Michigan Library Association’s Thumbs Up! Award

Okay, this is the last post about my trip, which did not end in New York. On Tuesday late afternoon we flew to Toronto and spent a little time with the family, 36 hours to be precise. The main purpose of the visit was to take not one but two tours of U of T, for the Son. We also dropped by my agent’s office, Hilary McMahon at Westwood Creative. Even though Hilary has been my agent since 2007, I have never been invited past the foyer. It’s a rule at Westwood that you have to have been a client for at least 7 years before they take you on a tour. 🙂 Alright, that’s not true. It may have more to do with the fact that I live in Vancouver, and never make it to her office.

Then, on Thursday morning at THREE FORTY-FIVE AM, Son and I woke up to catch our respective flights. Son flew home to Vancouver. I flew to Detroit, then to the wonderfully named Kalamazoo, where I was picked up by a driver and taken to Battle Creek Michigan, about half an hour away, for the Michigan Library Association’s “Thumbs Up!http://www.mla.lib.mi.us/awards/thumbsup” award. It is their young readers’ choice award, and I was delighted that this year’s winner was “The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen.” Last year’s winner was John Green for “The Fault in our Stars!” So I felt pretty freakin’ awesome, a bit of six degrees of separation. I delivered a keynote and was presented with a gorgeous, heavy glass award (which they are shipping to me because I only had carry-on and I could just imagine their faces at security!).

It was a really fun afternoon. In the evening I went out for dinner with about fifteen librarians. They held up my belief that librarians are among the liveliest, entertaining and fun people to be around! I had a lot in common with one of them – we both met our Swedish engineer husbands abroad (her in France, me in Belgium) and brought them to North America to get hitched.

In other ways we had nothing in common. For example, she would hold this alligator. I, as you can see from my expression, would not. All the gals in this photo were very entertaining and delightful. I want to thank everyone in Battle Creek for a terrific, oh, 18 or so hours! (I was up at 4 am this morning to meander my way flight by flight back to Vancouver).