A most unfortunate evening

A couple weeks ago, Fred and I took Annabelle up to Louisville to hear Daniel Handler speak at a writers' conference. Handler is better known among her age-group as being "Lemony Snicket," author of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Annabelle is a huge fan, so she was very excited to have the opportunity to meet him.

After he spoke, he signed his books. The event handlers had said that he would NOT be personalizing the inscriptions, but he did. It made the line move slowly (took us over an hour and a half to get to the front), but it was really nice how he took the time to chat with everybody in turn.

He is a rather strange duck, snide but so very funny. When Annabelle's turn came, he asked her how it was working out for her, having me as a mom. She said it was going pretty well, and I started motioning for her to move closer to him so that I could get a picture of the 2 of them together. He told her: "I don't like your mom. She seems bossy." I might be bossy, but I got my picture:



Annabelle took an extra book with her to get it signed for her friend Maya, who is a huge fan. He signed it "to an alleged friend," since--as he said--he really couldn't tell since she wasn't there. It was very dim in the room, so the video didn't really turn out, but if you click this link you can listen to his conversation with her about that. It's pretty funny.

So now Annabelle has spoken with Lemony Snicket and sat on J.K. Rowlings' fence. Those are a couple of the biggest names in children's literature today!