WHATTA BIRTHDAY!!!
Thank you to everyone for the kind messages and good thoughts. If the rest of the world knew how much fun it is to turn 49, they wouldn’t angst about it so much.
Special thanks to the teens, parents, librarians, teachers, and booksellers at the Pittsford B&N for making my birthday FORGE tour event such a blast.
My father was super-impressed by the signs!
They made me a birthday cake!! And gave me presents: about 1.5 tons of popcorn, and a popcorn game, and a pen that had my name on it – SPELLED CORRECTLY!!
Some of the teens came early and camped out. They were smart and brought pillows, blankets, and food!
These guys all volunteers for the Rochester-area Teen Book Fest – the BEST teen book fest in the country. (My visit to the store was part of the fund raising efforts for the fest.) I’ll be speaking at TBF again in 2012.
And a few last pics from Missouri.
Pete the Bookseller from Reading Reptile took me to Charlie Parker’s grave.
And made sure I enjoyed a pulled pork sandwich at Arthur Bryant’s.
Eric is a Twitter friend and a teacher with a massively marked-up copy of CHAINS.
He gave me my new favorite shirt, from the History Geek club he runs. LOVE IT!!
Christine Taylor-Butler is a friend I met at Kindling Words. She took the time to come to my bookstore event, which was VERY much appreciated. It’s always comforting when I can see friends in the audience.
What a great picture of brudder. I canNOT believe he’s 83.
Laurie- I came to your talk tonight and loved it. You have such a great way talking to your YA fans. Good to see you! sorry that I couldn’t hold out til the end but I had a lovely chat with one of your fans and her mother- a Penn State senior who’s been following you since 2nd grade with hopes of being a writer.
Hugs
Ginny