My First Author Meeting

So I've had a few authors comment on my blog, Facebook posts, or "Like" my page, but yesterday I had the chance to meet an author for the first time in real life, John Archambault, co-author of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

My manager had worked out a great partnership with the local Child Care Council to bring John in for an event at the library followed by speaking at the Council's training summit for early childhood workers, and the events were jointly promoted by both organizations. The event at the library was advertised as a family night, and promoted through social media, flyers, and television, with many crafts and activities, storytelling by John, and book signing. It was a huge success with over 700 people in attendance! 

The next day was the training summit, which was where I came in. My manager and I were asked to present one of the training sessions (which is why I missed the event Friday night, because I'm only part-time and had to watch my hours) after John's keynote speech. Our presentation was on early literacy, focusing mostly on the five practices (read, write, talk, sing, play) and how to use them everyday, as well as in an organized storytime. We actually had to present it twice, during the morning session and again after lunch.

We had done a similar presentation back in October for another group of child care workers, that had not gone as well as we would have liked, for reasons mostly beyond our control at the time. This time we made significant changes, including all new slides, had significantly more time to prepare, a more interested audience, and I was pretty pleased with how it went.

 After the last presentation was over, I got the chance to meet John. He was very gracious, offering to pose for a picture, and autographed the door sign from our presentation (my awesome manager had already gotten me a signed book the night before). I heard lots of comments from attendees about how much they enjoyed his speech as well.