Category: Conference Corner

My final day at ALA Annual Conference began by checking out of my hotel and storing my luggage – so I ended up being late to the ALSC Awards and Breakfast and got to the front of the line right after they ran out of food. Oh well! A neighbor did split a bagel with me.

But the ALSC Awards were lovely, as always. The winners gave short speeches, so I only have brief notes, but let me share a little bit of that.

Here are Nicholas Day and illustrator Brett Helquist receiving the Sibert Medal for The Mona Lisa Vanishes:

Brett Helquist talked about getting his artistic education in the library reference section, looking at the art books and a book called Anyone Can Draw. He never did stump the New York Public Library librarians when looking for a picture reference.

Nicholas Day began the book in 2020 and says, “Paris is a good place to visit in your head.” He also commented that “vital” is what people say before they underfund you. And we lead people to fiction through fact.

The wonderful book Houses with a Story, by Seiji Yoshida, won the Batchelder Award for best book in translation. This award is given to the publisher, so a representative of Abrams Books spoke:

This book demonstrates the breadth and depth of translated books. How to describe it? Each house tells its story but invites the reader to fill in the blanks. Imagination and reams are universal. Invites us to travel to places in our imaginations.

Corey R. Tabor was the Geisel Award winner, for Fox Has a Problem.

Beginning Readers deserve great books, too. Early readers are the most joyful.

The program finished off with the award for Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media, with these enthusiastic creators:

After the ALSC awards, I headed to the Exhibit Hall, and attended a couple sessions at the Book Buzz theater to hear about books I’ll surely be ordering for our library system.

Walking around the exhibits, I ran into John Schu, author of Louder Than Hunger.

I’d talked with John the night before, and felt like I’d slighted him by taking a picture with Jason Reynolds, but not with him! Before becoming an author, John was a librarian, and I’d become familiar with him from comments on the Heavy Medal Newbery blog, then served on an ALSC committee with him and got in the habit of talking with him at conferences. He’s a kind person who has that Mr. Rogers quality of talking with and seeing the person in front of him, and I’m happy to be his friend, however peripherally. Just such a kind person.

The next session I took notes about was “Feeling Supernatural: Breathtaking Worlds in Young Adult Literature,” featuring Lamar Giles, Amanda Glaze, Courtney Gould, and Leia Stone. Some highlights:

Q: How do you define supernatural?
LG – Breaking rules of reality.
AG – Past secret having power over us today.
CG – Predominantly based in reality, with speculative elements to increase stakes.
LS – At the start you think she’s human with no power – then magic surprises you.

Q: How do you decide what to keep close to reality?
LG – Like it to follow the rising action of the plot – get more supernatural as action rises.
AG – Love when magic hides in plain sight. If you squint, you might see it.
CG – Hers are close to contemporary with supernatural elements added. Monsters emphasize their underlying fears.
LS – Main character cursed to feel pain when touched – based on fibromyalgia.

Q: What are the rules that bind your antagonists?
LS – Tries not to write herself into a corner, so not too many rules.
CG – Simple but effective: What does the character need to learn? Also must be able to overcome the antagonist.
AG – Also in tandem with what the character needs.
LG – A Faustian element – a businessman who deals in the supernatural. How do you trip up a bad businessman?

Q: All your books include suspense. Do you plan it out in advance?
LG – A lot of it is trial and error and comes out in the rewrite.
AG – First draft is you telling yourself the story. Revision is for the reader. Outside readers help.
CG – Has an idea of the Twist when she starts: it’s a twisting-the-knife moment – but it changes by the time she gets there.
LS – She’s a pantser. She guards her writing time and writes it and it comes to her.

Q: History or legends? Research?
LS – Got into fantasy because you don’t need research. She only writes about places she’s been to.
CG – Did research on wilderness survival. Monster research – different kinds of cryptids.
AG – Her books are inspired by something that happened in history. This book – Winchester Mystery House – houses the spirits of the victims of rifles. Folks who worked there gave her lots of info. When she gets stuck, she goes back to the research.
LG – Based in history – Guy with a deal with the devil for music plus desegregation and a school that closed.

