Evening my friends!

Today was day two of the week long BEA/BBC extravaganza in NYC.  I was glad to have a fabulous bookish event to attend with fabulous friends.  @lenoreva, @lizb and @catagator and I started the day off with breakfast at Good Stuff Diner.  We had excellent conversations about blogging and books and life in general.

Once done, we walked over to Books of Wonder to attend an event with seven young adult authors — Julie Chibbaro, Amy Ignatow, Melissa Kantor, Megan Mccafferty, Elizabeth Scott, Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg.  The authors each spent about five or so minutes to tell us about their book and then read an excerpt.  Then withstood a rigorous question and answer session where they were asked about their writing process, book banning, their road to publication and desire to be a writer.

One of the best things about events like this is that I discover books I may not have ordinarily sought out.  Not only that but it amazes me how an engaging author can make me want to read those books.  Case in point, Casey Scieska and Steven Weindberg have written and illustrated a non fiction book about their world travels.  The two of them were fantastically animated and entertaining to the point that I was reaching for the book.  You all know that I am not a non-fiction girl at all.  That’s how fun and interesting they were.

Amy Ignatow was another author that surprised me.  Her book The Popularity Papers strikes me as more a middle grade read and not one that I would necessarily be inclined to reach for.  However, she was so hysterically funny I’m interested to see if her wit and sense of humor are carried over into the book.

But, I admit, the best part of the event was listening to Megan Mccafferty talk about how Bumped came to be and what her intentions were when writing it.  Such a great dynamic explanation.  Sadly, I proceeded to *completely* fan girl all over her when I got my book signed.  I’m sure she thought I was a complete freak show for all the gushing over the book I did.  But I did love it, and you should read it!

Great, great stuff.  Books of Wonder always puts on a fantastic event.  I’ve been to several here now and each one really is enjoyable.