Lisa Yee and Paul Rodeen

This weekend was Iowa's fall SCBWI conference (see the list of speakers), and it was outstanding.

I think my favorite part was Lisa Yee's closing address. She roped literary agent Paul Rodeen into assisting her with demonstrating something she does during school visits. She invites the boy with the loudest voice onto stage with her. Then she reads the scene from Millicent Min, Girl Genius where Millicent and Stanford are in the library for their first tutoring session.

So Lisa read Millicent's part and then showed Paul the book when it was Stanford's turn so he could say Stanford's lines. As she narrated, Paul acted the part, like slumping way down in his seat. Paul is a very tall former Knox College (small liberal arts school in Illinois) basketball player (Stanford is an excellent basketball player). At one point, with a two-dimensional paper basketball, Stanford/Paul demonstrated all sorts of basketball moves. He also devoured a sandwich, half a bag of chips, and a whole can of Coke. After which he belched on cue.

It was hilarious.

I have no idea how much notice Paul had about this beforehand or whether he knew what he was getting into. Either way, he was clearly game and showed no sign of embarrassment. To me that was a great sign.

I don't know if he'd be interested in my work. I only spoke to him briefly because Sterling Lord and I are alumni of Grinnell College and Paul had spoken fondly about being a liberal arts grad. Paul struck me as a young, ambitious, honest, hard-working, Midwesterner who's also a jock who changed his major to creative writing.

His performance with Lisa Yee made me rethink my opinion of him. It was good to have my prejudices (about underachieving jocks) shaken up a bit.