Po(sey) Sessions

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 n…

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 29Stopping by Woods on a Snowy EveningWhose 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
…

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 ha…