It’s A Wrap! 2012 Book Expo America and Armchair BEA

Now, my experience with the BEA Blogger Conference may not have been the best or even close to what I expected, but Book Expo America was incredible! Minus the overwhelming aspects of the giant event I found so much of what happened within the walls of the Javits Center from Tuesday to Thursday last week amazing. Not only were there wall-to-wall publishers sharing the latest and greatest in books, but there were friends and book lovers at every turn. It was absolutely not long enough to fit everything in, but I’m certain my feet and my kiddos are thanking my arrival home.

Monday and Tuesday:

The first day was dedicated primarily to the Book Blogger Con and you can read my full wrap-up here. But one of the things I was looking forward to the most on Monday was the opportunity I had to meet up with Raquel Matos. We initially met on Twitter when we were discussing the “controversial” topic of book jackets on children’s books. Haha. Little did I know at the time that Raquel would quickly turn into a dear friend and someone I’ve wanted to meet for a long time now. It was fantastic to finally meet her!!!

Monday night I was also able to attend the Scholastic book event with authors like James Dashner, Jeff Hirsch, Kate Messner and Maggie Stiefvater to mention just a few. This was a fantastic meet and greet as well as absolutely hilarious when the authors acted out each other’s books. Loved this and getting to see the fun location of Scholastic Books, so neat! After the Scholastic event was the Harper Collins event featuring a few adult fiction authors at a very swanky bar. Being that I’m not a drinker, it was very late and I’d had a long day this was a quick stop, but I was still so excited to see quite a few familiar faces.

Tuesday started with a trip to the BEA Press Room, which let me tell you was an absolute life saver! There were a number of times I ventured into this little hideaway with my press pass just to lounge in the comfy chairs and put my feet up for a minute or two. So nice! On Tuesday morning though I finally had the opportunity to meet up with Florinda from The 3 R’s Blog and one of my absolute favorite people in the world, author Beth Kephart. Finally! She was every bit as incredible as I thought she would be and despite her concern about her hair, I’d say she was the best looking of our bunch! This was a dream come true and if I were to end the week at this point I think I would have been 100% satisfied.

Tuesday didn’t stop after this meet-up though. I had the fantastic opportunity to meet up with a number of publishers I’ve worked with for years now including Candlewick, MacMillan, Chronicle Books, Sourcebooks, Capstone, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Kids Can Press, Lerner Publishing Group, Peachtree Publishers and Tiger Tales Books. Meeting with Tiger Tales was especially fantastic since they were one of the first publishers I had contact with, in fact their book I’ve Seen Santa by David Bedford was the first book we reviewed here! Sarah Prial and Barbara Knight were delightful and incredibly welcoming. In fact they ended up being a sponsor for Armchair BEA! Loved making all of these wonderful in-real-life connections.

It ended up that Tuesday was the “big” afternoon/evening for me. Not only did I meet the fabulous Lenore Appelhans (whose name I never seem to be able to spell correctly) while attending the Apocalypsies event that afternoon, but I also snagged a copy of her upcoming debut novel Level 2 which she signed for me! Lenore is just as sweet in person as she is online and her book blew me away (yes, I read it on the plane ride home…I couldn’t help it!). After this it was a quick trip to a meeting with Brilliance Audio and wow! Can I tell you how much I adore this company?! Amazing people truly.

As I mentioned, Tuesday was an epic day and the evening was the icing on the top of the cake. That evening I was honored to be invited to a wonderful dinner with Candlewick Press featuring two of their middle grade novelists, Scott Nash and Laura Amy Schlitz, along with a number of marvelous industry professionals (Jennifer Brown from Shelf Awareness and Betsy Bird from A Fuse #8 Production, to name a couple), booksellers, teachers and librarians. In total there were about thirty five people at the dinner and I’m not sure my feet ever touched the ground the entire evening. Honestly I couldn’t list everyone that I met, but I can definitely say they were all incredible especially the wonderful folks at Candlewick Press. Not only was the night magnificent but they sent me away with a number of books (all signed of course) by both authors, many of which I’ll be able to giveaway very soon. This was an experience of a lifetime and I can’t thank Candlewick enough for their generosity by including me in such a prestigious group of industry professionals. Amazing.

Wednesday:

I know, only Wednesday? It’s crazy to think I packed so much into such a short period of time, but I did some how and perhaps that’s why I’m still left wondering if it all really happened. Wednesday was fun though! This day was more relaxed and I spent a lot of time in the author signing lines as well as with a lunch with the fabulous Raquel. We ate over a long discussion of future books coming from Candlewick that I cannot wait to tell you all about…be prepared, they’re amazing! Wednesday I also met with the wonderful Esther from MacMillan Audio. She was so full of life and excitement about the future audiobooks coming from MacMillan that I couldn’t help but get excited myself! Look for more titles from them in the very near future! Also I attended the BEA Middle Grade Editor’s Buzz, but I’ll have more on that very soon. As I mentioned, Wednesday was a day for author signings and of course I completely spaced on taking pictures (grrr!). But here are the books I was able to pick up:

Among these some of my favorites were This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen (Who was amazing and totally remembered our photo montage we did from I Want My Hat Back and even mentioned that he sent it to his mom!), Guys Read: The Sports Pages edited by Jon Scieszka (Jon was incredible, as was the entire Walden Pond Press team who were all there, and he couldn’t stop telling people about the interview we did with him last year. Loved that!) and also meeting William Joyce the author and man behind The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (amazing, incredible, brilliant). After that we went home and crashed for the night.

Thursday:

This was a day for wandering and catching up on the last few things I hadn’t seen. I also took a few more pictures that I’d missed including one with Emily from Emily’s Reading Room and one with the fabulous Scaredy Squirrel. In addition to this I was able to have lunch with the fabulous Kellie from Walden Pond Press! I love Kellie to pieces and the last time we met was at the LA Times Festival of Books where she was a bit under the weather. Thankfully this time she was feeling great and we spent a long lunch chatting about life and books and other fun things, it was a blast! Thank you Kellie! Later we headed out on the town. I do have to say a huge thank you to Raquel for the tip about PAX! It’s a fantastic place to eat if you’re ever in NY, incredibly cheap and really good wholesome food. Loved it! We also stopped by the Toys ‘R’ Us for the kiddos to pick up a shirt or two and saw the giant indoor ferris wheel, wow! Then we went out to a movie. So all in all a great last day!

Overall I’d say I had a fantastic time! Book Expo America was exhausting, amazing, overwhelming, insane and incredible all at the same time. I met so many people I’ve worked with for so long and wanted to see in person including a ton of bloggers that I should have taken photos with. Would I go again? Probably not. It was an experience of a lifetime and I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it because it was. Everyone who is in love with books should go a least once I think, but for this non-NY fan I think the one time was just enough to get my feet wet without feeling engulfed. My feet are thankful to be home, my kiddos are beyond thrilled mom and dad are back, and I’m really glad I showed some restraint when selecting books to bring home (only $10 for shipping!). I’m excited for all the connections I made, for the friends I was able to meet finally and for the books I discovered. Now lets hope maybe they’ll move the event closer to home in the future! Until then I’ll just keep enjoying the event via Armchair BEA which I need to say was more incredible than ever. Thank you again to all the hard work by everyone involved!