Q: Advice on writing heavy topics for a YA Audience?
LG – When writing about grief, approach it honestly.
AG – She doesn’t hold back. “You can always close a book.”
CG – Never wants to act like she’s teaching teens a lesson. Didn’t pull any punches writing about the troubled teen industry.
LS – Teens go through all the things adults go through. Teens just want to feel normal!

After that event, it was time to head a couple of hotels away to a ticketed event, the Author Gala Tea. This event features adult authors, but you get some nice in-depth speeches from each author. (I didn’t get great pictures in the big hall, but here are some.)

First up was Chloe Gong, with a new book coming out called Vilest Things. She wrote her first adult book when she turned 21, while isolated during Covid. It’s Antony & Cleopatra meets The Hunger Games.

Her protagonists are all on different sides. Not a romantasy, but the original toxic situation. This is the middle book of a trilogy.

Everything she writes is for her younger self – who only read library books.

Next was Tom Ryan, author of The Treasure Hunters Club, set in Nova Scotia.

A librarian pointed him from Lois Duncan to Agatha Christie and hooked him on mysteries. Bring a group of interesting characters together in a great setting and start killing them off.

Another book from the childhood librarian was called Blue Nose Ghosts about ghosts of Nova Scotia. Those tales get in the book, too. This librarian emails him after every book about how proud she is.

The next speaker was Lev A.C. Rosen, author of Rough Pages:

This book is the third in a series. His book Jack of Hearts was the 23rd most challenged book in the U.S.

Books can change us. They help us see the humanity in people. Reclam our identity. They heal us.

Rough Pages talks about when sending gay books through the mail was a federal crime, but there were folks who operated a queer book service. In the early 1950s, these publishers went under. In 1953, the ALA came out with its Freedom to Read statement. People were banning books left and right.

This is a book about stories – who gets to read them and who gets to tell them.

These things come in cycles. We’ve gotten through this before.

Next up was Justinian Huang, author of The Emperor and the Endless Palace

When he first came out to his dad, he was told that Asian people can’t be gay. This romantic thriller defies that, spanning 2000 years. It’s about a couple reincarnating, always destined to be doomed lovers. The true story it’s based on proved that gay Chinese people go back thousands of years.

The next speaker, Anna Montague, had the book with my favorite title: How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?

When I showed her my nametag in the signing line, she was so excited, she wanted a picture with me!

Her book is about a road trip with an urn of ashes.

It all started because her therapist broke up with her in 2020. Then her elderly friends got her thinking about the golden periods of our lives.

Magda’s best friend dies unexpectedly. She is given her friend’s correspondence and the urn of her ashes. It’s a meditation on female friendship. It’s also about grief – and the absurdity inherent in it.

Chris Whitaker spoke next, author of All the Colors of the Dark

He regaled us with stories of his life. He started going to libraries when he was 8 or 9 and his parents divorced. A man his mother dated broke his arm one night when he was ten. He later got stabbed on the street. Had PTSD and got a self-help book from the library. He told about starting at a stock trading company and owing them a million dollars but not how he managed to pay that off!

He quit his job to become a writer. Then ended up working 3 jobs. But it all changed when one of his books became a bestseller.

The final speaker was Katy Hayes, author of Saltwater.

Libraries are airports where you can fly anywhere for free. She went to her local library because it had air conditioning – but it also offered her a portal to a larger world.

In suspense fiction, the atmosphere sets the tone. This book is set on the island of Capri. In the early 1990s, there was a death. Then 30 years later, it happens again. It’s an island full of illusion, obsessed with appearances. There are three dead bodies in this book, which has to be a win, right?

It’s about a family who has everything and the women who will stop at nothing to escape them.

Can we believe what we see? All mysteries and suspense novels are magic tricks.

And that’s it – the last of my notes from ALA Annual Conference 2024. I hoped you enjoyed this taste of the conference!

Sunday night of ALA Annual Conference is time for the Newbery/Caldecott/Legacy Banquet!

Beforehand, there was a big balcony to hang around outdoors in the breeze – and I got to talk with friends – and author Jason Reynolds!

