Category: Conference Corner

Continuing my highlights from ALA Annual Conference 2022, on Sunday June 26, after the YA Author Coffee Klatch, I attended a Collection Management Discussion Group sponsored by the Association for Library Services to Children. I was especially excited about this session, because exactly five days before, I’d started my new job as Youth Materials Selector for my library system.

Though this was a lot of detailed and specific discussions, and I still didn’t really know what I didn’t know. But it was good to meet the group and I got my name on an email list.

Among other things, we discussed book challenges. Some libraries had dealt with “1st Amendment Auditors.” Their PR department made a good list of talking points. You have to be careful in email — “You end up with pen pals.” Talk about other options and know what you have on the shelves.

We discussed that children’s nonfiction collections didn’t go out as much during the pandemic. Some libraries were building “curriculum kits” for home schoolers, working with local schools. Some of the nonfiction collection is switching to ebooks.

I did learn that for those who had tried it, a “Lucky Day” collection didn’t work as well with children’s books. Mainly, children’s book usage doesn’t fall off as much as adults do — children don’t care as much if it’s new, because it’s new to them. One person said their library did 5 or 6 “Lucky Day” books for children per month. (These are always available.) After 6 months, if each copy hasn’t gone out in the last two months, that title is weeded from the Lucky Day collection.

There’s been some plateauing of ebooks, but we’ll see what the summer holds. The pandemic has changed a lot of patterns. Everybody’s buying fewer CDs — mostly just children’s and not young adult.

After that meeting was Library Family Feud!

I got to be on a team of Librarians to compete against a team of Authors to win real money for book-related charities! Here’s the Author team:

It was a whole lot of fun. I knew two of my teammates from Capitol Choices (a DC-area group of librarians that makes a list of 100 notable children’s and YA books each year). Hundreds of librarians were surveyed to get the answers, so we may have had an advantage, though in the past the authors usually won.

I’m most proud of my answer when the topic was “Famous Poets” and I thought of “Amanda Gorman” to steal it from the Authors.

And — we won! Here’s the winning team of Librarians!

We got books signed by the authors when we finished.

After that, I went back to the exhibits, where I got more books signed and attended a Book Buzz Fall Preview for Levine Querido Books, Chronical Books, and Candlewick Press. They made me want to get all the books!

Then it was time to change for the Newbery/Caldecott/Legacy Banquet!

My third day of ALA Annual Conference, on June 26, 2022, began at 9 AM with the YA Author Coffee Klatch.

Most years, the authors who participate in this event were all award winners, but this time there were some debut authors in the mix. We got about five minutes with each author before they moved to the next table, so not much time to interact, but it was fun to hear personally about their books.

At first I was shy, but after the first few, I took pictures, so I’d remember them and their books.

Here are the authors I met:

Lisa Fipps, author of Starfish. Book Two is coming!

Vincent Tirado, author of Burn Down, Rise Up. The characters go back in time to the Bronx in the 70s.

Angeline Boulley, author of Firekeeper’s Daughter. Book Two is also coming for her! It will be same setting, different characters.

Kyle Lukoff, author of Different Kinds of Fruit.

Gail Jarrow, author of American Murderer. She gave us gummy worms as swag for a book about a worm parasite!

Anath Hirsh, author of Pixels of You, soft sci-fi graphic novel about artificial intelligence and presenting as human.

Laekan Zea Kemp, author of Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet, Heartbreak Symphony (2022), and An Appetite for Miracles (2023). The first one was about food, the new one is about music overcoming grief, and the next is about food and music and dementia.

Tim Grove, author of nonfiction The First Flight Around the World, and a new book, The World Turned Upside Down, about Yorktown, including a story about Lafayette’s spy.

Diana Peterfreund, author of the Clue trilogy. It’s great for doing library programming around. Send her pictures if you do a themed game night!

Judy Lin, author of A Magic Steeped in Poison and Venom Dark and Sweet (coming August 2022). It’s Taiwanese-Chinese-inspired fantasy about a magical tea competition.

Cory Anderson, author of Morris Finalist What Beauty There Is, crime fiction set in rural Idaho.

Francesca Padila, author of What’s Coming to Me, a debut novel, a mystery about a girl on her own in rural Long Island who discovers her boss is laundering money. (Oops! Missed her picture!)

Darcie Little Badger, author of two of my recent favorites, Elatsoe and A Snake Falls to Earth. They’re inspired by storytelling structures and themes for the Lipan Apache. She has a PhD in Oceanography and wanted to combat a sense of helplessness and environmental anxiety.

Susan Azim Boyer, author of Jasmine Amideh Nees a Win, a funny book about the Iran hostage crisis and an Iranian American student feeling shame around her identity.

Vanessa L. Torres, author of The Turning Pointe (pub 2/22/22), about a Latinx ballet dancer in the 80s in Minneapolis. She encounters police brutality and leaves her emotions on the dance floor.

Marsha Argueta Mickelson, author of Pura Belpré Honor book Where I Belong, a contemporary YA novel where politics brings out the story. Her next book is called The Weight of Everything.

Ebony LaBelle, author of Love Radio, a YA romance set in Detroit. A love letter to Detroit and to families. Black joy.

In this series, I’m hitting the highlights of the 2022 ALA Annual Conference in DC — first time in-person since 2019. And since the 2019 conference was a peak experience for me, and I was given the Allie Beth Martin Award at the Public Library Association Member Breakfast, I thought it would be fun to attend it again. (During the pandemic, the awards are on hiatus, so I didn’t get to cheer someone else getting it.)

The speaker was April Ryan, the first black woman to be a White House correspondent. She’s written The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America and Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House, and has an upcoming book, Black Women Will Save the World. Since childhood, she’s been a benefactor and supporter of the public library system.

