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This past week we went to the American Library Association in Las Vegas!  There were lots of librarians, and lots of books, and lots of excitement.

We always have a great time at this show — it’s full of people who have decided to dedicate their professional lives to the awesomeness of reading.  How could that not be awesome?

Here are some photos from our librarians + Vegas adventure!

First Second sets up with our parent company, MacKids.  They kindly take charge of the organization and logistics of this kind of show for us, which is really wonderful.  Here’s our graphic novel display in their booth.

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Here’s another shot of our display.  This year’s First Second graphic novels, you guys!  It’s a really good selection (in my humble-and-probably-biased opinion).

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Just in case you missed all the stars for Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki’s marvelous graphic novel This One Summer!  And yes — we actually paste them on the book to display how many-starred they are.  It is an excellent call-out.

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And here are our upcoming picture book comics, positioned with MacKids’ other young titles.

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ALA does this great thing where they give comics creators free table space in exchange for an art donation, to be auctioned off to benefit libraries.  This year, we had a few different authors take advantage of this!

Here’s The Green Turtle, the protagonist of Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew’s upcoming graphic novel The Shadow Hero.

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And here’s Mr. Wolf, the protagonist of Aron Steinke’s autobiographical education comics.

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Here’s a photo of Thien Pham in Artists Alley — he’s the illustrator of Level Up.

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And here’s Dave Roman with Astronaut Academy.

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Aron Steinke signs a copy of his upcoming graphic novel The Zoo Box in Artists Alley.  You can see that he remembered to bring a table cloth!

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Here’s Gene Luen Yang signing a copy of his upcoming graphic novel The Shadow Hero.  This book is going to be really good, you guys!

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And here’s Gene and Thien enjoying some ice cream with one of our upcoming authors, Rainbow Rowell.  Ice cream: especially delicious in Las Vegas where it’s 110 degrees.

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We brought an advance copy of our upcoming graphic novel with Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang, In Real Life.  I think this one’s a stand-out!  So do these clearly very excited librarians — Candice Mack, Amanda Jacobs-Foust, and Jack Baur.

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Hopefully, next year the show will be somewhere less warm!  But other than that, we had a great time!