The Newbery Banquet is always a wonderful chance for a grand celebration with fellow children’s book lovers. There’s always an amazing program with art from the Caldecott medalist, good food, and then the highlight of the night – speeches from the winners. Since I knew the speeches get printed in Horn Book Magazine, I held off from taking notes and just enjoyed the moment this year. I will consult said magazine for some of the highlights from the speeches.

First, the Caldecott Honor winners get to receive their award without having to give speeches. Then the first speech came from Vashti Harrison, Caldecott Medalist for her amazing picture book, Big.

Vashti Harrison began her speech by remarking that people told her right away she was the first Black woman to win the Caldecott Medal. And then she told us about seven Black women who had won Caldecott Honor: Faith Ringgold, Carol Byard, Ekua Holmes, Oge Mora, Cozbi A. Cabrera, Noa Denmon, and Janelle Washington.

Then she talked about her own story. For anyone who’s read the amazing book Big, it wasn’t a surprise, because she portrayed all of this with her art. But she did talk about coming to illustration in film school with animation, drawing Disney-style people who didn’t look like herself. Even as a child, she drew characters thinner than herself, and the images she tended to copy were mostly of white or light-skinned women.

She was empowered to draw beautiful Black women, and got love and support online, but she was still making them impossibly thin.

I love this part of her speech so much, I’ll copy it here:

I resolved to only draw children, children who are allowed to be chubby and chunky and thick, and we love them for it. Children, who have no wrong or incorrect curves or folds. Children, for whom big is good.

Drawing is such an intimate practice. You spend time with characters, you make decisions that seem microscopic but can change a character entirely: the placement of their eyes, the length of their neck. As I made these tiny creative choices, I wondered, At what age does big start being bad? For me it was in second grade, when a girl looked over at my round belly and asked if I was pregnant. That version of me is still inside, still hurting.

I needed to make something to heal myself, and I needed to confront my internalized bias.

And she succeeded! She went on to talk about adultification and Black girls being punished for being too much. Her book takes those on so beautifully.

It was amazing to be in the room when she received this well-deserved medal for creating the most distinguished American picture book of 2023.

Then came the Newbery! First all the wonderful Honor book authors received their plaques. Then came the presentation of the Newbery Medal to winner Dave Eggers, for his book The Eyes and the Impossible.

He began his speech with a delightful story of his first grade teacher helping all her students write books, telling us that great educators expect more of us. And then his fifth grade teacher did the same thing – and entered his story in the state young authors’ contest, and he was chosen to attend a celebration of young authors in another part of the state.

At that conference, he met Gwendolyn Brooks, who called the students “fellow authors.” He was never the same.

His parents died at the ages of fifty-one and fifty-five, and he is now fifty-four. He’d made a vow to himself that if he lived past fifty, he’d write whatever he wanted. I like this paragraph from his speech:

My secret that I can now divulge is that The Eyes and the Impossible was my love letter to being alive past fifty, and how I sometimes cannot believe my luck. To see what I see, to love who I love, to be able to convey these things in a book that I honestly cannot believe made any sense to anyone. This is the most personal book I’ve ever written, and it’s also the weirdest, and the fact that librarians of this great nation have recognized it – that word again! – means to me, and should mean to any writer anywhere, that if we forget our dignified selves and write with a kind of untethered abandon, sometimes that’s exactly what a reader wants. Johannes, the protagonist of this book, gave me a way to write the way I always wanted to write – actually sing the way I always wanted to sing – and the fact that you all have accepted his voice, as unbridled as it is, means the world to me. I thank you.

And I have to add his last two paragraphs where he thanks librarians:

Thank you, the Newbery committee. I can’t imagine how hard your work was, but I am grateful to you, and to all librarians everywhere, for accepting this very strange book, and for accepting all very strange books. Books are simply souls in paper form, so when we accept a strange book, we accept a strange soul. We say that soul, however unusual or unprecedented, how reckless or flawed, belongs among the other souls of the world. And once this soul has been welcomed to the library – which is nothing less than a repository of souls – it cannot be unwelcomed.

