A bookish child almost misses seeing her favorite writer in the whole wide world, in a wish-fulfillment tale that will turn any author groupie (or author, for that matter) green with envy. Janey’s wild to meet Lily May Appleton at a local college’s literary festival, but she gets so absorbed in reading Appleton’s latest animal mystery while other, less interesting authors make presentations, that she loses the rest of her class. Much later, having wandered desolately around the campus, she tearfully tells her tale of woe to an elderly passerby, who turns out to be. . . .well, you know. A long, pleasant give-and-take ensues, and Janey gets the entire bagful of books she brought signed before triumphantly rejoining her class at day’s end. Hahn tells the tale in present tense; Bush illustrates her brief chapters with full-page scenes of typical children encountering several affectionately spoofed author and illustrator types. A warm companion to Louise Borden’s The Day Eddie Met the Author (2001) or Eve Bunting’s My Special Day at Third Street School (2004). (Fiction. 7-9)
