Friday - our unused bad weather day - a "free holiday" of sorts. I didn't get a mani/pedi and enjoy a spa day or eat bonbons while lounging next to the pool like most normal teachers do in their spare time. No, not me. Why be normal? I geeked out and fangirled at the North Texas Teen Book Festival's educator day in Irving.
What more could a girl ask for?
Met my fellow book nerd buddies at the convention center and trekked inside. After climbing to the clouds via escalators, we found ourselves in a room mostly filled with fancy tables. The ones with cloths and multiple forks and properly folded napkins spilling from coffee mugs - just like our usual teacher lunch every day (not!). We stared for a moment, acclimating ourselves to the room, noticing the piles of books for sale in the back and the three authors we came to see in the front. Then, we bought books. Because it's what you do!
Next, we found seats where we could easily see the authors while enjoying our fancy-looking lunch and dug in. We met some nice folks and found some old friends. We ate. We laughed. But best of all, we listened.
Sarah Dessen told us of wishing she weren't always in her brother's shadow as a teen and using that background to write herself out of her teen parking lots and into the hands of teen readers. e lockhart told of thinking she was writing a teen love story until she figured out that most stories set on secluded islands are certainly thrillers! Ruta Sepetys mentioned that she writes from a literal tree house and spends countless hours researching, for this book, people like her immigrant father from Lithuania.
They were fascinating and hysterical and amazing. Then, we met them!
Each author was kind and smiley and clever. We laughed with them, glowing with the opportunity to tell how much we and our students love their work. With Ruta Sepetys, though, I had a *moment*. I was still in the middle of her book Salt to the Sea, a story of refugees during WW2 fleeing toward a doomed German ship soon to sink. While reading last week during class, I stopped to take a photo of a passage using birds that I found particularly beautiful, and I told her that my students giggled at me for photographing words. Immediately, she knew the paragraph I liked, reciting it back to me from memory, and she seemed excited that I enjoyed it. She explained how she plants little nuggets like that into a story, never knowing if a reader will find it and like it. She said she'd be telling her husband of this exchange and thanked me for complimenting her! I had so many things I wanted to say - how I love birds as images because of the bird watcher my husband has made me into - how I love that she wove birds, particularly storks, into the character of Emilia's story - how I wish I could put words together in a way that would make a reader catch her breath. Instead, I teared up. Words failed. Maybe next time.
We spent our afternoon listening to more authors. We heard panels on censorship and diversity and labels. We laughed and laughed and laughed. We tweeted and retweeted powerful words (sorry my Tweeps). We had a blast!
An even cooler thing? The next day, NTTBF16 continued with 75 authors and what is reported to be 8000+ students who came to hear and meet those authors! That is amazing! And that is what great lit will do - connect us, unite us, encourage and motivate us. I didn't make it to that day, but after attending the educator day, I know I'm going back next year. And next time, I hope to take a bus load of readers with me. Because it's awesome!
What more could a girl ask for?
Met my fellow book nerd buddies at the convention center and trekked inside. After climbing to the clouds via escalators, we found ourselves in a room mostly filled with fancy tables. The ones with cloths and multiple forks and properly folded napkins spilling from coffee mugs - just like our usual teacher lunch every day (not!). We stared for a moment, acclimating ourselves to the room, noticing the piles of books for sale in the back and the three authors we came to see in the front. Then, we bought books. Because it's what you do!
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| View from our seats |
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| Kate & e lockhart! |
Sarah Dessen told us of wishing she weren't always in her brother's shadow as a teen and using that background to write herself out of her teen parking lots and into the hands of teen readers. e lockhart told of thinking she was writing a teen love story until she figured out that most stories set on secluded islands are certainly thrillers! Ruta Sepetys mentioned that she writes from a literal tree house and spends countless hours researching, for this book, people like her immigrant father from Lithuania.
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| Dessen, Sepetys, and lockhart! |
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| Checking my phone for the pic of her passage! |
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| My book nerd buddies and me! |
An even cooler thing? The next day, NTTBF16 continued with 75 authors and what is reported to be 8000+ students who came to hear and meet those authors! That is amazing! And that is what great lit will do - connect us, unite us, encourage and motivate us. I didn't make it to that day, but after attending the educator day, I know I'm going back next year. And next time, I hope to take a bus load of readers with me. Because it's awesome!
I am super jealous that you got to meet e lockhart!!! Through a girly teenage romance novel you got a grown man to read and read with a fierceness!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you for having such a deep love for book and reading. But even more thanks for allowing that deep love to rub off to your other co-workers!!
P.S. I think I am going to have to start reading Kate Mayo's blog because she keeps appearing in your blog. :)