And How Was the Pigeon Man?

Fab.
Duh.

What? You want more? You're insatiable. I love that about you.

All right, so last night was the night El Hombre Pichon, Mo Willems, came in to the Donnell Library to speak to the masses on everything from new and upcoming books to how to draw everyone's favorite boid. As you may recall I had a teensy tiny fear that no one would show up. Then we'd have Mo Willems, a room of three people, and in my dark despair I'd somehow end up downing the entire bottle of Yellowtail we had on the refreshment table.

Anywho, the room filled up perfectly. Everyone had a seat, everyone was able to see Mo do his Mo-thing, and the temperature hovered around 97 degrees. So we were not too packed, nor were we bereft of patrons. It was fabulous. Next week's presenter Meghan McCarthy was on hand to view the festivities too. Y'all need to come see her as well. She has not yet reached Mo-heights, so we need to show her that she is loved. Chris Barton already said that he might come and he lives in friggin' Austin, Texas. THAT is the kind of dedication I'm talking about, people!

Cool Things Gleaned:

• There is another pigeon book in the works. Mo would not tell us the plot or any real details except to hand us the first four words. Here they are: The Pigeon Wants a. Finish the line correctly, win a sweet. As we have already covered hot dogs and buses and as the Pigeon website is not proffering any clues, I'm going to guess that it's The Pigeon Wants a Girlfriend. Admit it. You would kill to see that book. Especially if the beloved was not a pigeon at all but something more eclectic like... a horse.
• Performing the book Today I Will Fly as Reader's Theater works magnificently. Particularly when you've an adorable four-year-old read off the, "Woof Woof Woof," lines.
  
• I got to see a galley of Knuffle Bunny Too (which contains information within on how to pronounce it). The new book has magnificent views of the Arch in Grand Army Plaza (Brooklyn) taken at 3 a.m. on the top of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. The story itself repeats tropes from the previous book smartly and then the whole affair becomes rather Noir. In a good way, mind you. The Pigeon also suffers an untold indignity in this title that I will not divulge except to say that it involves curly blond hair.
• This was a fun little detail from Mo's blog that I had seen briefly on his site but was explained better by him in person. If you read the man's regular postings then you know that he posts the art that kids send him, especially when it's particularly good. So this kid sends in the "DVD" of the upcoming film Super Mo Willems as shown here:
  
  But the thing is that the date on this has been erased and moved up in time. Apparently it used to say 2007. Now it's 9/12/08. As Mo mentioned on his blog, "Must have had some production problems, or perhaps the star wouldn't stop frowning or something."
  

I met his agent too. This was the woman who shopped Pigeon around for 2 years before anyone took a chance on buying it. Makes you wonder about the people who turned it down, no? HAHAHAHA!

I should mention that due to the rarity of the ARC, I did not get my own copy of Knuffle Bunny Too. Sad me. But you know what Meghan McCarthy did? She brought me a freak-ass awesome bright n' almost shiny copy of her newest title Strong Man. Shown here:



A magnificent evening all around. I'm now going to attempt to convince my boss that the Donnell Central Children's Room should serve as the repository of the Papers of Mo Willems. I mean, the poor guy lives in Brooklyn and keeps a whole heckuva lot of his stuff. Surely we could serve as his beneficiaries, yes? Yes?

I'll work on it.
Thanks again to Mo Willems for doing this for NYPL.