More than that, because of you, these souls will be protected. When the small-minded ban books, they are banning souls. They are removing certain voices from the chorus of humanity and the chorus of history. And it is librarians who are tasked with making sure these souls are not removed, that they always have a home and always have a voice. Librarians are the keepers and protectors of all history’s souls, its outcasts and oddballs, its screamers and whisperers, all of whom have a right to be heard. No pressure, but we count on you to save us all, to protect us all, to preserve us all. Thank you and godspeed.

The final award of the night was the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, given to Pam Muñoz Ryan. She gave another lovely acceptance speech.

She began her speech with thanks to the many, many people who have helped her along in her career. Then she talked about how when she started writing, “there were only a handful of stories written by and about Latinos in the United States.” Her book Esperanza Rising parallels her grandmother’s experiences in a Mexican farm labor camp, and that camp is where her mother was born.

She didn’t grow up in a print-rich environment, but both her her grandmothers nurtured her love of story. The small branch library near her house fanned that love into an obsession with reading. She went there to escape from younger siblings and cousins and to get out of the heat.

It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the books would leap from the confines of the stacks and hold me spellbound. Stories are powerful that way, and once I was captured, I carried books to kitchen tables, to the car, and secretly propped them inside textbooks at school. I tried on many lives far more interesting than my own.

As I made my way through junior high, books carried me away from the wrath of mean girls, tallness, big feet, and a big, noisy extended family. I coped through books. It is no surprise that I now often write for readers who are the same age that I was when books made the most profound difference in my life.

She talked about seeing the worth inside each other, as her grandmother did, and she told a story about Pablo Neruda from her book The Dreamer, when he exchanged gifts with a child he didn’t know through a hole in a fence.

As artists and writers, we pass our work through a hole in the fence, never knowing who is on the other side. Never knowing if or when someone might pick up our book and have a reaction, a revelation, a good laugh, or the clutching-to-the-chest moment of a book well-loved and long-carried. We’re never sure if we will incite our reader, cause an indignant rampage, or inspire a cult following. We write and draw, shackled to the beautiful tyranny of now. We work with hearts full of hope for the future, and the promise of unknown communions.

Once again, it was thrilling to be in the giant room with these brilliant creators doing great things for children along with hundreds of other people celebrating distinguished children’s books.

Here’s my post about ALA Annual Conference Opening, The Printz Awards, and Day 2.

June 30, 2024, was the Sunday of ALA Annual Conference in San Diego this year, and it was time to meet our Morris Award Winner and Finalists! Well, those who made it, anyway. Pictured above are winner Byron Graves in the center, with Hannah V. Sawyerr and Ari Tyson beside him.

I can’t begin to tell you how lovely it was to celebrate our winning authors. The William Morris Award is for the best young adult debut book of the year, and as a committee we read hundreds, discussed them, and came to a strong consensus about our Finalists. It’s especially wonderful to get to encourage these stellar writers at the beginning of their careers.

So the first event of the day was the YALSA Awards. We got to hang out with the authors in the green room beforehand, and then celebrate the winners with other YA book enthusiasts.

My pictures from a distance came out blurry in the fairly dark room, but let me give some good lines from the various winners.

First up was our winner, Byron Graves, for Rez Ball. (*Such* a good book! Read it, everybody!)

He said that he wrote the book so that a 16-year-old Ojibwe kid like he had been could now see himself in a book. He also gave credit to his mother, who “crafted and freestyled” bedtime stories.

The next award was the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award, won by Dashka Slater, for Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed.

Her book started in the signing line for The 57 Bus, when someone asked her if she’d heard about this incident. And though she very much wanted to write about sweetness and light this time, the story wouldn’t let her go. She wanted to understand what had happened and why, and she very much wishes it had become irrelevant.

Almost all the high schools she’s visited had incidents of online hate – disguised as humor. Kids are having conversations about it. She doesn’t write for teens because she has answers, but because she has questions.

After the Alex Awards were announced (no authors were there), it was time for the Margaret Edwards Award Winner to speak. This award is given for lifetime achievement and was given to Neal Shusterman.

