{"id":42978,"date":"2023-10-31T18:17:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T22:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=42978"},"modified":"2023-10-31T18:17:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T22:17:59","slug":"conference-corner-virginia-library-association-conference-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=42978","title":{"rendered":"Conference Corner – Virginia Library Association Conference 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ast Tuesday, I got to attend one day of the Virginia Library Association Conference. It was close by — basically in between my home and my workplace. I like to write up notes to consolidate what I learned, always bearing in mind that a big part of the value of librarian conferences is connecting with colleagues. In this case, I got to see many friends from my own library system and have lunch with people I used to see daily.<\/p>\n

First up, the keynote speaker was author Jason Reynolds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, if you’ve never heard Jason Reynolds speak, you need to find a way to do so. And I can’t communicate in notes his humor and presence — you had to be there.<\/p>\n

But I will also note some good points he made (with lots of humor and poignancy):<\/p>\n

He talked about relating to kids, as he does as an author but also as a person. He says you need three things: Humility, Intimacy, and Gratitude.<\/p>\n

In his writing, he needs Humility because he’s no longer 13.<\/p>\n

He’s got intimacy because the language of his neighborhood (rap) has become the language of youth culture. He puts boys in stories where they can be vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Gratitude — He shows kids as human beings. His books are his love letters to kids.<\/p>\n

Books are the tickets he created to get access to human beings, his golden tickets to every school in the country.<\/p>\n

When we deal with humans, we need:<\/p>\n

Humility — Deal with our egos. Adults are an entitled population. We need humility to create a relationship with kids.<\/p>\n

Intimacy — Thank them for coming. Without the kids, we have no purpose. <\/p>\n

Books are important, but we ban humans every day, by not acknowledging them.<\/p>\n

Look up and see the people around us. We’re all made to be opened.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After lunch, the next session I went to was the Cardinal Cup Author Spotlight.<\/p>\n

The Virginia Library Association gives an annual award to honor a distinguished biography, historical fiction or American history book for young people<\/a>. It has this year been renamed the Cardinal Cup instead of the Jefferson Cup.<\/p>\n

The winning book this year was Louisa June and the Nazis in the Waves<\/em>, by L. M. Elliott<\/a>. The author talked about her research about the Nazi U-boats that used to patrol the East Coast of the United States and in March 1942, before sonar, were sinking an American ship every 8 hours. Five U-boats sank 397 ships. I’d had no idea! Her talk about her research and the tidbits she found was fascinating.<\/p>\n

Her writing process is research, then imagination, dictated by fact. I was enchanted by all she had to say and got two signed books (this one and her next one), which I plan to read just as soon as we’ve chosen this year’s Morris Award winners.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The next session was called Legislative Panel on the Right to Read in School and Local Public Libraries<\/p>\n

It was moderated by VLA’s liaison to the legislature and featured a Virginia state senator and state legislator who have been fighting increased legislation attacking the right to read and trying to limit what’s available in Virginia libraries.<\/p>\n

As the legislator said, parents who *want* their children to have access to books have rights, too.<\/p>\n

The Virginia senator speaking is also a professor of literature, so this is close to her heart. After all, we know the dangers of book banning.<\/p>\n

This past legislative session, they talked about bills that were defeated, and a bill that got through. On its surface, it is saying parents have to consent to study books in class. In practice, it made it easier to ban books.<\/p>\n

They warned us that advocacy is important. Right now, those who want to ban books have the loudest voices, and we need to change that. Advocacy matters.<\/p>\n

This is driving government control on speech and thinking.<\/p>\n

Remember: We never want politicians to determine what is literature!<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The final session I attended was four “lightning talks” with basically nuts-and-bolts library issues, including two friends from my library system who made an app that helps manage our collection.<\/p>\n

Altogether, it was a great day to get out and mingle with other librarians and be inspired and refreshed to continue doing the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ast Tuesday, I got to attend one day of the Virginia Library Association Conference. It was close by — basically in between my home and my workplace. I like to write up notes to consolidate what I learned, always bearing in mind that a big part of the value of librarian conferences is connecting with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conf-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42982,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42978\/revisions\/42982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}