Fuse #8 Weekly Recap

New Feature!  At heart I’m a lazy woman who would rather attend things than speak about them.  This week, however, I had to deal with an embarrassment of riches.  So to encourage these people to keep on inviting me, I’m going to start doing little teeny tiny recaps of the events in question.  Besides, some of them are funny enough that I’d feel bad not sharing them.

May 11-17th

• Monday, May 11th: CBC Breakfast, Little Brown and Company Librarian Preview (recap pending), Prince Caspian screening

• Tuesday, May 12th:  Nothing. Eight hours of sleep.
  

• Wednesday, May 13th: Smarties publishing party at Gstaad

• Thursday, May 14th: Ezra Jack Keats Awards

• Friday, May 15th: Final farewell dinner between the remaining members of the Central Children’s Room (and a Dance, Dance, Library Revolution party that I unfortunately opted out of because I had to work on Saturday)

• Saturday, May 16th: Children’s and YA Literary Cafe

So let’s look at a couple of these events and see what they were like.

Here is Jon doing his thing:

And here I am with Bill Kartalopoulos of Raw Junior, Inc.

Thanks to Melanie Greenberg for the pics!

2. The Smarties in Publishing Party:  The final one, actually.  I received an email that read as follows: 

After a long run doing monthly networking events with our wonderful colleagues in the publishing industry, Jessica and I have decided to call time on SIP – a.k.a. Smarties in Publishing.

We’ve loved making so many friends and running this group (which was initially co-founded by Nadia Cornier) and have gained much from casual discussions of topics covering anything from careers in publishing, cover art, graphic novels, what makes a big book, and the finances of the book biz. Two years on, we’re grateful to all who helped make it such a fun and informative group. Thank you.

Aw. Well the farewell to the group (which consists of editors, agents, and people in marketing) met in a little room called The Cabin at a bar in the godforsaken 26th Street area called Gstaad.  It was called "The Cabin" because when you walk into it the dim lighting and comfy chairs do indeed give you the sense that you’re in a backwoods somewhere.  To our amusement someone at the bar had placed at copy of Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer on a shelf above us.  I got into a host of lovely conversations, primarily with the good people of Little Brown who were there in full force.  It was a lot of fun.  Hopefully I’ll see these people at a Kidlit Drink Night (Monday!) sometime.

3.  The Ezra Jack Keats Book Award – The new writer and new illustrator awards are, according to the website, "given annually to an outstanding new writer of picture books for children (age 9 and under) and are presented jointly by the New York Public Library and the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation."  Groovy.  This year the award winners were Jonathan Bean for New Illustrator and David Ezra Stein for New Author.  Both soft-spoken fellows attended (as did their families) and they gave great speeches.  Best of all, I got to see what Mr. Bean actually looked like.  Quite a nice fellow.  You may wonder why there are no pictures.  I was working the reference desk at the time, I’m afraid, so no pics did I take.  Rest assured that the turnout was magnificent and the fellows did not disappoint.  A fine time was had by all.

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