Princeton Children's Book Festival 2008 Trip Report

Last Saturday, in revenge for my post about my hair, my curls destroyed my hairbrush. Utterly.

It was a crime of passion.

But I soldiered on, dragged the disintegrating bristles through my fuzz, and then trotted off to the Princeton Children's Book Festival.

I love the Princeton Children's Book Festival. You sit outside under a tent with 40+ other writers and talk to people about books. Awesome.

Here's me at my table:


One of the things that I love about this book festival is that the organizers (led by the fabulous Allison Santos) are organized. (You'd think this would be a standard feature of organizers, but not so much.) These librarians and volunteers think of everything.

For example, every author who wants one can have their own personal helper to, you know, help. In addition to helping me schlep candy from the car and tastefully arranging the requisite beware-the-Wild vines, my helper got me food! This gained her instant entry to my list of People Who Are Awesome.

I brought the vines; she brought the sandwiches.

Other people who are awesome were there too, including many, many awesome authors. For the festival, I was seated between the super-nice Linda Bozzo and Sally Cook and behind Dan Gutman. I also had a chance to talk a bit with Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead, both wonderful people and writers. And I got to meet the fabulous Donna Jo Napoli, whose books I adore, and many other writers at a lovely gathering afterward hosted by Margery Cuyler.

Rebecca Stead, Me, and Wendy Mass

Me and Linda Bozzo

And here's something completely unrelated but it made me smile so I wanted to share. I discovered this commercial the other day on Diana Peterfreund's blog, and I 100% agree with it (except for the line about arachnids).