>Craigslist or Freaky Friday?

by Roger Sutton
May 13, 2008 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
>Missed Connections: leaving Stony Brook station around 6:00 PM yesterday. Me, tall middle-aged man in a bowtie listening to iPod. You, medium-height young woman reading the Horn Book.

Any authors out there ever similarly catch a reader unawares?
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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ChatRabbit

>I had a funny experience in church, whereby a little girl was climbing on the pew in front of me with a coloring book I had illustrated for Golden Books years ago. Truly unexpected. I didn't say anything- you're not supposed to talk in church. That didn't stop the little girl, though!

Finding your book in the hands of an actual person is way more fun than finding it at a yard sale or flea market...

Posted : May 17, 2008 02:58

Melissa Walker

>I did just catch a girl in the Union Square Barnes and Noble reading my latest release, Violet by Design, while sipping Starbucks by the window. She turned out to be a teen model (like my protagonist) and we spent an hour chatting. It was just perfect timing and it made both of our days!

Posted : May 14, 2008 03:55

Joyce

>Just heard Walter Dean Myers accepting the Kerlan Award in Minneapolis and he told a story of seeing a young woman reading MONSTER in the subway in NYC. He said she looked up for a moment from reading, staring off into space, and he felt very strongly that, at that moment, they were "inhabiting the same world."

Posted : May 14, 2008 12:25

Wendie O

>I was at the library Information Desk one day when a boy came up with my biography of George Washington in his hands. Is this any good, he asked? "Oh yes," I said. "I know the author." He went happily away, never suspecting that I WAS the author. _wendieO

Posted : May 14, 2008 03:47

janeyolen

>In Portland, stopped in a children's bookstore in time to hear a mother asking whether they had a children's novel where at a Jewish holiday, a girl goes back in time.

The store owner, my husband, and I said simultaneously, "DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC" and the woman said, "Yes, that's it! Do you have it?"

And I got to do the Big Reveal, which was great fun.

But except for one other time, that's been it.

Jane

Posted : May 14, 2008 01:37

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