>I do love TLA. The librarians I meet there are hardworking, engaged in the profession, and funny, and their capacity for multitasking can be awesome, as with the young librarian-in-progress who visited our booth, where she filled out a subscription form (both Magazine and Guide, thank you Lord), talked about her MLS program, and chatted with her fiance via cell phone all at the same time.

Anne Quirk is the mistress of booth-setup, so after speedily dispatching with that we got to spend the day at the Houston MFA, a beautiful pair of buildings, and languidly wandering around Rice University and its posh neighborhood. Anne tried--twice--to talk me into attending a baseball game but I each time affected an attack of the vapors.

In the exhibit hall, the floor talk often turned to the issue of labeling, whether it be by grade or age level, Lexile score, or Accelerated Reading points. Fortuitously, one of our very own blog commenters is working on an article re this for a future issue of the Magazine. One of my best libraryland pals (and HB reviewer) Betty Carter also came through with a good pitch (see, I can use the metaphors without enjoying the game) for a piece we hope to publish in September, and U.K. novelist K.M. Grant told me an amazing story about an ancestor of hers who was the last man in England to be drawn and quartered--she has the head. We'll be getting that story into our pages as well.