just another bronx girl

I'm back from the NCTE/ALAN Convention and it was quite the experience, let me tell you!

I'll start with the location. A lot has already been written about Opryland (check out elockhar, writergrl, castellucci, sarazarr, and John Green), but the only way I can describe what it's like living there for five days is to compare it to THE TRUMAN SHOW. It is an artificial world that has been designed to TRICK the inhabitants into thinking they are in an actual world, you know, one with fresh air! There are lots of trees and plants and even a river and waterfall. BUT THEY AREN'T REAL! The temperature is controlled so that it's warmer in the day and cooler at night. And there's a nice breeze every so often. There were even bird sightings!

BUT YOU'RE STILL INSIDE THIS BIOSPHERE!!!

From coe booth

From coe booth

From coe booth

From coe booth

This place is wild!!!

On Saturday, I did manage to leave the dome. I went to a mall to do a book signing with LAUREN MYRACLE and WILLIAM SLEATOR. They were both a blast!!! It was my first bookstore signing and, I don't want to BRAG or anything, but I did sell a WHOLE book.

ONE.

It was so humiliating. Especially since the bookstore had gone through all the trouble of placing THREE STACKS of books and TWO SHARPIES on my signing table. Like one Sharpie would run out of ink with all the signing I would be doing. Not only did I only sell one book, I ended up spending $16 at the bookstore! (In my own defense, though, there were only three kids at the signing, and two of them looked like they were eleven years old. They did ask great questions though!) Oh well...

The NCTE/ALAN Convention was so interesting. These are the English teachers and school librarians every kid would kill to have. They are excited about literature and eager to find books to bring back to their classrooms. I've only had a few such teachers and I KNOW the effect they have on students. I always credit my fourth grade teacher with creating a book lover out of me. She had a little "book nook" area in her classroom that she stocked with such a wide variety of books that it was impossible to not find something you liked. Looking back, I'm pretty sure she probably used her own money to buy those books! Now that's dedication.

During the convention, I had lots of lovely lunches and dinners. I had dinner one night with JUDITH ORTIZ, NIKKI GRIMES, and ALAN LAWRENCE SITOMER. Another night I went out with the Scholastic staff and authors to a restaurant that was decorated like an old plantation from back in the pre-Civil War days. (And as a Black woman, let me say, the decor wasn't exactly all that comforting, but I was part of a group so I tried to get past it!) I did have the opportunity there to taste some delicious cheeses which were described to us with words like sexy and risque. And, hey, I'm from the Bronx. The only cheeses I had eaten up to that point were cheddar, American and gob'ment! :-)

On Sunday I read at the Scholastic Brunch along with JORDAN SONNENBLICK, JIM MURPHY, and TRACY MACK AND MICHAEL CITRIN. Then I spoke at something called an Author Strand. I'm still not 100% sure what that means, but it was a shared session with KAYE GIBBONS. (Can you believe that?!) I spoke a little bit about my life, the inspiration behind TYRELL and what kinds of issues I hoped to explore in the book. I was extremely nervous standing there, even though the audience was super supportive. And it helped a lot that DAVID LEVITHAN, SARAH DESSEN and SARA ZARR were right in front giving me the "You're doing good" sign.

Kaye was a hoot! She's sooo funny. After we both spoke, the audience asked us questions and I had the opportunity to say some of the things I had hoped to say when I was at the podium but was too nervous. One audience member, who was excited about possibly teaching TYRELL in her high school class, asked me how she can go about justifying to parents teaching a book with such raw language, and I explained that I wanted TYRELL to be as authentic as possible, and the language in the book represents the truth for some teenagers. I told her that teens should be exposed to as much of reality as possible while they are in school where there can be discussion and there is a teacher there to help guide them, so that when they graduate they will not be put out into the world unaware of people whose lives are very much different from their own. It's all about education.

After the Author Strand, I was interviewed for the ALAN REVIEW by Jim Blasingame. He was so nice and supportive of TYRELL. I did get kind of nervous when he pulled out a tape recorder though. I can't wait to see the interview, just to see how he managed to make sense out of my rambling answers!

At night all the teen authors hung out in the Delta Lounge where the music was excruciatingly bad, but the company was great. One night we even got into an interesting, lively, scholarly debate. Okay, it was on whether or not Estelle Getty is still alive, but a lively debate it was. By the way, she's alive!!!

I had a free day on Monday, so I walked around attending everyone else's readings and panels. Then I went to lunch with a group of authors and I had this weird surreal moment. I was sitting at a table with David, NANCY GARDEN, GAIL GILES, EMILY (E.) LOCKHART, JULIE ANN PETERS and CECIL CASTELLUCCI. And all these authors were just so much fun. It's almost like they're regular people or something!

Here I am with Cecil and Emily in the nativity garden:

From coe booth

The whole event was overwhelming, especially if you're a fan of great children's books. I would walk down the hallways and routinely run into writers like JOHN GREEN (hysterical as always!), ELLEN WITTLINGER (lots o' hugs from her), JILL SANTOPOLO (a fantastic editor and upcoming author), GREG and CYNTHIA LEITICH SMITH, and MATT DE LA PENA. I also got to finally meet professornana! YAY!

And I just want to go on record about an incident first mentioned by castellucci. Yes, there were boxes of books. And, yes, I might have been the ringleader of a few unnamed teen authors removing such books from those boxes without authorization. (Stealing is such a dirty word!) And, yes, we were scolded once and then resumed removing such books without authorization about two minutes later. But there is a greater INJUSTICE here. How dare that woman who yelled at us say, "Authors aren't allowed to take any free books!"? If it weren't for us authors, there wouldn't even be any books for us to steal, uh, I mean, remove without authorization!

Right???

And just because I like you, dear blog reader, let me leave you with a zebra playing guitar!

From coe booth