Rhymes With Satan
This week I spent three days at the annual Michigan Library Association Spring Institute, which took place in Michigan's own tribute to Bavaria, Frankenmuth.
The conference was great (Note to Ang and Mary: Best. Conference. Ever.) and had many highlights, including keynote speeches by Mo Willems, Anastasia Goodstein, and MT Anderson; the annual karaoke night with Matt the Millionaire Welz; and of course seeing so many friends from libraries throughout MI.
The best, most awesome part of the conference, though, was our Thumbs Up! keynote speaker, Chris Krovatin. He's the author of one of the alltime best teen novels, Heavy Metal and You, and besides being a massively talented writer, he's an articulate speaker, an extremely intelligent person, and an all-around cool guy. (I think it sort of goes without saying that he has excellent taste in music.)
Eva and I subjected him to the sites of Frankenmuth, including the Cheese Haus, the Fudge Kitchen, and of course Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland. The latter was even creepier than I expected and after a few minutes of wandering in a glittery stupor, we hightailed it out of there. Unfortunately for Chris, there was a problem with his originally scheduled flight out of MI, so he ended up having to spend the rest of the day with us, but he couldn't have been more awesome about it. He was nothing but nice to us, even as we mother-henned him half to death, and let us pick his brain about his upcoming second book (due summer 2008 - mark your calendars now!) and other sundry topics.
Viva Spring Institute!
Labels: Anastasia Goodstein, Bronner's, Cheese Haus, Chris Krovatin, frankenmuth, Heavy Metal and You, Matt Welz, michigan library association, Mo Willems, MT Anderson, spring institute, Thumbs Up, ypulse
