I attended the Texas Teens 4 Libraries book convention for the first time April 16. And let me be the first to say that it was astounding. Teenages from all over the state, and their respective school districts, gathered together to meet, greet, and listen to famous authors.

My day started off with riding the metro with my friends at 6:30 a.m. to downtown Austin. We were a group of avid readers waiting to have our day filled with various books and authors. The Austin Convention Center was pretty big and hosted many author panels open to the TT4L attendees. The opening session consisted of students getting shirts and seven free books with a little bit of social time.

Upon opening my bag, I was overjoyed with the books I got. Many of them were pre-released copies whose authors were present to sign the copies. Schedules of the events were distributed to the students and they were free to attend the ones they pleased. I saw the list of authors present and almost lost all sense. The moment I read Neal Shusterman’s name on the list I knew the day was going to be memorable.

Shusterman is the writer of many famous books including The Unwind Dystology, Skinjacker Trilogy, and Lone Star book Bruiser. He is also one of my ABSOLUTE favorite authors who ranks directly after J. K. Rowling. His Skinjacker Trilogy was the first work I read and I became one of his biggest fans.

I attended the Neal Shusterman author panel and listened to him speak about his new book Challenger Deep. He talked about his inspiration, his son, and how events in the past led him to create a novel that really uncovered mental illness. I got goosebumps just listening to him. The panel was one of the biggest highlights of the entire event.

After the panel, we ate lunch and joined the other TT4L students in the book Exhibit. Just walking into the exhibit hall left me utterly speechless. It was a large room coupled with multiple publishing companies willing to talk and give out books. We spent three hours there and talked to many major publishing companies. Penguin, Scholastic and Bloomsbury gave out free advance readers copies to all attendees along with a chance to get those books signed by the author.

Along with the displays, many authors signed books as well. Various authors had long lines of people waiting to get signatures. Shusterman, Gordon Korman, Scott Westerfeld and Sarah J. Mass were among the few that were there to sign. Meeting so many authors was beyond my imagination. It was Heaven for readers.

At the end of the day, I came home to 41 books, three posters, seven pins, and a memory that I will cherish for the rest of my life thanks to librarians Laura Fauli and Amelia Lewis, as well as social studies teacher Lindsey Phillips.