My very favourite moment of A.L.A. was a grandmotherly librarian enthusing to me about how very much she had enjoyed my single use, in Stardust,of what my own grandmother would, and then only under duress, refer to ominously as "The F Word".
That very narrowly beat out the amazing graphic novel preconference (amazing because it wasn't, as I half-expected, a bunch of librarians who were comics fans, but was, much more interestingly, 175 librarians who could see the enormous demand for graphic novels in their libraries, particularly amongst teens, and wanted to know more about these things that, due to demand, they were putting on their shelves); spending quality time with Jane Yolen (who I normally forget is *j*a*n*e* y*o*l*e*n* because mostly I think of her as my friend Adam's mum/Allie's grandma etc., so seeing her in her element and worshipped like the goddess of some exotic tribe made me inexplicably happy); and seeing the "Advanced Listening Copies" of Two Plays For Voices ; not to mention signing finished copies of Coraline; spending time with Art Spiegelman, and with the lovely Colleen Doran and the not-as-lovely-as-Colleen-but pretty-darn-loveable-in-his-own-right Jeff Smith; and the librarian who told me how Sandman graphic novels were the most checked-out things from her rural library "until they meet someone who adopts them, and then they don't come back" -- she didn't see it as books getting stolen, she was just happy that a kid out there had found a book he or she wanted so much she or he "adopted" it; and spending time with author Chris Lynch; and, above all, realising the incredibly powerful role that all the librarians play in keeping America literate (for little pay and not a lot of appreciation, I don't think it's overstating things to suggest these people are the thin grey line between literacy and barbarism).