It's a good thing I am a morning person because I had a 7:00 breakfast date with the folks at Little, Brown. I would've liked a bit more sleep as it took me quite a while to wind down from Newbery the previous evening; but, hey, it's Little, Brown!
Whether it's publisher previews in New York or events at conferences, Little Brown events are always special. Their books are consistently not only superb, but appealing to children. (We will not discuss the three-peat lest we jinx <cough> <Mighty Moby> cough). I feel lucky and honored to receive invitations. But, I felt super-lucky yesterday morning to learn that attendees were the first/ only folks to receive arcs of Peter Brown's sequel to The Wild Robot, The Wild Robot Escapes. Spoiler Alert!
Victoria Stapleton warned us that we were marked if any appeared on eBay. Like that would ever happen at my house! Just ask my patient husband who trips over books everywhere. I usually save my signed arcs on a carefully curated shelf. eBay my foot. I have actually stopped frequenting a local indie because he sells arcs. I found this out when he broke the embargo on a rather hyped book five years ago and haven't been in since.
Again, I digress. Three books were featured at the breakfast, Peter's, and The Star Thief by Lindsey Baker as well as Wade Albert White's second book in his "Adventurer's Guide" series (and his second book, period), The Adventurer's Guide to Dragons (and Why they Keep Biting Me). The Star Thief is on my summer TBR and I am embarrassed to admit that I missed The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes. I must remedy that because it sounds like a lot of fun.
From the breakfast, I had to trek down to the convention center before the exhibits closed because I had put five or six audiobooks aside at the BOT booth. I always buy five audiobooks at conference in addition to the one they are giving away because, conference prices! This year, I almost purchased ten, but set the five aside and added just one on further deliberation. There's only so much money one can spend even at convention prices.
One of the problems managing conference when it's in Chicago is needing to travel a lot. There's only one hotel near the convention center and a fair number of meetings and publisher events are held off-site. Trekking back and forth took time but I refused to spring for cab fare this trip. I took the el in and am taking it out. It's the shuttle or my feet.
Speaking of which, I used them to trek back to the convention center for the Odyssey Awards ceremony. After purchasing my audiobooks, I shuttled back to my hotel, grabbed my Simon & Schuster Art Lunch gift bag and trundled a few blocks to a FedEx store. Honestly, my arm and shoulder muscles really got a workout this weekend! I thought I might have dislocated my right elbow when I arrived at the FedEx store and attempted to lift the bags I was carrying with that hand up. My elbow wouldn't bend!
I want to post this and also spend some time writing about Odyssey.
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