SCBWI Winter Conference Recap: Mentee Monday

Apologies dear blog readers. This post has been a long time coming. It's been a busy few weeks of working and good things in the works. 

But let us travel back to the beginning of the month, to the Monday after the conference.

One of the bests parts of the whole weekend was reconnecting with my fellow Mentees, and on Monday--with our fearless leader, David Diaz, at the helm--we spent the entire day together.

We started out with brunch,

(Photo courtesy of David Diaz.)

stopped to make t-shirts

(Photo Courtesy of Maple Lam.)

and pick up some hot chocolate,

(Photo Courtesy of Maple Lam.)

and then headed up to Books of Wonder. Books of Wonder is the only bookstore that I know of that organizes its picture books alphabetically by illustrator. (If you've never been, you should go immediately.)

(Photos courtesy of David Diaz.)

After books, we marched east to meet with Chad Beckerman, Tamar Brazis, and Maria Middleton at Abrams Books. The team there talked to us about promotional materials and really showcased what makes Abrams special.

(Photo courtesy of David Diaz.)

(Photo courtesy of David Diaz.)

And finally hopped on a subway that whisked us downtown to Penguin

(Photo courtesy of Jessica Lanan.)

where we talked to an incredibly talented and generous group of art directors and left our portfolios out on a table for folks to look at. Art directors from six different children's imprints shared with us the similarities and differences in the materials they print and talked about what makes each imprint unique.

(Photo courtesy of Jessica Lanan.)

It was a whirlwind non-stop sort of day, and an excellent end to an incredible weekend.

Heaps upon heaps of thanks to David Diaz for organizing an amazing day; to the folks at Abrams - Chad Beckerman, Tamar Brazis, and Maria Middleton - for talking to us about publishing and promos; to Cecilia Young for arranging an incredible program for our visit to Penguin; and to the art directors at Penguin who took the time to talk to us - Giuseppe Castellano, Lily Malcolm, Nancy Brennan, Semadar Megged, and Irene Vandervoort.

And until next time, I'll leave you with my favorite photo from the weekend and a clear winner for our next album cover:

(Photo courtesy of Debbie Ohi.)