His speech made our jaws drop.

It started innocuously enough. His father wouldn’t read his books because they’re fiction. But he maintains that Fiction is the single most important thing we have.

At 18, he bought the Writer’s Market. He sent 20 copies of his first book to 20 publishers, and they were all rejected.

“Writers today are losing the benefit of soul-crushing rejection. We need to be reminded we haven’t arrived.”

His second book got him an agent, Andrea Brown. She couldn’t sell it. His third book sold when he was 23. “This author is gifted and in serious need of therapy.”

The goalpost has to keep moving. He wrote the Scythe trilogy to disrupt teen dystopia, to show a future when mankind really was getting things right. He came up with Scythe at the end of 2012, after his Mom had a stroke. Dying in the hands of people you love is not the worst way to go.

Then he began talking about Identity. Our identity comes from our people, or it’s forced on us by society or it’s something we choose. It defines who we are, who we love and hate, our whole world. And identity is a fiction.

Isn’t it wild that fiction defines our lives? Take great care in the stories you tell yourself and others.

Then he told the jaw-dropping story about his own identity. He grew up believing he took after a grandfather who was a Sepphardic Jew. But ten years after his parents had died, his son did an Ancestry DNA test – with surprising results that motivated research – and he learned that he was half Black and half Scotch-Irish. So that gave him lots of thoughts about identity.

People tell writers to stay in their lane, and his lanes go every which way now.

There are three kinds of diversity:
We need all kids to see themselves.
We need all writers to be able to speak.
We need all to be able to put themselves in other people’s shoes.

We are all human beings. Every story is our story to tell. He’s chosen a narrative where this is additive in his life.

After the awards celebration, we Morris Committee members who were there got to have lunch with Byron and Hannah! It was a wonderful time. They signed books for us, and we signed one book for each of them. *smile*

After lunch, we walked back to the convention center. I just barely had time to make it to a program I’d been eyeing: Welcome to the Puzzledome! It was a sample program to show how to run a jigsaw puzzle competition! This is something I’ve long wanted to try. I was late, but got there before they started, and joined up with these two from a base library in Japan. Our team came in second place, finishing the 500-piece puzzle in One hour, five minutes. The winning team did it in 58 minutes, but they had four people, so we were quite pleased with ourselves.

So – I did something stupid. Incredibly stupid.

I used the words “Covid positive” in my original post about my ALA Conference attendance.

Someone found this post just before I got on a plane to go home from San Diego. They had seen me at the conference – after I had tested negative – and because I wasn’t wearing a mask outside in the wind after I tested negative – they concluded that I had attended the conference giving people Covid willy-nilly.

Because I’d posted this picture (again, outside in the wind) from Day 2, they concluded that I’d completely lied that I’d ever worn a mask at the conference.

Before I say anything else, let me mention that none of these people in this picture – my fellow Morris committee members and the main people I talked with the first two days of the conference – got Covid from me, as they have reported two weeks after the conference.

By the time I got off my plane, Twitter was in a frenzy about me going to the conference and spreading Covid. They wouldn’t listen to anything I said about the precautions I took and the medical advice I got. I stayed off Twitter for a week and shut off notifications, because being a target of all that hatred and loathing was more than I could take.

My plan was to not post about the rest of the conference, because after I was Covid negative, I started meeting authors and taking pictures with them – but those folks will never believe it.

However, after the furor died down, I remembered that I *like* to post about the conferences I attend. It helps me make the most of what I learned and remember the wonderful people I interact with. So I’m going to post about the last two days of the conference – when I was Covid negative – and refer to this post if anyone objects.

And I figure my own blog is my chance to give the full story – which chance I did not get on Twitter. If people don’t believe me, I feel sorry for them keeping all that hatred and contempt in their hearts. I have been thankful that those who actually know me have backed me up when I discussed the situation with them.

Here’s how it started: I’ve caught Covid two times, and both times it was on a long plane flight with one stop. This time, thank goodness, it was on the way back from Germany instead of on the way there.

