ALA--Monday

At ALA on Monday, I spoke on a panel about autism.  The other participants were:  author Francisco Stork, Dr Ricki Robinson, and librarian Patricia Twarogowski, who has created effective programming for special needs children.  It was very interesting to hear the other panelists, and I talked about the needs of siblings.  

Later,  when we were talking about communicating with people with autism, I said, "You will make some mistakes, and that's okay."  Because I think sometimes people get so afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing that it freezes them into doing nothing.  

"Even I make mistakes with my son, and I've had almost 19 years of experiences with him," I told them and went on to tell a story about being invited to speak at the Asilomar conference last February where David Wiesner was the illustrator keynote speaker. 

"My son loves lizards, and Art and Max is a favorite book.  So I had the idea of bringing my son's copy of Art and Max with me to California and asking David to sign it.  I thought, 'How special would that be?!!'' 

But when I told my son the idea, he grabbed his book away from me and went into this room and slammed the door!  Because here's what he heard:  "Mom is going to take your precious book across the country away from you and she's going to let some guy write in it!"  

I explained to the audience that we were both right, but looking at that situation completely differently. I apologized and told him we'd try again. 

I smiled at the audience. "Hugo Cabret is another of my son's favorite books. And I knew that here in New Orleans, I might see Brian Selznick, but  HUGO STAYED HOME!"  

They all laughed, but I think it's a genuine message.  It's hard for my son to view things through my perspective, but it's also hard for me to view things through his--we both make mistakes and we forgive each other and we try again.   

Then Francisco and I were whisked off to the Scholastic booth for a signing with Jordan Sonnenblick.

  Scholastic gave away F&Gs of Happy Birthday, Hamster!   I signed some of those and lots of copies of Touch Blue and Rules.

  It was very exciting to see Hamster smiling down at me.


 
I'm sitting with Francisco, and Jordan is at the first table signing.

While I was signing, I heard someone come up behind me.  It was Brian Selznick.  Lizette Serrano of Scholastic had been at my panel talk, and she told Brian how much my son loved Hugo Cabret.  He signed a copy of that book and his new one to my son. 

   What a sweet, generous gesture. I was very, very touched. 

I signed steadily for an hour, and then I had a Hot Rod Hamster signing at the Follett booth.  Julia took this photo of my line:

  Thank you to everyone who waited in that line, but a special thank you to one librarian who did so just so she could tell me a story. 

She's a school librarian and she had been going through the hard process of getting all the books back into the library before the end of school.  One little girl had not brought back Rules, and the librarian sent a note to the child's teacher to remind the student to bring it back.  The little girl held off doing so, and at one point the teacher opened the child's backpack and found the book.  She held it up and yelled at the child. The little girl brought Rules back to the library in tears. 

The librarian asked a few questions and found out the girl has a sister with autism and it had been just too hard to give the book up.  That night, that librarian went to Barnes and Noble and using her own money, she bought that child her own copy to keep.
 
The poor Follett people looked so worried when I jumped out of my signing seat and hugged that librarian, both of us crying.  They were good tears, though.  After talking about sibling issues in the morning, it was a powerful affirmation that I'd done the right thing. 



Julia and I went to lunch with Dr. Robinson and the wonderful organizers of our panel, and then to supper with my 2007 Newbery Committee.  It was an emotional and wonderful day.