MBA Children's Breakfast

The highlight of the recent Midwest Booksellers Association convention was the annual Children's Breakfast. The four featured authors were:

• Loren Long, author and illustrator of OTIS, a picture book about a very special tractor,

• Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of FRONT AND CENTER, the last book in the DAIRY QUEEN trilogy,

• M.T. Anderson, author of FEED and JASPER DASH AND THE FLAME-PITS OF DELAWARE, and

• Neil Gaiman, author of THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS.

Each author spoke about their new books and about being an author/illustrator. Each was funny in their own way. Loren Long talked about getting the idea for his book from his kids. Murdock showed pictures of her home where she works. Anderson talked about setting his scary, adventure book in Delaware (of all places)! And Gaiman told us how he originally wrote ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS for World Book Day in England where authors write short novels for free and kids get these books for free using special tokens.

I snapped this great shot of Gaiman and Anderson. It was EARLY in the morning. I'm not sure Neil Gaiman owns a hairbrush. Anderson is purposely making a "tough guy" face.

It was pretty amazing to meet these authors and hear them speak. Who knows? Maybe someday, one of us will be up there speaking at the MBA Children's Breakfast. I can't wait to see who's there next year!