Hellobee Boards

Never been to one with an author but my kids like readings at BN with their staff.

I would love to go to a reading! I'd be super excited to meet Mo too!

I LOVE Mo Willems! So, I haven't ever actually been to a book-store signing event, but because I've been on a few book awards committees in the past, I've had dinner with some authors, and that's always super fun because you get to hang out with them as real people.

I've met Veronica Roth, and John Green, and Mo Willems, and Jon Scieszka, and Judy Blume (that was a big one!) and a ton of other YA authors. It's fun, because sometimes you meet their spouses, or see pictures of their kids. I had a dinner with Mike Wolfe from American Pickers, after he wrote a YA book and I was hugely pregnant at the time and we bonded over that, because he'd just had a daughter.

I always hover between a little star-struck and realizing they are totally just normal people. Except John Green and Judy Blume, who are like...extraordinary, haha. And really good at capturing a whole room's energy.

eta: I have an embarrassing amount of signed copies of all these books--and most are from before I had children, so they are always just signed to me (the huge librarian dork).

As a child of a children's librarian I went to A LOT of these and unless I really liked the book the author read, they were SO boring! Except, the illustrator ones, those were pretty cool and they'd usually do a drawing when they signed your book! When I got older, my mom would take me to author book talks for books that I really liked - those were cool. I vividly remember the one with Lois Lowery about The Giver and her talking about symbolism.