A Very Late ALA Recap

So this is a really late post, but I finally haven't had a break since ALA! Now that I have a few minutes I just want to give a huge thank you to all the publishers, authors, and especially the librarians I met at ALA! 

I had spent 3 days at the Annual Conference for ALA, and well it was beyond amazing! When I first entered the hall I was overwhelmed. every where I looked all I saw were books, books and more BOOKS! All readers would love it there. Being my first convention I was clueless on what I had to do. I had done my research for proper etiquette at these sort of events, but in the room I had no idea how everything worked. Luckily I met some awesome people who helped me understand the ways of the convention, as well as keep me entertained in the long lines!

My School Book Club! I love everyone of these girls (Even the ones who could not make it)! These girls kept me company, and this event allowed our club to have amazing exposure, and get great books for our school which we can use in the future. After we read the books, we will be donating the books to our school library :)

On the first day I ended up meeting some of my favorite bloggers!  (left to right) Zareen, ME :D, Katie, Lauren, Jill, and HD. All of them gave me amazing advice, and they are just all around awesome people to talk to! Jill also tagged along with our book club for the weekend so she became an honorary book club member for the weekend! :D

I also ended up meeting Sandy and Darla! I talk to them a ton online, but it was awesome meeting them AGAIN! :D  They both have really fun blogs, with a variety of book reviews, and ask them about books-they have a lot to say! ;) From left to right: Zareen, Wafa (she is also in my school book club, and she recently started her own blog!), Darla, Sandy, and Me! :D 

And I finally met Mickey from I'm a Book Shark! We were both waiting  inline for a signing, and well she kept me entertained! :D 

I met so many other people too, but I may have not taken a picture! But not only did I meet bloggers, I met a bunch of authors...and they knew who I was!! Tahreh Mafi, and Kady Cross knew me from Twitter! And a bunch of authors who came to my school's event back in March were there too! :D <- The moment when and author recognizes you is just plain amazing!

On Sunday I also was one of the teens who was part of BFYA. So basically a few months ago I was given a list of books to read, and well all I had to do was talk about them. It was a lot more nerve racking than it sounds! There were a bunch of us teens, and a room full of librarians who wanted to hear our opinions on books! So basically it was live vlogging where I talked about a book I liked (but no more than a minute). I talked about a lot of books ;). BUT before that Wafa (she was also part of it) and I got to go a special lunch hosted by Penguin, and we got to meet 3 of their authors! So there I met:

Alli Condie (Matched), Marie Lu (legend), and Jessica Khoury (Origin) 

I also got my books signed!! Thank you so much Penguin for your generosity and this opportunity. 

At the end of the weekend this was the whole entire group: 

This was on Sunday BEFORE the event even started!

ALA was just plain amazing! And I hope I can go again in the near future!

THANK YOU

I would also like to thank so many of the amazing publishers for their generosity, tips, and conversations!

I would also love to give a special thanks to these publishers for their generosity to our school book club, and for being so amazing to us! I am very grateful, and so is the rest of our club for everything. Thank you everyone who is a part of ALA- the librarians, publishers, authors, and everyone else who made this experience plain amazing- thank you!