Tonight is our fun filled SCBWI WWA Holiday Party meeting complete with cocoa, a cookie contest*, books by local authors and illustrators** for sale (most can be signed tonight, too, making awesome prezzies) and top notch session topics including:

Mini-Session: SHARING OUR GIFTS
With Mindy Harwick and Ann Teplick***. Feeling like a hermit? Checking and rechecking your email for that multi-book contract? Caught in the vacuum of self-absorption? Get out there and share your talents! The possibilities are endless, from volunteering in a classroom to mentorship with youth in juvenile detentions, prisons, or hospitals. Come learn how to partner with community organizations to help others find their voices and get their own stories into the world. Mindy, who has published short stories and many articles for children, also mentors teens at Denney Juvenile Justice Center and works as a school writer-in-residence. Ann is a poet, playwright, and prose writer who has worked with a variety of young writers including incarcerated youth at King County juvenile detention and young residents at a state psychiatric hospital.

Main Program: THE GIFT OF BOOKS
This December we’ll host some of the best read minds in the region as Allyson Schrier moderates a panel with booksellers from All for Kids Books & Music, Parkplace Books, The Secret Garden Bookshop, Third Place Books, and University Book Store. They are joining us to share their gifts of wisdom and wonder as we engage in a discussion about their passion and ours: books! Between them they have read much of what has been published for children this year and will speak candidly about the books we've got to read, and those we are better off avoiding. From the Newbery to the Caldecott; from the Prinz to the Geisel award—who do they expect to see earning medals this year? What books should win the awards but probably won't—and why? Which of this year's books are going to light up kids' eyes and help turn them into life-long readers? What are the books, current and classic, we should be gifting to the children (and grown-ups) in our lives this holiday season? If you love books—and we know you do—this is a session you won't want to miss!

Be there or be square:

Seattle Pacific University, Otto Miller Hall 109
Registration/cookies at 6:30 p.m., program at 7:00 p.m.
Guest entry is only ten bucks for hours of delight!

* I was a cookie judge last year and might be again this year. And I welcome bribes. All bribes should be in the form of cookies or British Pound Sterling.

** Illustrators like me! Sara and I will be on hand to sign copies of our award and seal winning fashion book!

*** Is it illegal or just nosy that I know that Ann Teplick and I are often on the same Hold shelf at the library? Because she comes right after me alphabetically and I often wish I could take some of the books she puts on hold...