A Bologna feast

The amazing illustrator Kirsten Carlson, who spends most of her time these days in Europe, took the time to update us on her trip to the children's book fair in Bologna.

She recommends we check out Beth Beck's blog, which summarizes the first day of the symposium. The link is here. Beth's sister was the official photographer, and you can check out her great shots here.

Kirsten writes:

 There were some familiar faces there from our WA conference in 2008. Marcia Wernick and Rosemary Stimola were at the symposium and thought it was pretty neat they had been a part of our WA conf already :).... and Arthur Levine, although not at the conference, was at the fair.

Richard Peck gave and outstanding presentation, he is one of the few people that I would classify as a professional orator. His voice booms and whispers, he is quite engaging. Stephen Mooser had wonderfully inspiring things to say and he shared how SCBWI began. A happy accident basically...all wonderful things seem to begin that way.

Even though the fair was illustrator-friendly. It's overwhelming to have the hundreds and hundreds of booths there. Most of the seasoned Bologna attendees made appointments with publishers months before, a good take home lesson for both new or uninformed writer and illustrator attendees.

The fact that SCBWI had a booth was a great anchor for all of us, in my opinion. And I met such wonderful people from all over the world. SCBWI Australia, Japan, UK, Spain, Israel, more countries than I can count on both hands.