BookExpo America 2009: Librarians Descend on BEA
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By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2009 2:05:00 PM
Bowling with Scott Westfield, sipping tea with Mo Willems, and getting bag loads of autographed books are
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Incoming YALSA President Kim Patton trying to locate her daughter on the exhibit floor. |
School librarians, Jan Romanczyk and Carol Woodcock from Great Meadows, NJ, arrived at 7 a.m. on opening day to make sure they didn’t miss anything, but by noon they admitted having trouble staying on top of it all.
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The librarians' lounge at BEA. |
It was the first BEA for Kansas City Librarian Kim Patton, the new president-elect of the Young Adult Library Services Association, who was on her cell phone trying to track down her daughter in the exhibit area.
Lorraine Bartlett of Hampton Public Library and Sasha Matthews, teen librarian at Chesapeake Public Library, both in Virginia, had breakfast on Friday with Julie Andrews, Meg Cabot, and Tomie dePaola. While strolling the 1,500 exhibits, attendees also came across familiar faces signing their books, including Kathy Lee Gifford, Judy Collins, and Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot in charge of the emergency water landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in New York’s Hudson River earlier this year.
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Librarians Jan Romanczyk (left) and Carol Woodcock. |
The Twitterverse was alive with librarians' reactions to their BEA experience. TiffanyE, a high school librarian from the Philadelphia area, wrote “Amazing BEA moment 4: Kristin Cashore [author of Graceling, Houghton, 2008] told me I was her hero. Might have to read her ARC [advanced readers copy] next.” She also tweeted about her hour-long conversation with Mo Willems over tea.
Meanwhile, Doseofsnark, a librarian at New York Public Library, tweeted, “Bowling with David Levithan, Scott Westerfeld, and Laura Lutz. Good times!”
BookExpo 2010 is scheduled to be held in New York City on May 25–27 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
