Photo credit: Andrea Fischman.

New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall has hosted thousands of legendary performers since it opened in 1891, from the New York Philharmonic to jazz greats Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to modern notables Isaac Stern and Renée Fleming. Joining their ranks this week? John Green—the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska (Dutton, 2005), An Abundance of Katherines (Dutton, 2006), and Paper Towns (Dutton, 2008)—and his brother Hank Green, who took to the stage on Tuesday to entertain over 2,800 fans. “An Evening of Awesome,” featuring numerous special guests, was also lived-streamed to sites around the country through a special partnership with Tumblr.

Photo credit: Andrea Fischman.

The much-anticipated and hyped event was part of a 17-city tour celebrating the first anniversary of Green’s most recent bestselling YA fiction book, The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton, 2012); the tour has sold over 11,300 tickets.

For the uninitiated, the Green brothers are also known for their popular YouTube video blog series Vlogbrothers, which has close to a million subscribers. Passionate fans of the series, who call themselves “nerdfighters,” are so numerous and so well organized that they have created their own online social networking group to, as they declare,  “increase awesome and decrease suck.”

“It brought to life the Nerdfighter community,” says Elazar Nudell, 30, of the site. Nudell traveled all the way from Springfield, MA, to attend the sold-out event along with Max Schnaper, 21, and Sasha Zacharia, 21.

However, most of the live audience at Carnegie Hall was comprised of teenage girls.

“John Green understands teen girls,” 17-year-old Samantha from Merrick, NY, tells School Library Journal. She feels that Green’s books helped her during a troubling time in her life. “He made me realize that how I felt was OK.”

Her schoolmate, 16-year-old Johanna, claims that the author encouraged her to be a thoughtful person. While waiting for the show to begin, Johanna read to Sam from a book by her other favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut.

The evening was part rock concert, part author and literary reading, and part talk show.

Shouts of  “We love you!” rang out through the hall as the tuxedo-clad duo took the stage. John entertained the audience with a monologue about his life and work. He told them, “My life is like a very long Emily Dickinson poem.”

Hank sang songs of his own composition on such topics as Helen Hunt, Harry Potter, and Quarks. Grammy-winning musician and former member of The Moldy Peaches, Kimya Dawson, and the folk rock band The Mountain Goats also performed during the evening.

Later, Ashley Clements and Daniel Vincent Gordh, actors in the The Lizzie Bennet Diaries Web series developed by Hank Green, appeared to do a dramatic reading from The Fault in Our Star. The night’s special guests also were on hand to perform a Readers Theater scene from Paper Towns.

The surprise guest of the evening was Neil Gaiman. The award-winning author of The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins, 2008), participated in the Q&A portion of the evening, asking John Green such questions and queries as “Where do people go when they die?” (“Narnia,” interjected Hank) and “Describe yourself in three words,” to which John finally agreed on Handsome, Awesome, and Tall—after some prompting from Hank, Neil, and the audience.  Also during the Q&A, Hank Green admitted to having a crush on his high school English teacher.

During the event, Carnegie Hall became a trending topic on Twitter; already by noon on Wednesday there were more than 35,000 additional views of the event and 18,000 comments. Additional meetups around this event are scheduled for upcoming days; a schedule can be found here.

“This Year” singalong. Photo credit: Andrea Fischman.

For additional photos of this event from School Library Journal, check out our Tumblr feed!

Photo: Kimberly Butler

Due out next year, it will be the first new Sandman story in nine years and will coincide with the original series’ 25th anniversary.

The new limited series, called “The Sandman,” is a prequel to the DC series he began in 1988 and ended in 1996 with 75 issues. Sandman is Dream, known also as Morpheus, an immortal member of a group called the Endless.

“I’m excited; this has been an incredibly long time coming,” Gaiman said in the video message. “It was one of the few stories that actually felt, when I finished Sandman, like I had failed because I had not told this story.”

Gaiman fans recently learned that he signed a major book deal with HarperCollins for two picture books and three novels, where we’ll see some favorite familiar characters, as well as some new ones.

Inspired by a recent trip to China, Gaiman‘s book deal with HarperCollins includes two new picture books for small children that center on Chu, the loveable little panda with the great big sneeze. Chu’s Day, illustrated by Adam Rex, will be published January 8, 2013, and another Chu book has already been written.

Fortunately, the Milk, a funny young middle-grade novel that’s already completed, is “an ode to the pleasure and wonders of storytelling itself” and will feature numerous interior illustrations by Skottie Young, says HarperCollins. The deal also includes a sequel to Odd and the Frost Giants,which will follow the Viking boy Odd on further adventures. Gaiman says on his blog that he’s already “started and plotted” the book.

Gaiman will also write a still unnamed middle grade novel, described as a “mysterious book that I think I know what it is (not even started, won’t be for quite a while, and I think I know the setting but not the story).”
“We are thrilled to sign these wonderful and diverse books by the immensely talented Neil Gaiman, who is such a treasure and has so many fans of all ages,” says Rosemary Brosnan, his editor at HarperCollins.

The author wrote on his blog that he’s also hard at work on an adult novel, which has the working title, Lettie Hempstock’s Ocean. Although contacts haven’t been signed yet, Gaiman says it should be out sometime in 2013.

“[The novel is] lurching further toward the end of its second draft every day. (mostly I’m just listening to comments from friends who have read it, and fixing things, or thinking about them and letting them stay the same…),” he writes on his blog.

Gaiman’s Newbery-winning The Graveyard Book was the only book to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie Medals. He’s also the author ofStardust and Coraline, which was made into an Academy Award-nominated animated feature film.