Teen Author Festival

From the moment I found out about the Teen Author Festival I knew I would be going. Provo is a bit of a far drive for me, so we sent a friend to the library when the tickets for the Scott Westerfeld keynote became available. Unfortunately, he was told the tickets to the free event sold out in 2 hours.  So no guaranteed seats for us, we were told there would be a stand by land and we planned on parking our butts into it an hour or so before show time.

 

Saturday morning came and I wasn’t feeling a 100%. Mr. X and I scrapped our early departure plans for a more relaxed morning.  We were running late but weren’t entirely sure we would have made it into the keynote address so we weren’t particularly worried. It was going to be a fun day and there were lots of authors to meet, and I had a bag full of books waiting to be signed.

 

Somehow Mr. X and I were both under the understanding that keynote started at 11am, but we were both blatantly wrong and arrived just in time to stand in the line for non ticketed attendees for a nominal amount of time. 
 

The other people in line seemed pretty excited too. There were a lot of teens, which was the whole point of the event, though it did make me feel a little on the old side.  We watched a few authors walk by us and check in at the table in front, it was also where we found our maps and schedules.  Mr. X and I were trying to plan out our schedule for the day, but a lot of the others waiting were chilling out, reading. Just like any good book festival attendee should do!

 

  

 

This was the first time the Teen Book Festival was held and the Provo City Library did a great job with it. They had a nice offering of panels; one for each hour after the keynote address of the festival. They were Fantasy, YA Lit, and Romance. If I had one complaint it was that there wasn’t a listing of who was on each panel but you had to see what panel an author was on by what time they would be on one and cross referencing it with the times of the panels. It wasn’t difficult but there ended up being a lot of page flipping while I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my day.

Ally Condie and Robert Frost

The almost-snow reminds me of a line from a poem we studied this year in Language and Literacy: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” It is one of my favorites of all the Hundred Poems, the ones our Society chose to keep, back when they decided our culture was too cluttered.  They created commissions to choose the hundred best of everything: Hundred Songs, Hundred Paintings, Hundred Stories, Hundred Poems. The rest were eliminated. Gone forever. For the best, the Society said, and everyone believed because it made sense. How can we appreciate anything fully when overwhelmed by too much?

- Matched, page 29

 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
--
Robert Frost

Hey Guys!

Long time, no blog! I know, but life has been super busy. And I am considering that a good thing.

Today was a very good day. There are so many things to tell you about that I just don't have time to explain them all right now. One of the highlights of my day was definitely meeting Jennifer A. Neilsen. Have you ever heard of her? She is a Utah author whose middle grade book recently released. She explained the book to me as Series of Unfortunate Events meets The Spiderwick Chronicles, and really that sounded right up my alley. I have some great pictures that I took of her, but for the moment they are stuck on my camera.

I guess it would help if I told you the title of this book, wouldn't it? First, go get a pen and paper. Really....go!
*waits*

Okay the title of Jennifer A. Nielsen's book is Elliot and the Goblin War. This book is the first in a series and has some amazing illustrations by Gideon Kendall.

There is so much more I want to tell you about my day. For now it will have to wait. I am horribly behind on all my blogging and I hope to rectify that fact soon. Sometimes when I get behind I feel a little bit too much like I am drowning though. You ever feel like that?

In the meantime, ponder this:

"When he was eight years old, Elliot Penster started and interspecies war."

Great first line isn't??? Hope you are all doing well. Leave me some comments and let me know you stopped by.

Yours Truly,
Thwizzle