Today was the reason for this trip in the first place. My newest book, BRAIN FOOD: Recipes for Success in School, Sports, and Life hit the streets today. Published by MEvans (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield), BRAIN FOOD is the marriage of nutrition and learning, written by two sisters. I wrote this book with my youngest sister, Kelly Hammer, because she is a nutritionist and personal trainer. She's included incredible recipes and meal plans for every age and stage of childhood. It is a wonderful resource.
Kelly and I signed copies of Brain Food in the publisher's booth on the exhibit floor from 2 - 3 p.m. We also gave away bottled water with the Brain Food cover on it. It was well received.
Hopefully, we can help parents enable their kids to eat with the brain in mind. We also offer recipes, not included in our book, on our Brain Food website. How the brain develops and what it needs at age 2 is quite different than what it requires at age 14. That's why we broke down these ages and stages in the book so you can see how their eating needs to change to match their physical, emotional, and mental needs.
BEA is a huge book convention with thousands of books on display for retailers to choose from. It is overwhelming and tiring to see all of it. I loved that there was an entire floor of the exhibit hall dedicated to the children's market. It's nice to see how this market is still booming.
At the Writers' Digest Writers' Conference, one of our speakers said that publishing is "flat" right now...he believes we can blame JetBlue airlines for that. They provide in seat satellite tv in every seat, so passengers no longer read on their flights. But I have to say, that spending this week in NY gave me hope. There were people reading EVERYWHERE. I should have taken pictures of every time I saw someone reading: on the subway, on the ferry, on the bus, in a cab, on the elevator, riding down an escalator, walking along the street, on a bench in the park, on the steps to a church, in a cemetary, in line almost anywhere, and even (now don't freak out) WHILE DRIVING A CAB! I'm grateful reading is not dead!