But the flight was only a week before ALA Annual Conference in San Diego.

So I assumed I wouldn’t be able to go, and I emailed my fellow Morris committee members. They answered to not give up yet. I made a virtual appointment with a doctor to talk about Paxlovid, which she prescribed. I asked her what she thought about whether I could go to the conference, and she repeated the current CDC guidelines that if my fever is gone for 24 hours and my symptoms are going away, I can carry on normal activities, wearing a mask. I told my friends I might be able to go, and they cheered for me.

I never had much of a fever – 99.5 at the highest. But I took Paxlovid and felt better quickly. By Wednesday afternoon, it was back to my normal of 97.4, and my symptoms had left. All day Thursday that kept up (and all through the conference, too – I brought my thermometer on the trip) and I felt fine on Thursday and spent the day packing my bags to go.

Now, my sister lives near San Diego, and we made a deal that I would only come to see her after I was Covid negative. Because passing people in a convention center or sitting next to someone wearing a mask is a lot less contact than staying in someone’s house, so we decided a stricter standard would apply. So I did bring tests, and I was negative by Sunday and went to her house Monday night – and it was after I was negative that I started meeting authors and taking pictures with them.

So, yes, I was still positive when I arrived at the conference on Friday. But I was very aware of that. And presumably after your fever and symptoms have left, you’re shedding a lot less virus. When my Morris committee friends came up to me at the Printz awards, I stood at a distance and kept my mask on to talk with them. Then Saturday when I saw them at a reception on a boat, we talked outside in the wind. Even if I were at the very beginning of the illness and shedding lots of virus, I fail to see how that virus could have transmitted to someone else in the wind on that boat.

And that’s the thing. There are some on Twitter who believe that I was responsible for every case of Covid that someone caught at ALA Annual Conference. But thousands of people arrived at that conference after taking a plane trip. Who is more contagious? The person with no remaining symptoms who’s wearing a mask, or the person who caught Covid on the plane trip to the conference but doesn’t know it yet and isn’t wearing a mask?

Now, when the Twitter furor erupted, I was paranoid I’d find out my committee friends had caught it from me. But time has passed, and the people I actually talked with and spent the most time with those first two days did not catch it from me. My family that I saw later that week did not catch it from me. I can’t bring myself to believe that I filled any of those convention center rooms up with virus and infected people I didn’t even talk with.

Though if you really want me to be your scapegoat, if you won’t believe me that I took precautions, and that I think those precautions were effective – there’s not really anything I can do about that. I now have new sympathy for teens who get bullied on social media, and I’m going to try to stay out of any social media shaming in the future.

So – that’s what happened. I followed CDC guidelines and went about my normal activities, wearing a mask, when my symptoms and fever were gone for more than 24 hours. After a swab up my nose didn’t even detect any virus, I no longer worried that I might accidentally infect someone.

Now I’m going to write up the rest of the conference without mentioning Covid, but this is my explanation if someone has an issue with what they see.

Saturday, June 29, 2024, was the second day of the American Library Association Annual Conference in San Diego.

The first session I attended was about selecting Board Books.

Panelists were board book authors Anne Wynter, Carole Boston Weatherford, Alisha Sevigny, and Steve Light

I liked the way they talked about joy and play in board books. Steve Light wrote his first board book (about trucks) when he imitated a boy in his class of 3-year-olds who just found joy in drawing trucks.

Board books are inherently playful, and kids play physically with the books, but also play with the language of the books. Also many board books are interactive, encouraging play. The interactive books are perfect for the wiggly ones.

Next I got in on the end of a panel of Newbery Honor winners led by Travis Jonker. I didn’t get notes written, but afterward I personally congratulated Erin Bow on her amazing book, Simon Sort of Says, and somehow we got to talking about my mathematical knitting.

Next, I went to a panel of Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors called “Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil: The Appeal of Morally Gray Characters in Science Fiction and Fantasy books.”

Here are the signed books I got after that panel ended:

The authors were O. O. Sangoyomi, Mary E. Pearson, Veronica Roth, and Yume Kitasei

Moderator: Your books are based on folklore and myth. How do they get populated with these morally ambiguous characters?

