Children’s Book Authors at the California Reading Association Conference

October 21, 2012 @ 3:12 pm | Filed under: , ,

Such fun visiting with lots of authors, teachers, and librarians at this weekend’s California Reading Association Professional Development Institute! Here are some of the lovely authors I spent the day with:

SCBWI authors at CRA

With Edith Hope Fine, Judith Josephson, and Lori Mitchell, some of my SCBWI author pals.

author Cindy Pon

The awesome Cindy Pon.

Authors at CRA

Of course Edith, Judith, and I insisted on a photo with Betty Birney, author of the Humphrey novels, The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs, and a zillion other books.

Shelley Moore Thomas

I had the fun of sitting next to Shelley Moore Thomas, who writes the delightful Good Knight early reader series. Her new middle-grade novel, The Seven Tales of Trinket, sounds extremely enticing. Nested stories, Celtic lore: yeah, she had me at hello.

I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll

Farther down the table was Amanda Noll—unfortunately I flubbed my photo of her, so you get her book cover instead. Doesn’t it just GRAB you? Looking forward to enjoying this one with my small fry.

My photo of Barrie Summy came out blurry too. I loved getting to know her and I love these book titles!

These guys were charming and I’ll be writing more about them for GeekMom: Adam Glendon Sidwell and his brother Jarom. Cool animation background, a ton of creative ideas for teaching story structure to kids, and a book called Evertaster. (Speaking of amazing covers.)

The SCBWI gang. Andrea Zimmerman (author of many books including a Huck favorite, Trashy Town), Judith, Edith, me, Erin Dealey (author of, among other books, the supercute Little Bo Peep Can’t Get to Sleep—this one has Rillabook written all over it, and the art is so cute I’m tempted to buy a second copy for print-framing), Suzanne Santillan (author of Grandma’s Pear Tree, a really lovely picture book), and Shelley.

Same group, except Andrea has left and we’ve added the great Milly Lee!

Signing books at CRA.

Here’s my corner of the table. 🙂 Fox and Crow missed the photo op! It sold out before I remembered to get a picture. Speaking of photo ops, I love the Betty Birney/Erin Dealey picture happening behind me.

Many thanks to the fine folks of the California Reading Association for having us, and thanks to The Yellow Book Road children’s bookstore for stocking our books!


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Comments

7 Reponses | Comments Feed
  1. tanita says:

    Oh, wow, this looks like it was a really fun day! And I have to laugh at you for not remembering to get to your table – sometimes there really are too many other people’s tables to see!!

  2. Melissa Wiley says:

    Wish you could have been there too, Tanita! One of these days we’ll wind up at a conference together. And when we do, I’d better have a table near yours or mine will sit abandoned the whole time while I gab with you. 🙂

  3. cindy says:

    thank you so much for the write up, melissa! i had super
    fun and appreciate all your foto taking on our behalf. =DD
    good luck with your new books out too, may they find many
    happy kiddies so they can be read!

  4. Suzanne Santillan says:

    What a fun event. Thanks for posting the pictures.

    Sue

  5. Shelley Moore Thomas says:

    Great pictures, Melissa! I love how you can tell which one was taken by the super tall brothers!

    It was great to meet you and see all of the SCBWI folks there.

    Take care,

    Shelley

    P.S. brought The Prairie Thief to my class today. Kids can’t wait to read it!

  6. Jennifer says:

    Your two early readers are our lesson plans this week!

  7. Adam Glendon Sidwell says:

    Thanks for the shout out! So good to meet you Melissa. It won’t be the last time!