A "Death to Barbie" t-shirt that has a picture of Barbie with an arrow sticking through her head.
Oddly, I couldn't find any online images of Barbie with an arrow stuck through her head. So Thalia stuck toothpicks through one of her dolls, photographed it, and we printed it out on sticker project paper. By the way, sticker project paper doesn't adhere to t-shirts well, but we were making do with what we had. There's lots of Fray-check holding that image on the shirt. Cheap black t-shirt from Walmart. Cheap pink iron-on letters from Walmart. Go forth and make your own.
Later that evening it occurred to me how to make the silver camo pants -- use grey camo fabric and fabric paint. Oh well. If we ever need to do this again, we'll have an even better outfit.
The schedule: the library closes at 5pm. The doors open again at 6pm, and Rick Riordan speaks at 7pm.
The kids and Rick loaded up and left at 5:20, intent on getting there early. I thought that was a little nuts -- why get there sooooo early?. But, they weren't sure what traffic would be like, plus they were picking up a friend.
Rick called me at 6 to say they were at the library, and they were LATE
because at least 500 to 700 people were already there
and ahead of them in line.
Precisely 653 people were ahead of them. The first 650 were admitted to the main auditorium. They were directed into overflow area #1, where they watched on a big screen. Others were in overflow #2. I don't know how many overflows there were.
But, hey, at least they got in the building -- plenty of people didn't. Which meant that those people were outside waiting when a big thunderstorm rolled in suddenly (which sort of goes with part of the book, if you ask me -- the storms in the Midwest? I totally would've been talking about a Titan going through the area.)
(Links to Rick Riordan's blog saying the crowd was 1,500, and the Post-Dispatch book blog, which put the crowd at 1,700.)
Rick Riordan was a fun speaker. They said his talk wasn't really long. Perhaps he was anticipating signing his name about a thousand times later that evening. Although he seemed like he was enjoying meeting so many fans. Check it out -- about 600 books into this marathon, and he's still smiling and gracious. And he's been doing this for days and days in various cities. Amazing.
He did talk about some of the next books he'll be writing. The kids were pretty excited about that. Some of it we'd read about on his blog.
A memorable evening!
Maybe the smile was for the shirts. Maybe it's just that my kids aren't old enough to be into these books, but I feel so out of the loop that the only time I'd ever heard of these was here on your blog...yet hundreds of people show up.
ReplyDeleteHe was a middle school teacher, and RIck (my husband) said it was really obvious that Riordan enjoys talking to and being with kids.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny how we're tuned in to certain bits of popular culture, and totally miss other things?