wearing a press pass is the coolest thing ever

Last week, I seriously began my obsessive thinking about the upcoming National Book Festival, and now, two days after the event, I'm still going strong. But, that's because the memories from the day are simply wonderful, amazing, fantastic, spectacular, fill-in-the-blank-with-an-extremely-positive-adjective-of-your-choice. Oh yes, folks, it was a lovely day.

A while back, I asked Jennifer, my editor at 5 Minutes for Books, if she thought we qualified as 'press,' since the NBF website had a link to request a press pass. Although I had no real idea what that would entail, it certainly sounded like a cool thing. She wasn't sure, but encouraged me to fill out the online form, saying that the worst that could happen would be to be told no. I'm not big on taking risks, and even though this one seems silly, I was still pretty nervous to submit the form. I did it anyway, and in the special requests section, I put it all on the line and requested an interview with Mo Willems. I was pretty sure it would come to nothing...

And then, I began to hear from representatives from the NBF, and I was offered several interviews with other children's authors. A few were authors whose work I was completely unfamiliar with, and in other genres than I would be most interested in reading/reviewing. So, I declined a few (which came to bite me later...), but I accepted an interview with nonfiction children's author, Craig Hatkoff. I still held out for my few minutes to chat with Mo, though. After several weeks, and many emails later, it was finally agreed upon. The day of the Festival would entail interviews in the Media Tent with two incredibly successful, and thus hugely intimidating to me, children's authors. I went off on Saturday morning with a clipboard holding my typed and highlighted schedule chart, my official interview questions, my contact sheet, and a map of the Festival. Lovely hubby was so kind as to lend me an audio recorder to capture my first ever interviews with famous people, so I could forever return to what I imagined would be several minutes of me stuttering and making a general fool of myself.

Lo and behold, I don't think I handled myself too badly, but I have yet to listen to the interviews in their entirety. What I thought would be just a few short minutes, turned out to be about 45 minutes chatting with Craig Hatkoff, and a good ten minute chat with Mo Willems. (Who, if you are new to these parts, just happens to be my most favorite children's book author ever, and has been the subject of a blog post or two before...) Once I get the audio files back from lovely hubby, I'll post again about our lovely talks, because both Craig and Mo were incredibly friendly and personable, and I actually did learn some new things from those conversations.

Me speaking with Craig Hatkoff in a WAY more official setting than I expected in the Media Tent.

Me and my starstruck grin listening to Mo Willems just outside the Media Tent.


The face of a super-fan's joy. Mine that is, I don't know what JAM's is all about! Mo, on the other hand, may be counting down the seconds until he could escape!

In addition to my first foray into famous-people- interviewer territory, the entire day had the feeling of being blessed-- forget the rain, forget the crowds, it was as if I were walking on a cloud. Amazing and out-of-this-world. (Apparently that's the effect of having a press pass around my neck. I may take to wearing it on a regular basis.) I swear to you, I felt among my people-- my fellow 130,000+ book-lovers who have shared in the experience of the outside world falling away and time standing still as the covers of a book are opened. There were so many amazing authors who were speaking, and since I never successfully figured out that whole cloning thing, we had to make choices about who to watch speak that day, and who we'd simply have to catch when the videos are posted online. Here's a little breakdown of our day:

• Craig Hatkoff's talk in the Children's Tent-- much of his speech was similar to our conversation that morning, but it was fantastic to sit with JAM and listen to his amazement and awe in response to Craig's telling of Winter's story, the subject of his new book, Winter's Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned to Swim Again. This book is incredible!! It follows four previous titles by Craig, who wrote them with his daughters Juliana and Isabella, about true stories of amazing animal survival. You simply must check them all out!

Craig Hatkoff holding up one of Winter the dolphin's prosthetic tails-- truly amazing!

• Julia Alvarez was wonderful to listen to, especially after reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents with my online book club last year. She spoke so passionately about writing and reading, I had chills.
  
• Although I'm not directly familiar with the Judy Moody books, JAM has read at least one, and we both immensely enjoyed listening to Megan McDonald talk about how her own real-life experiences growing up with four older sisters inspired much of the mischievous ways of Judy in her books. She was fun to watch and we laughed a lot!
• We stayed in the children's tent to listen to Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, and I am beyond thrilled that we did. I am unfamiliar with The Spiderwick Chronicles, but JAM read them last year, I believe. Watching them on stage together was a pure joy-- like attending a stand-up comedy show with my son. This is the interview opportunity that I passed up. UGH. My mindset was that since I hadn't read their books, I probably wouldn't have had anything to ask them, but man oh man, I wish I had rethought that one, because they would have been an absolute blast to chat with. So, so funny.
  
