Maureen Johnson Books

What a weekend! Signings! Book Expo America! Parties! So much to tell you about!

Right now, I am in Pennsylvania, at Chez Johnson. I drove down here last night, very late, in the middle of a huge thunderstorm. There is nothing like driving through New York in a blinding rain to give you a sense of Perspective and Your Own Mortality.

I was just looking for some lunch. My parents are extremely clean people, but the one thing they never do is clean out the refrigerator, so I take it upon myself to be the date-checking fairy when I am here. Now that I have completed my duty, I see there is very little left to eat. I found what I thought was blue cheese, and was excited by the prospect of a big salad, but discovered when I pulled it out of the back of the fridge that is was in fact suet for birds. And there is no lettuce. So that idea is pretty much dead.

The reason I am here is because I am signing books! Before I go any further, let me give the dates where you can see me this week:

MONDAY (today): Chester County Books, West Chester, PA, 7pm

TUESDAY: Barnes and Noble, Oxford Valley, PA, 7pm

WEDNESDAY: New York Public Library, Tompkins Square, 6pm

SATURDAY: Books of Wonder, New York City, noon

And a heads up on next week, which will be in Atlanta, Georgia.

Okay, let’s rewind to before the storm and the blue cheese/suet. Let’s go all the way back to Friday. I had done a reading at Borders on Columbus Circle the night before—the first official Girl At Sea reading. On Friday morning, I was at the Children’s Books Breakfast at Book Expo America, which is a massive publishing event. Daphne Unfeasible came by to get me in an Unfeasiblemobile at 7 in the morning, and we were very grunt-grunt but content as we rode to town. When we arrived at 7:45, BEA still felt very fresh and new and just about awake.

The breakfast was fantastic. Well, the speakers were. My friend Libba Bray was the MC, and she did an amazing job. She didn’t seem at all freaked out by the thousand or so people in front of her. The speakers were Jacqueline Wilson (megafamous in the UK), Daniel Pinkwater, and Mo Willems. I happen to be a little obsessed with the Pigeon that Mo is so famous for. In fact, when I spoke after him at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I stole the pigeon from the drawing pad that he left behind.

So, naturally, I wanted the pigeon that he drew at the breakfast. I wanted it very badly. In fact, I kind of wanted to throw myself at him and get him to draw a pigeon on my arm so that I could get it tattooed in, but ultimately chickened out, even though Daphne was trying to get me to go talk to him.

But it turned out that MC Libba HAD THE PIGEON, and when she saw how much I coveted it, she gave it to me.

I now own TWO original pigeons!

I am officially on my way to a collection.

Swoon.

The breakfast was an amazing gathering of friends and fabulous writers I was meeting for the first time. Along with Libba, I saw: Holly Black, Cassie Clare, E. Lockhart, Sarah Beth Durst, Ally Carter.

As Daphne, Sarah, and I made our way out to the main part of the expo, my phone kept ringing—Scott Westerfeld had sprung to life, still suffering greatly from jetlag, and John Green came sproinging along, fresh from a call to a mortgage broker or something like that. He looked slightly puffy.

Thus, I got to walk around in what I kept referring to as my “fame sandwich.” You can get pretty much anywhere in Book Expo America if you are walking between John Green and Scott Westerfeld. People sometimes squeal when they see them. I am used to them by now, and so do not squeal. Mo Willems, though . . .

As the 30,000 people filtered into BEA, the day sort of got less and less antically fun, mostly because it took on the air of a bazaar in the middle of the desert, or the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera. And the air conditioning began to fail. Daphne and I escaped late in the afternoon, so that I could get to my reading on time. Sadly, we could not find any cabs, and it was 92 degrees out, and we were each carrying about fifty pounds of books. So we wandered around the far west side sadly.

Saturday brought one of the highlights of the summer. I was at the Spiderwick movie party. I can tell a good part of this story in pictures.

The party was at a big studio, which was draped and fogged up to look magical and mysterious. The room was decorated with props from the movie—Victorian sofas and desks and scientific instruments—projected spiderwebs, and movie stills. They were serving drinks called Spidertinis, which were deep green and sort of smelled like the stuff I was using last week to get the paint off my paint brushes. They tasted much like how they smelled, but they were highly effective, and explain a lot of the faces I can be seen making in the pictures below.

Scott was there, and so was Justine, who was finally alive enough to come out of the house. I was standing with Scott by a back wall, when suddenly some people came and told us to move, immediately. An actor was giving a speech, and was having us all recite a magical incantation, and then all of the sudden, the wall we had just been up against started making a noise.

I looked at Scott, and he looked at me. Our looks were puzzled, yet knowing, if you can imagine such a thing. Then, all of the sudden, there was A LOT OF AIR AND SMOKE AND AHHHHHH THE NOISE THE PAINFUL NOISE MY EAR IS BLEEDING AHHHHHHHH!

And the entire wall came away, and there was a whole other room behind it, full of things that were made to look oversized, so that we would seem small, like fairies.

“My ear,” I said to Scott. But he could not hear me, because he was holding his ear.

But the room was fantastic. There was a bar that looked like a cracker box and tables that were boxes of matches. The buffet had a giant cheeseburger, about the size of a beach ball. When you turned the corner, there was a screening room, with fabulous benches that you will see for yourself.

Holly got up and made a speech, but for most of the night, I think she was away wth Important People getting her photo taken. I do not think she was drinking spidertinis. We all went out for food later, and she didn't have the spidertini stare. She just looked glamourous.

Here are some poorly taken and even more poorly edited photos of the event.

SPIDERWALL! The picture does not do the room justice.

Movie stills. Nothing like a picture of pictures to really bring the event alive. (They were so cool, though.)

Scott Westerfeld, now deaf, tries to steal this oversized muffin from the magic room.

Scott and Cassie Clare. No spidertinis.

The screening room seats were made to look like huge candy boxes. And that’s me, lounging. Sadly, there was no candy in there. Spidertini count: ???

The star of the evening, Holly Black, looking relaxed.

And here is a sequence of photos showing me wooing a very jetlagged Justine. More tomorrow . . . promise! I have very exciting news to tell! Enough gleeful bragging and Spidertini blackmail photos. We will never speak of this again. For now, I have to get something to eat and get on my way out to West Chester. I wonder if bird suet makes a good sandwich . . .