Friday, November 02, 2007

We Met Mo Willems!

We just happened to be visiting family in Irvine, CA when Mo Willems was there doing a book signing there at A Whale of a Tale for his latest picture book, Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity. We flew into Burbank and took our time driving down so we missed the beginning of his talk and reading, but we did get to catch him talking about the next pigeon book. It's being released on April 1, 2008 and mo announced that the title will be five words long. He even shared the first four words with us, The Pigeon Wants A ________. He's leaving it to kids to fill in the blank for now and he says that on April 1st children every where will rush to their local bookstore to be greatly disappointed that he didn't choose their title!
He was just as funny and as personable as you would expect. He's my very favorite picture book author so I felt a little like I was meeting a rockstar. While we were waiting in line to get our books signed I mentioned to my husband that I hoped that I didn't have a MotherReader moment (another kidlit blogger who says that she gushed to the point of embarrassment when she met mo). Mo overhead me and asked if I was a blogger and proceeded to tell me that he LOVES the kidlit bloggers! Then he was even more animated and friendly. (ok, and as if that didn't win me over enough, he oohed and awed over my son and commented on how gorgeous his blue eyes are, and what mom wouldn't love that?)
On April 1st, I will be lined up at my local children's book store to pick up the new pigeon book. I can't wait! Want to know more about Mo? You can view his web site here.
And because he says that he's phasing that out, you can see his blog here.

And his pigeon site here.

A few highlights? On his blog Mo has pictures of a teacher with a pigeon costume (and I thought that I was a big fan!)
And under Mo's Stuff he has a link to info on Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus the Musical, which looks fantastic!

3 comments:

Me said...

Stephanie, Fantastic blog.

I just found it while on a mission to find a christmas present for my brother. He's 25 but training to be a primary school teacher (UK). He like's clever picture books like the incredible book eating boy. On your recommendation I'm going to get him "Not a box" sounds like his sort of thing.

Anyway on a slightly different not I am looking for a book that both my brother and I loved in the 1990's when we were children (possibly written much earlier). It was about a man who built a beach in his back garden because his family couldn't go on holiday to a real beach.

It was a fantastic book that really captured our imagination. I don't know what it was called ?Something street. Just wondering if you knew of such a book.

J.R. and Meg +3 said...

That is an awesome teacher costume! I just always went as pippy longstocking, another classic literary character that not many kids know about anymore these days.

Heather said...

So glad you got to meet Mo and that he wasn't a disappointment