Lit Con

Today, I spent all day at the Colorado Teen Lit Con in Denver. This is my second year going, and I love it. This year, I went to a local author panel with Alane Ferguson, Carrie Vaughn, Ronald Cree, Sarah Ockler, and Traci Jones. All of them were wonderful and amusing to listen to, even though I have yet to read any of their books. I also went to Katie's (of Katie's Book Blog) talk about how to become a book blogger. It was interesting, but it's more of something that my sister wanted to do. That last session I went to was a discussion about how YA books can be used to ask essential questions, such as What does it mean to be human? It seemed to be geared more toward teachers looking for suggestions, but I enjoyed it. I ended up there when I couldn't find the room for the Blue Spruce Nominee Talk.

The keynote speakers this year were Rachel Vail and Pete Hautman, both of whom were entertaining and hilarious in completely different ways. Rachel was animated and dramatic, acting out her speech at the podium. Pete had a dry, witty sense of humor like Garrison Keillor. Both of them were lovely and I'm looking forward to reading their books.

I ended up going home with ten new books, six of which I got for free by managing to go to the right talks. I also got a handful of mockingjay temporary tattoos which I will be gleefully reapplying until I run out. The first one is on the underside of my forearm.