Book Expo 2018 - Day 2 (Thursday)

Thursday was another busy day for Kathy and me. It started bright and early with an Author & Illustrator Breakfast hosted by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. Kathy and I love to walk when we are in the city, so we headed out around 7:00 or so to walk to the Javits Center. We keep a pretty good pace and ended up arriving early, so we took advantage of some downtime to visit with each other. Even after all of these years, we still manage to talk non-stop for our entire trip!

I'm not entirely sure how I was invited to Children's Author Breakfast because it was mainly bookseller, but no complaints here. This event was one of my very favorites at this year's Book Expo. There were so many incredible authors and illustrators. It was quite the event!

When we arrived and checked in, we learned that we would be sitting at Deb Caletti's table. I couldn't believe it! There were numerous round tables set up a "book celebrity" or two at each table. Kathy and I plopped down right next to Ms. Caletti. She was extremely gracious and fun to talk with. The event was moderated by a bookseller from Texas and she was outstanding. The program which featured about ten minutes per author/illustrator moved right along at the perfect pace and was never dull.

I truly enjoyed every minute of this event. There were some huge names in children's publishing there, and I enjoyed hearing how they found inspiration for their books. It was a fairly small event so the setting was rather intimate. Like I said earlier, I have no idea why I was invited but I'm so glad I was!

It's hard for me to feature just a few of the books from this event because each and every one of them sounded/looked wonderful. I was very excited to see Matthew Van Fleet and hear about his new book CHOMP GOES THE ALLIGATOR. He wrote a little book called ONE YELLOW LION that my kids played with/read over and over again!

Another highlight was hearing Sharon Draper and Deb Caletti speak. They are both just amazing. I was thrilled to get ARCS of BLENDED by Sharon Draper and A HEART IN A BODY IN THE WORLD by Deb Caletti -- the two books I most wanted to receive.

Another book I'm looking forward to is Leah Tinari's LIMITLESS. This book feature 24 "remarkable American women of vision, grit, and guts." Her illustrations are truly spectacular and we received a numbered print of Carrie Fisher, one of Ms. Tinari's idols. Check out this page:

There were also some gorgeous picture books presented including THE BROKEN ORNAMENT by Tony DiTerlizzi, JUST ADD GLITTER by Angela DiTerlizzi, and OCEAN MEETS SKY by The Fan Brothers. THE BROKEN ORNAMENT AND OCEAN MEETS SKY are absolutely beautiful, and JUST ADD GLITTER is adorable. Hearing about how these books were made (especially the glitter one) was fascinating! Unfortunately, none of these books were available yet, but I'll be certain to check them out when they are released.

THE BROKEN ORNAMENT

JUST ADD GLITTER

OCEAN MEETS SKY

Right after the breakfast, Kathy and I decided to head over to see our friend Miriam Parker signing her new novel THE SHORTEST WAY HOME. We usually don't spend too much time in the autographing space, but because crowds were smaller this year, we managed to snag quite a few signed copies.

Then we went to the showroom floor. It's always a bit overwhelming but I think this year's BEA was much smaller than past year's. That made it very manageable to navigate though. There were also more "book drops" than past years, and it took Kathy and I some time before we got the hang of it. We had fun collecting books and running them down to the shipping area, but we soon tired of the crowds and decided to leave Javits and get a drink on our walk home.

We stopped at As Is, and Kathy was in high heaven. She's a connoisseur of beer and this bar certainly had some unique ones. One was even brewed with hot marble. I liked it because we could order little pours and sample a few. I was pretty sure when we were leaving that we would be visiting this bar again this trip!

We headed back to Times Square and stopped at the TKTS booth again. This time, we got tickets for A BRONX TALE featuring Chazz Palminteri; and Dawn, owner of The Concord Bookshop, joined us. We ate dinner at Scarlatto and it was surprising good. (I'm always worried about walking into a restaurant without reservations!) The show was also terrific, and now I want to watch the 1993 movie by the same name. The show wasn't very long (and we still wanted to visit), so we tried to get into a speakeasy. We were turned away (don't laugh!), and we ended up at a little bar on a corner in Times Square. It was a very fun evening -- the food, entertainment and company couldn't have been any better!

And that's pretty much a wrap for Day 2!