Rick Riordan's Visit to the Library

For those of you who saw my Walk Like an Egyptian post and want to know what exactly possessed me to dress in costume and dye my hair black...this is why.
Rick Riordan, author The Lightning Thief and a whole bunch of other fun books, came to visit! We had to host him off-site at a local high school so we could get a larger crowd; max capacity at the Library is about 500, but here we could fit 1500 and I think we were pretty close, at least 1200. Rick was a very engaging presenter and it was so much fun. On the down side, this was such a big event that I didn't even get to meet him, but it was still lots of fun.

This is as close as I got...




Here, Rick shows us a glimpse of his former career as a teacher:


And here we see that his mom saved his first rejection letter:


This might be the coolest part of the night: Rick gave us a chance to hear the opening of his NEXT book to be published, Mark of Athena, which comes out in the fall.



This is another part of his reading.





Here I am with the Library director at the end (almost) of a very busy night!