Whenever it was tickets first went on sale for this event? Stayed up until 12:01a.m. so that I could be one of the first to nab them. Can I just say–I’m glad I was a night owl as the event did sell out and, because I bought tix so early, we weren’t #1,005 for our turn to meet and greet the author–we were #21.

The Redondo Beach Civic Center is a trek for us valley dwellers, so as soon as I picked up my son from school, we zoomed down the coast (as much as you can zoom on the 405 Freeway), rendezvousing with my husband as he made his way there from work. We were early, so we had a tailgate Pilkey Picnic before lining up to go inside the civic center.

If you can ever attend a Dav Pilkey author event, I (as a writer of kidlit, as a parent of a kid who loves Captain Underpants and Dog Man), super strongly urge you to GO. DP is humble, engaging, and he imparts positive messages, such as: practice what you love to do, especially when life feels extremely hard.

When it was our turn for the meet and greet, DP welcomed my son, shook his hand, looked him in the eye as he asked him a few questions about himself, offered to answer any questions my son might have, then high-fived him–all before picture taking started. My son, shy as he was, came away from that encounter feeling as if he’d been acknowledged and seen and heard by a hero slash rockstar. Our 11 year old teenager dropped any moodiness in order to gush to his parents for the next couple of days about meeting Dav Pilkey. The event truly meant a lot to him.

Which meant a lot to his parents.

Can I just say: TRA LA LA!!! (Captain Underpants reference, as if you didn’t know)

Yours in secretly high-fiving-each-other parents,

PB

Thank you, Dav Pilkey, for a memorable evening!