New Star Wars fictions, Chronicle Books and More

From June 26th to 29th, I enjoyed the many festivities at American Library Association’s 2015 Annual Conference in San Francisco.  Here are some photos with captions (click on the first photo to see the slideshow with full captions!)

Star Wars retold for Middle Grade readers — from Disney Publishing Worldwide.  The four authors of the upcoming (and already published) books are: Tony DiTerlizzi, Alexandra Bracken, Adam Gidwitz, and Tom Angleberger.

Yoda Fountain

My friend Maria

The screening room is a regular sized theater.

Four new books (one is already published) based on Episodes 4, 5, and 6 penned by these authors.

Tom Angleberger selecting a couple of librarians from the audience to be “the narrator” and Yoda.

We’re treated to enlarged images from Tony DiTerlizzi’s heavily illustrated retelling of all three episodes.

The authors created a well-rehearsed readers theater for us that gave us quite a good taste of what these titles will read like.

The three volumes have completely different styles and authorial voices, while keeping to the details of the canon.

After the performance, we got to tour Lucas Film Center.

And a party with photo-ops with the two very gentlemanly stormtroopers.

Chronicle Books invited us to check out their amazingly beautiful, open, and creative work space!  I found out that there is an entire Industrial Design department, creating merchandise connected to the books they publish.  Too fun!

4th Floor is set up as the party space.

A picture, courtesy of SLJ, of Shelley Diaz, senior review editor for SLJ and myself.

Jeffrey Brown, cartoonist/author of Vader and Son, etc.

Pyramids of macarons from

I sampled the Chai flavor brushed with gold coloring.. Yum

Ben Laramie, head of the Industrial Design department, gave us a tour!

Miniature of the floor plan for upcoming trade show Chronicle booth.

What’s inside the Chamber of Secrets?

Pieces needed for the cover design of the upcoming Chess Queen Enigma

Full of creativity and beautiful designs.

BLACK LIVES MATTER!

Catalog Covers through the years

Of course, there were many other events, sessions, workshops that I didn’t take a lot of pictures of — The Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast, the ALSC Preconference highlighting and celebrating this year’s Honored books (Caldecott, Newbery, Sibert, Geisel, Carnegie), Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder Banquet, and the ALSC Awards ceremony (Sibert, Geisel, Carnegie, Batchelder.)

Honored Books of 2015!

Creating the book Josephine — a panel presentation

My friend Deb Taylor, honored with the Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement

Amy Crews, daughter of Wilder Award for Lifetime Achievement recipient Donald Crews — and an old friend of mine!

Junko Yokota, dear friend and Newbery committee co-member — who chaired the 2015 Caldecott Committee, on the Dais at the Banquet

Six of the 2002 Newbery Committee members got together and took a photo (JoAnn Jonas, Elizabeth Overmeyer, Deborah Taylor, Vaunda Nelson, Patty Carlton, Roxanne Feldman)