She reminded us the story is being written right now. They’ll come to us. Be well-read in the midst of book bans.

This moment is one people will write about, and we’ll have on our shelves. Every avenue of this country, there’s a challenge. We matter in these moments. Information matters. Breaking stereotypes matters.

When no one else will, who will? Shirley Chisholm said, “If you don’t have a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” It’s about owning the table.

When we get there, there’s a thing called imposter syndrome. She’s the longest serving black woman covering the White House. Groups fought for her not to be there.

We still have underserved communities. Reach back and bring them in.

What does the fight look like? It’s not just at the Supreme Court.

All the controversy and consternation is over Truth. Black women are leading. This is a moment to use critical thinking.

There’s a rollback for every advance, and the rollback is here. Where do you stand in this moment?

Truth. Stories. The Written Word. They’re all so crucial in this moment. Books are more important than they’ve ever been.

Who can we trust to give us information today? Each of us plays a part in this system. Fight for those who don’t know what’s going on.

We are the curators of this moment.

I like to post highlights from ALA Annual Conference each year that I attend. It’s all so overwhelming when it happens, and writing up notes helps me absorb what I learned and what I experienced. You can follow these posts in the Conference Corner category. It’s already been a couple of weeks since I was finally at an in-person conference again. It was in Washington, D.C., the same as the last time it was in-person. I still don’t feel great about traveling in an airplane, but this meant I could drive in and out of the city each day.

The first day of the conference was Friday, June 24, 2022. I got there early in the afternoon to get my badge, show my vaccination status, and show my doctor’s note to get permission to bring a wheeled bag onto the exhibit floor.

My first activity was a fun excursion — ALSC (the Association for Library Services to Children) was sponsoring members to visit Planet Word — a new museum of the spoken word — a few blocks away from the convention center. Unfortunately, I remembered the time wrong and got there before the main group of people. I had fun exploring the museum — it’s worth a trip — but unfortunately my mind was on the conference so I didn’t linger enough to really do it justice.

I went back to the conference in time for the Opening Session with ALA president Patty Wong interviewing the chairperson of the FCC, Jessica Rosen Worcel. They mainly discussed efforts to get broadband to the underserved, with the help of libraries — and how much difference this makes in people’s lives.

She talked about an “Emergency Connectivity Fund” to use to help schools and libraries give students and patrons internet connectivity, a continuation of the eRate program that began in 1996, “a quiet powerhouse.” They’ve made eRate easier to apply for.

Kids who don’t have connectivity fall behind. And here she mentioned my friend Alma, who works in a rural school library, and the kids need internet access to do their homework.

Kids are affected by the digital divide even more after the pandemic. We can’t stop until every student has access at home.

The FCC has signed a Memo of Understanding with IMLS to work with libraries to connect communities.

After the Opening Session, the Exhibits opened. I showed a lot of restraint and only picked up nine books, some of them signed. I lost that restraint the next day, but it was a good start!

Then I dropped the books in my car and found a hotel bathroom where I could change my clothes to go to the 2022 Michael L. Printz Awards.

I love that at the Printz Awards, the winner and all the honor authors speak, instead of just the winners. Here are some notes from those speeches, with the honor authors first:

Angie Thomas, author of Concrete Rose

First, she broke to us that her book being set in 1998-1999 makes it “Historical.” Back in the day when women had full rights.

Black men didn’t have cell phones with cameras to document police brutality.

Life should be different by now. What are we doing to change things in 2040?

Limited perspectives create limited leaders. We are frontline soldiers in the battle against censorship.

The real Mavericks are invisible until they’re a threat. Acknowledge the roses. Fight for them. Help them grow.

Andrew Carr (editor), reading the speech for Malinda Lo, author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club

(He was really cute reading the nice things she said about her editor!)

Book bans have skyrocketed and laws targeting librarians. Those who seek to repress the new reality — they have teamwork. We need teamwork, too.

Librarians curate books about all of us for all of us. We have a team behind us, too.

All the authors are on our team. Our team is bigger than their team.

Our team is better, motivated by truth, curiosity, and compassion.

You are not alone!

Kekla Magoon, author of Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People

20 years ago, she thought of the Black Panther party as Black guys with guns — so scary, we didn’t talk about it.

The first thing that caught her attention was when she found out about the free breakfast program. She became eager to learn more. She was angry it had been kept from her.

This was the project of her passion. She spent 10 years on study and travel and gathered nearly 180 photos.

Meanwhile, echoes rang out constantly.

After all that wait, this is the right book at the right time.

The struggle for representation continues. Black history is our history. We need multiple perspectives.

We have to trust our kids to build a better future.

Lisa Fipps, author of Starfish

Librarians have to fight a lot. Thanks for all of it!

It’s unknown how many lives have been saved by school librarians welcoming loners at lunch.

For many children and for her, Starfish is nonfiction and biography.

Children need this book.

Fat children have a right to take up space.

To children: I’m sorry. People hurt you, and then laugh.

Words can hurt, and words can also heal. Words can set us free.

Angeline Boulley, author of Firekeeper’s Daughter

Her Ojibwe language and culture are still here — because of stories.

We’re honoring stories and storytellers. She really is a Firekeeper’s daughter. Only good thoughts and words are allowed around a ceremonial fire. Stories are good medicine.

She told about the “creative jigsaw puzzle” behind the story that is her book.

She was 18 before she read a book with an indigenous protagonist. It was disappointing, and it was also too late.

Representation in children’s books matters.

She mentioned the “windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors” we talk about in children’s books and quoted Debbie Reese — “Some of those windows need curtains.”

She writes to preserve her culture and edits to protect it.

There are traumatic events in her book, but it’s not a tragedy.

Stories are good medicine. They are like women: Strong like the tide, with forces too powerful to control.