• The talk that I expected to enjoy from the comfort of a seat in the side front row soon became the talk that I would watch for a bit from right next to the stage, and eventually, the talk that I would be a part of!! WHAT?! Okay, here's how it went down. I was sitting with my friend L in our side, front row seats, waiting for JAM to get back from the port-a-potties in time for Mo Willems' scheduled appearance at the Children's Tent. All of a sudden, his wonderful publicist who I had been emailing with for weeks to coordinate the interview, walks up and says something quickly to me, something like, "Oh, friend! Do you want to come up and be a part of this?" Um... YES PLEASE! So, I dash off behind her to the side of the stage where Mo is standing with two young girls. He looks at me and says something like, "Oh, great! You'll have fun with this." He introduces me to one of the girls saying, "This is (and let's her fill in her name). She's the daughter of a blogger," and then tells the other girl, "Trixie, you'll be the dog." Oh. Hello there Trixie Willems, owner of the beloved Knuffle Bunny, and dear daughter of my favorite author! I then turn to the first little girl, Erin, because I realize that I know who her blogging mother is-- MotherReader! So, a few minutes later, I found myself on stage acting out Today I Will Fly! with Mo Willems (as Gerald the Elephant), Erin (as Piggie... the, uh, piggie), Trixie Willems (as the inspiring dog), Cheryl Willems (his wife who held the book for the audience to see). I had the extreme pleasure of playing the part of the helpful pelican, who utters three lines which necessitated my first ever wearing of a mic-pack. Holy cow. When the video of that is made available online, you know for damn sure that I'll be plugging that baby over here. And get this- it will be in the Library of Congress' archives for all of time. Holy friggin cow. After the talk, I thanked Mo again, and walked off with my 'script' (which is not one of his books that we already owned- sweet!). I am still in a daze.

JAM's photographic evidence of my time on stage with Mo, or at least his disembodied head. His wife, whose fashion sense I admire, is my 1/2 sized twin to my left.

• Then we headed over to the Teens & Children's Tent and saw Patrick Carman, whose books were previously unfamiliar to both me and JAM, but are now on this week's library list. This guy was hilarious, and I'm so glad that we got to see him talk, because I think JAM will adore his books.
• Next up was Jeff Kinney, UMD alum and all-around funny guy, whose Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are among JAM's read-again-and-again favorites. After missing him at the university's Maryland Day this past spring, I was thrilled when I saw him on this year's NBF list-- JAM giggled through his talk and is looking forward to his new book coming out next month.
• Our final talk for the LONG day was David Shannon and Jon Scieszka, who worked together on a new book Robot Zot! that was pretty funny when they read it together. They were another hilarious duo on stage together, and JAM was thrilled to listen to them after enjoying their picture books (together and separately) for years. He recently read Knucklehead, Scieszka's autobiography-of-sorts which was full of stories that made the mom in me groan in terror, but the humor-loving-gal in me crack up. L, JAM and I were all sufficiently entertained by their on-stage antics, and it was an upbeat and happy way to end a fantastic day.

After eight hours on the National Mall, much of it in a steady, cool rain, we were exhausted, but happy to have been there. Especially me. I felt like everything went my way, which simply never happens, so naturally I was a bit skeptical, but I tried my best to push that aside. Lovely hubby was an absolute sport, taking one for the team even with his injured and aching knee, since he handled the young-uns all morning to allow for me to hang out with the big wigs in the Media Tent. It seems as if they had some amazing adventures of their own! The official NBF 2009 video hasn't been posted online yet, but I saw the B-side roll on the press room section of the site, and Red and JAM make an appearance on that video! Hopefully those beautiful faces will also appear on the final video, which of course, I will plug here, too!

Whew!! If there is one person who actually made it to the end of this marathon-of-memories post, I salute you. (I figure this is one of those posts just for me to look back on in my golden years.) Now, I expect you all, near and far, to mark your calendars for next year-- the last Saturday in September means one thing, and one thing only-- National Book Festival! Wanna hang out with us next year??


Still starstruck and stupified,