These ladies should have their own comedy hour. Their books are impeccable -- perfect plots, beautiful settings, and wonderful, sympathetic characters that have senses of humor -- but in person these two are some sort of foxy hyper-hilarious Smothers Brothers/Diabolical Geniuses who should be on SNL full time. Or better yet, co-run our country from the White House.

Lordy.

They did three events yesterday EACH with different content (take that, Seinfeld!) and are doing two more today if you want to start your own Grateful Dead-like groupie troupe for them.

Shannon's outfit is the actual outfit used for the BOOK OF A THOUSAND DAYS cover. Lovely book. I'm only 2/3 of the way through THE SWEET FAR THING -- the action is ramping up and it is killing me. I will be tense until I finish this book and I have lots of work to do! Aargh!

Their events today:

Friday, January 25th
3:15pm
Mountlake Terrace Library
23300 - 58th Ave. W
Mountlake Terrace, WA

6:30 pm
Third Place Books
17171 Bothell Way
Lake Forest Park, WA

Continue reading "Shannon Hale and Libba Bray in town!" »

Happy Newbery and Caldecott Day!

I spent the morning getting a broken molar fixed. Drills and blood and shots in your mouth. It feels like I have a tiny kitty litter box in the middle of my tooth -- grit from the filling that should go away*. I would wager a bazillion dollars that my feelings this morning are the EXACT OPPOSITE of the lucky and deserving winners of the prestigious children's book awards that were just announced.

And guess who the guest rock star illustrator at the April SCBWI conference here is?

Rhymes with Shmo Shmillens!

Mo freaking Willems. He won a Caldecott honor and the Geisel award. He shouldn't be missed. And we have Betsy freaking Bird coming and Arthur freaking Levine and the 2007 freaking Newbery ladies minus one. And Laini bleeping Taylor and Jim bleeping Bartolo. AND MORE. It is insane how many cool children's book people will be here in April. And snacks. We'll even have box lunches and snacks.

Western Washington also rocks because it is home to the authors for my first and second book illustration jobs -- Sara of Fashion Studio fame and Martha of Grammar fame. THINGS THAT MAKE US [SIC] will be out this fall and I'm doing 10 spots for it! It IS the best, most hilarious grammar book you will ever read.

Continue reading "Western Washington ROCKS" »