TLA

I have been enjoying the last two days at TLA, the Texas Library Association's exhibit. Our Texas SCBWI chapters have once again banded together to promote our organization as 'the' go to source for finding children's book authors and illustrators.  The response has been great.  We've had librarians searching us out to get a hold of their copy of our speakers' source book.  We've also been hearing stories from librarians of how they used the book last year to book speakers, so good to know it's working!

A gaggle full of RA's at our booth!  Liz Mertz, RA for Brazos Valley, Janet Fox, former Brazos Valley RA, Ellen Hopkins (YA rock star) and current co-RA for Nevada and me, RA for Southwest Texas.  (What's an RA? A regional advisor for the local SCBWI chapters.  We organize the local events and cheer on our members!)

Some of our books on display - Texas is filled with talent!  We are raffling off signed copies of books from our members, giving out our speakers book to librarians and I do believe there is chocolate involved.  I heard chocolate and good books are two things to have on hand when dealing with librarians.

Books on display. 

We have been rotating the books on our main table so everyone has a chance to shine!  The green booklet are the speakers source book.  Our designer, Jennifer Murrillo, did an awesome job using old school library icons like the card catalog and check-out cards for the theme.  So taking our cue from her booklet we designed the booth to have an old world library feel.  I'll post more tomorrow on some friendly faces I've run into in the exhibit hall.