I survived the sweltering heat at the L.A. Times Festival of Books and ended up gulping down lots of water during the day...and at one point (when I was desperate,) one gigantic cup of lemonade in under 5 minutes. But besides the heat, I had a fantastic time! There were so many great vendors there and it seemed like every other booth had a book signing. I first stopped by the Target Children's Stage (since I'm a big kid myself) and listened to two story times. The first was the lovely
Katharine Holabird, the author of
Angelina Ballerina. She was joined on stage by Angelina Ballerina, which I must say was a pretty cute costume considering how freaked out I usually am by people in costumes. Maybe it was because it was far away on stage.
The second reading was by the very funny
Mo Willems, who read three of his books in the most animated story time I have ever seen. I'm not sure what it is about yelling a lot and jumping around that is so funny. But it is. And Mo did a lot of it to the tune of his clever books!
After maneuvering my way through the swarms of strollers, I made it to a panel about food culture which was moderated by
Barry Glassner. This panel not only made me really hungry, but it also introduced a lot of issues in food culture that I vaguely knew about but had never really thought about in depth (ie: the
slow food movement and
"food porn".) The panel included
Jennifer 8. Lee,
Fred Kaufman, and
Raj Patel. After the panel, I got Jennifer 8. Lee to sign my copy of
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, and she taped a fortune next to her signature.
It says "Trust him but still keep your eyes open" and then there are happy faces flanking it. Hilarious--especially the happy faces.
I also got to meet Lela Lee, the Original Angry Little Asian Girl! I've been reading
Angry Little Girls (formerly Angry Little Asian Girl) since high school, and I proudly wore an ALAG tee to school, the classic white baby tee with Kim flipping the world off.
I was fully planning to buy a book, and then was sad when I went fishing through my wallet only to find a couple of $1 bills and a $5--not enough for a book (why did I need that lemonade??!) But she was so sweet and took a picture with me!
[All images by Mo, with the exception of the picture of me and Lela Lee, which was taken by Lela Lee's friend, and the
"A is for Angry" art print by Lela Lee which is from
Angry Little Girls. ]
I finished the day by meeting the talented and lovely
Paula Yoo, author of
Good Enough! I gobbled up the book in a couple of days and was so happy to meet her in person. It also led me to the
Book Soup booth, where I snagged an autographed copy of Marjane Satrapi's
Embroideries.
*Whew* I'm tired even recapping the day! If you're in my neck of the woods next year, come with me to next year's book festival! This time I'll bring sunscreen.
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