Woo! So yeah, last month I went to the Baltimore Book Festival, which is always a great time. As usual, there were some fantastic children's authors and illustrators that I really wanted to see, but unfortunately, they were only there on Saturday, and I had to work. Alas, I could not see Nathan Hale or Tomie DePaola, or any of the other great people. But as you can see from my post title, a good children's librarian cannot be kept down.
First I should say that I already had planned to be at the book festival on Friday. I actually volunteered to work at the library tent for 4 hours (yes, on my day off. I am quite the philanthropist, eh?). I had a lot of fun doing that. My job was to take pictures of people holding the giant library card.
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| The Giant Library Card! And me. |
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It was pretty enjoyable. I took pictures of several book characters with the giant library card, too. I got the Berenstain Bears, one of the Wild Things from
Where the Wild Things Are, and Curious George. Also a lion from a book none of us had ever heard of. Good times.
After my shift was over, I still wanted to do fun things at the book festival, so I did some research in the hopes that I would find an author worth seeing. I couldn't find anyone at the kids tent, which is where I usually go, let's be honest. But I did discover that Meg Cabot would be there! If you're not familiar with her, she's written about a billion books, most notably
The Princess Diaries (confession-never read them),
The Mediator (very good-I cried when I read the last book),
Avalon High (my personal favorite version of the King Arthur story, with
Merlin being a close second), and
1-800-Where-R-U (no words for how much I love these books). And lots of other books, too! She's also written several series for grownups, which I've never read because I almost never like books for grownups.
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| Other notable celebrities at the Baltimore Book Festival included Waldo. |
Anywho, she was coming to the Baltimore Book Festival to promote her latest book for grownups,
The Bride Wore Size 12. And she was in the Romance Writer's tent! AH! Basically, she was super delightful, and as she said herself, while there is some romance in her books, they're actually mysteries. Unfortunately, everyone else who was presenting in the panel really does write romance books, so it was awkward and uncomfortable to listen to them talk about their books. Fortunately, they gave out free chocolates! Also fortunate is the fact that Meg Cabot's adult books are pretty good! I've read a couple since the festival, and while they definitely are more grownup than her teen books (more swears), they're still really enjoyable.
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| We're famous! |
So yeah, I met Meg Cabot! She signed my book and took a picture with my friend Leah and me. And I think I was pretty cool about the whole thing. I am a noted spaz when it comes to meeting authors I admire, but I have been working on myself, and I think it's paying off. Meg Cabot was a success!
The rest of the book festival was really fun, too. It's a great place to buy awesome used books. I got a Czech phrase book for $1, which is going to be really helpful when I go to Prague. Have I mentioned how much I want to go to Prague? I also got the first
Girl Talk book, which was pretty thrilling. Next year I'm going to try to see even more stuff. I'd really like to do the literary walking tour. It sounds pretty awesome. All in all, it was a great day. How can you go wrong with a book festival?
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| Answer: You can't.
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