Last Saturday I had a Los Angeles launch for Sparkers at Children’s Book World, a fantastic children’s bookstore not far from UCLA. It was great fun! Though there was no spontaneous singing in Georgian, there were plenty of brownies. Even better, my college friend Andrew was able to come (and serve as official photographer!). I hadn’t seen him since graduation. For a while, we had the exact same major (Linguistics & Languages with French and Chinese), and we studied abroad in Grenoble together. Andrew spent the last two years teaching English in Korea and is now a graduate student in linguistics at Berkeley.

Speaking of linguists, many friends and colleagues from the department came to my party, which was very sweet of them. During the Q & A, my advisor asked me a phonology question. And I got to try out the special stamp one of the first-year grad students carved for me back in the spring when she was a prospie visiting UCLA!

Now for some photos (all taken by Andrew, unless otherwise specified):

Me in front of a wall of books!

Booksellers, linguists, church folk, Swarthmore alumni (some of those sets are overlapping)                       (Photo by Laura F.)

Signing books (note the stamp close at hand, and the ink pads that look like rosin)

Me and church friends

Me and UCLA linguist friends

Me and Andrew (Photo by…oh dear. Laura F. or Ana M.)

I’m glad so many people came out to celebrate with me, and many thanks to Children’s Book World for hosting my California launch!