MP: Morally ambiguous characters are real, and they are us.

YK: So often retellings flip who the good guys and bad guys are and help us see more. Gives the myths a whole new life.

OS: You can also give traditional villains more of a back story, which makes the story more interesting.

VR: A quote: “Through folklore we learn about a people and what they think about humanity.” We learn from Slavic folklore that being human is a drag! Unfair stuff happens all the time. They teach us about humanity, not necessarily about morality.

Moderator to OS: The king in her Hades retelling is so convinced he’s right?

OS: That’s what drew her to the myth. She wanted to give Persephone more agency. Love bordering on obsession. Love can change people for the better or the worse.

YK: He’s a villain but not a villain. The love story is somewhat toxic, but still beautiful. He’s a foil for her journey.

Moderato to VR: Your book gets us cheering for vampires.

VR: The long history of Monster Fiction is making them sympathetic. The character is deprogrammed from brainwashing. Polish immigrants came to Chicago fleeing monsters, too. They’re just trying to survive.

YK: VR has got characters working toward opposing goals, all sympathetic, but they can’t all win.

Moderator to YK: Everyone’s hero is someone’s villain. In your book, every side has a solid reason for what they’re doing. They all have a valid point.

YK: As someone biracial and bicultural, within herself, her own identities war against each other. Everybody has a different perspective, rooted in their background.

VR: Come to YK’s book for Indiana Jones and stay for thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human.

Moderator to MP: Romantasy has a trope of morally gray characters with a trope “I must keep secrets from you for your own protection.”

MP: She gets in their heads and explores their motivations. They all think they’re doing the right thing. One guy is lying because of past betrayal. Another one has a very deep fear for people’s lives. Moral conundrums are true to life. Life isn’t black and white.

VR: As an author, we don’t even want to have all the answers. Better to write questions you don’t know the answers to.

YK: Selfishness itself is not inherently bad. It can be your motivation, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Now some responses that came from audience questions:

VR: Folklore is for people in the time it exists. It’s a living thing.

MP: Celtic folklore was never written down until the Christian monks. She tries to get at what it would have been behind that filter.

OS: Greek mythology + Nigerian mythology is her personal interpretation.

VR: How much can you forgive? You don’t get to decide what other people can forgive.

MP: Can a person be redeemed?

OS: What do we consider offenses in the first place? We might not need to forgive them if we understand their motivations.

VR: People who demand moral clarity have a lack of appreciation for a narrative arc. Do you want me telling your children what to do?

After that panel, I got the four books signed. Then I went to the main session where Kwame Alexander was speaking.

He had fun talking about winning not just a Newbery, but also an Emmy for Crossover.

Then he read an amazing and precocious letter from a 5th grade fan who demanded that he write a book with a female main character. So he talked about his next book, inspired by his great-grandmother, Black Star. It is book two of a trilogy.

Then he told us about Black librarians who fought against book bans 100 years before Moms for Liberty. Folks had forbidden too many Black books in one place. But in 1921, Virginia Lee found ways to get the books to the people, despite the orders.

Public librarians, if you want a model – look no further than the Black librarians of the early 20th Century.

We are in the imagination business, and we are reimagining what it means to be in community in a paradoxical time.

Libraries aren’t just the refuge in the storm – libraries are the rainbow.

His parents surrounded him with books that made him believe he mattered.

Then during the audience question time, Kwame called Jerry Craft on stage and announced that they’re collaborating on a book together! (Even though Jerry Craft has never won an Emmy.)

It was funny, because after Kwame finished speaking, I got in a line to greet librarian Mychal Threets, who posts about Library Joy and Library Kids.

After that session, I went back to my hotel room and fell asleep – but woke up in time to walk 2 miles along the bay to go to a Macmillan Happy Hour on a boat that’s part of the San Diego Maritime Museum. There were lots of authors there, and it was an opportunity to talk with some, but I mostly hung out on the deck, where it was breezy, and talked with my fellow Morris committee members who were there, finally meeting them in person after all our Zoom meetings.

