#alamw15  Wow..you should see the snow coming down here in Chicago. It’s amazing. Makes you want a fireplace, a cup of tea, a fuzzy blanket and your stack of books.  We walk  across one of those enclosed walkway bridges to get from the hotel to the Convention Center and the traffic is moving at a flying pace on those slushy, snowy streets below us.  Amazing. I was talking to a librarian from Tucson who was walking over the bridge at the same time I was there and we laughed that back home we would be driving at a snail’s pace.  These Chicagoans are old hands at this stuff and the plows seem to be keeping the city streets from turning a frosty white.  Go Chicago!!!!

The Exhibit Halls are alive with folks stopping by the publishers’ booths to take time to talk.  There seems to be a general feeling of a more relaxed pace and less of a hectic crowd. You can really take time to have a conversation with publicists and new friends.

I picked up the new Ursula Vernon  book Hamster Princess because I hand out Dragonbreath about five times a day to reluctant readers whose parents are stunned to discover something their reluctant..that is to say non-reader… is smiling about.  🙂 Best part of the job:)

Jill Santopolo, editor at Philomel, handed me Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff. I may take that one on the plane. Still deciding:)  Jill is the editor for T.A. Barron’s books..Atlantis Rising and Atlantis in Peril..coming soon… and she has her own light, frothy series about sisters who love nail polish and doing rainbow manicures…it’s pure whipcream baby and a fun, wholesome take on sisters who get along..rare.

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley is getting some buzz.  That’s in the running for the plane home read.

And I don’t know if you all have seen the new NNEWTS series by Doug TenNapel?  I had not seen this. I love his graphic novels for kids and YA.  Book one is Escape from the Lizzarks.

I’m heading down with four heavy bags of books to go to the shipping room to send the books home.  It’s that moment now when you have to decide what book goes in the carry-on and what book goes in the box to be read later…ahhhh…too many good ones!

Hope you all are snug and warm in your neck of the woods.  The excitement for me will be getting in a taxi tonight in the middle of this blizzard to go to a publisher dinner.  That will be a true test of how Chicago taxi drivers overcome obstacles.  Maybe they could be a new series of superheroes…like lunch ladies… all speaking different languages..so far I’ve met a guy from Nepal whose wife is about to get her MBA…moved from Kathmandu  and a guy from Istanbul been here for three years and an elderly Korean fellow who has been here for 32 years. I lived in S. Korea for two years as an army wife so we traded a few stories.

Story…..that’s what it’s all about!!!