And to top it off, they told us to take as many books as we wanted, so I walked back with these. Two of them are second books from debut authors who made an impression during my Morris reading.

All in all, it was a grand first full day of the conference. No wonder I was tired!

The first big event of ALA Annual Conference is the Printz Awards and Reception on Friday night.

The ceremony was as exuberant and lovely as ever. I love that we get to hear from all the honorees, not the winner only.

My camera doesn’t do great in a big auditorium, but let me post some pictures and notes from the speeches:

First Honor Book Author was Moa Backe Astöt for Fire from the Sky

This award is beyond anything she imagined. She was 22 when the book was published, but was 15 when she started writing it. As a Sami teen, she didn’t see books about teens like her. She wanted to write a painful story with a happy ending. It’s crucial that indigenous people and minorities feel seen and represented in literature.

Next, her translator, Eva Apelqvist, spoke:

Sometimes we meet a book that we just want to share with the world. She first just translated a chapter to promote the book, and was so happy to get to translate more. The setting brings you to northern Sweden. She had to let go of cultural shackles and approach it with humility.

Next up was Kenneth M. Cadow, author of Gather:

A book with an award and a dog on the cover – and the dog lives!

He told a story of going to the solar eclipse – somehow we like to be reminded that we are small. People are unpredictable, sometimes pleasantly so. Our hope comes from knowing each other and tiptoeing around each other’s humanness. His book humannizes the data about white rural males and drugs.

Then came Shannon Gibney for The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be:

She reaches out to other people on Planet Adoptee. Other adoptees see and recognize the experiences here. And non-adoptees have told her: We didn’t know.

Next up was Candice Iloh for Salt the Water:

Cerulean is someone she never had the chance to be at 17. She’d believed she had to follow what adults said she should do. Young people lose hope in the institutes they’re supposed to trust. What happens when our young people have had enough? She illuminated one Black queer child’s choice to seek safety. No one is safe until we all are.

Finally, they presented the Printz Medal for the short story collection, The Collectors, edited by A. S. King. All the authors went up front to the side, and A. S. King gave the speech.

She wanted the speech to be weird. (And succeeded!) She started off with a story of how she ended up recommending Slaughterhouse Five to an old guy – and then warning him it’s a weird book.

She thinks the word “weird” actually means “humane.” Which means that being humane is weird.

Teenagers live in an entirely different world than we did. There’s emotional currency in weirdness. It’s weird to tell the truth. Weird is humane. It wants you to tell the truth.

They remove humane books.

Not one career here tonight was self-made.

Protect trans kids for no other reason than it’s the right thing to do.

We work with battle-weary kids whose adults can’t see the war. We serve children because we’ve all been children.

The opposite of humane is Shame.

We are artists. We are art.

Some claim to protect children by removing their emotional fire extinguishers.

Be weird!

I just finished attending the 2024 American Library Association Annual Conference!

I flew to San Diego on Friday, June 28, and here was the view from my hotel room:

And the view of the Convention Center:

My flight was delayed about 45 minutes, and even with just a quick stop in my hotel room, I wasn’t in time for the start of the Opening Session with Trevor Noah, but I did get to hear the end of it.

Trevor’s an advocate for libraries. I don’t remember all he said, being in a bit of a daze after my flight. But he did speak about the power of libraries and books that aren’t trying to manipulate you and get clicks.

Next was the opening of the exhibits.

I have a neck condition (a small right vertebral artery) which means I shouldn’t carry heavy bags of books. So usually, I go to ALA Member Services, show my doctor’s note, and get permission to bring a wheeled bag on the exhibit floor. But now I have a job where publishers send advance reader copies to me directly. Surely I don’t need to grab so many at the conference? I decided not to bring a wheeled bag and limit myself to not carry more than 3 books at a time. And, well – the first three days I succeeded in keeping it down to 4 at a time.

The first night, I picked up 4 books, 5 tote bags, some Booklist magazines, and a publisher catalog:

I must say that I demonstrated incredible restraint!

Then it was back to my hotel to get ready for the Printz Awards.