Beth Isaacson’s (Embarrassingly Über-delayed) Report on ALA Annual

Thursday 6/26 – Arrived. Decompressed.
Friday 6/27: Slept in.
Lunch with our own Chris Borawski. We discussed a few details re: which sessions to attend. (And I remembered I’d eaten at this restaurant with my family during a family visit back in elementary school!)

4 PM – ALSC Making Connections. This program wasn’t exactly what I hoped for – there was heavy focus on a bingo-like game; we played to “make connections” with one another. I discovered I preferred chatting with others w/o such guidance. That said, once we were through the game, various presenters and a Q&A period gave us great information about what not to miss at ALA, as well as opportunities (aside from the awards committees!) to get involved with ALSC. As a result of session, I modified my plans for the week to include attending part of one of the ALSC Board meetings, a best read panel or two, and the all committee meetings. You’ll notice as I progress that my plans continued to change.

Evening – Former Bookseller Reunion Dinner with a friend and old colleague from Politics & Prose, who’s now a student at UT-Austin library school. w00t!

Saturday 6/28: Began w/ Exhibit Floor, 9-10:15 AM. Aisle after aisle of publishers, service providers, and professional associations; crowds and crowds of people. Overwhelming and invigorating. I would highly recommend planning your exhibit floor exploration as much as you do your session attendance. Have a plan of attack – and be open to whim. (Head’s up: some publishers give away freebies first thing while others release them incrementally. Still others wait until the last day to foist their goods on you so they don’t have to schlep them back. Seven Up: If you plan on mailing back any purchases/galleys/etc., go to the exhibit floor post office earlier than later or be prepared to wait in a loooong(er) line.)

10:30AM -12 PM Bestsellers of a Different Color: Ethnic Writers in America. Heeding advice received before arriving in Anaheim, I jettisoned my original plans (Dewey or Don’t We?) for this panel presentation by six authors. Tracy Brown, Bich Minh Nguyen, Nikki Turner, Yxta Maya Murray, Nina Revoyr, and Wahida Clark shared their experiences as writers, read from and signed copies of their books. While I’d heard of Nguyen (Stealing Buddha’s Dinner), the others were new to me. I particularly glad to get to hear from the three urban lit authors (Brown, Turner, and Clark); each spoke passionately about how the need for books reflecting their own life experience led them to become writers.

(Lunch Tip: If you’re like me and abhor ridiculously long lines and yet insist on eating near the exhibit floor, find a place off the beaten path, at one extreme end of the floor or another. It worked (somewhat) well.)

1:30-3:30 PM - Teens @ Your Branch Library. The panel of teen experts comprised two librarians from Multnomah County (OR) Public Library, one from Cleveland Public Library, and another from Queens PL. The overwhelming word of advice in their discussion was staff training, staff training, staff training. The more we know about teen cognitive and behavioral development, the better we will understand and be able to serve this population. One description that remains with me on this: just as a toddler is fundamentally compelled to push that chair across the room, so is a teen bound by her brain chemistry to behave as she does. They have no choice – we can’t take it personally.

Another gem from this session: teens are living, breathing lie detectors. They have an innate sense of what’s fair and what isn’t. And they can smell fake. In other words, don’t ask a teen to quit any behavior that you wouldn’t ask of ANY other patron (talking on a cell phone, working in a group at a computer, speaking loudly, eating). And be yourself. Model the behavior you want from the youth and don’t be afraid to enforce boundaries. Under all that bluster, these kids need limitations and consequences.

Finally, learn teens’ names in as respectful and normal a way as possible. Names are powerful tools – you can gain a teen’s attention as effectively with the wrong name (used on purpose) as the right.

3-4 PM ALSC Board Meeting – I left the Teens @ Your Library panel early so I could attend a smidgeon of one of the ALSC board meetings. I arrived during ALSC Awards Eligibility Task Force presentation of its final report. This group was appointed by then ALSC president KT Horning after the annual conference in 2006 “to examine existing terms for ALSC award committees concerning publisher and author/illustrator eligibility; to make recommendations to the ALSC Board to clarify and/or change existing terms.” Ultimately, three categories were clarified: Eligibility of Publisher, eligibility of book, and eligibility of Author/Illustrator. It was a fascinating discussion to witness – the approved changes will be incorporated in to the relevant manuals on the ALSC website.

6 PM – Disney/Hyperion Cocktail Party. Thanks Fran Ware’s generosity, I was able to attend a Disney/Hyperion party/book signing held in celebration of Mo Willems’ Caldecott Honor for Knuffle Bunny, Too and his Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal for There is a Bird on Your Head! I spotted Nikki Grimes, Jon Scieszka, Mo (and Trixie!!), and Jon Agee. I also ran into Edie Ching, children’s literature consultant and former librarian of St. Alban’s School and our own Kathie Weinberg.

The serendipitous point of the evening though was meeting Jacqueline Woodson. During my final semester at UMD-CLIS, I wrote a 40-page paper on the Underground Railroad in children’s literature. As part of that paper, I read and evaluated Woodson’s Show Way – a book that manifests many controversial UGRR details for librarians and teachers. I pounced on Ms. Woodson, asking her about the book, how involved she was in the illustration process, and how she responded to critics who say quilt codes weren’t used on the UGRR. She was generous, articulate, friendly, and inspiring. I left feeling I could revisit my paper and set right several pieces I’d been uncomfortable with.

Sunday 6/29: 9-10AM – Visited the exhibit floor post office. The line was tolerable – not nearly as long as I’d seen it the afternoon before nor so long as it became on Monday, the last full day of the conference. Staff help you pack and seal your boxes – if you handle the tape gun, be prepared to have it taken from you!

10:30AM-12PM – Making It New: Innovation in Children’s Book Publishing Past, Present, and Future. DC-area children’s lit consultant and adjunct UMD faculty Maria Salvadore introduced this panel presentation. Leonard Marcus began the session (Publishing Past) with a review of the history of children’s publishing, from the first horn books used in colonial America to establishment of the first children’s room in a library – his most recent book, Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature, covers the topic in depth.

The second panelist, George Nicholson, founded Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers and Yearling Books and now works as an agent for children’s writers and illustrators. He described the scope of Publishing Present, referred to Le Guin’s February piece in Harper’s, the disappearance of the mentoring process between editors and writers, the Business of Publishing and the need for writers to be familiar with it in order to succeed, and suggested a change for the industry: namely, to tease literary publishing from commercial publishing.

The presentation concluded with Tim Ditlow, former publisher of Listening Library, who joined Amazon’s Brilliance Audio in January 2008. Ditlow’s view of Publishing’s Future fixed its gaze on the potential of digital media (eBooks and audio downloads). With the development of the G3 network (spurred on in no small part to the iPhone), Ditlow said it’s only a matter of time before we can download an audio book directly to our car/Kindle/iPhone without downloading to a computer first. And lest we should despair the loss of the book as artifact (that bunch of paper bound and covered), he shared the experience he had with his Kindle: mere months after getting the device, Ditlow caught himself while reading on a plane, utterly absorbed in the manuscript he was reading, transported. Regardless of the technology used to present it to us, we will be transported. (And lest we should despair again, he thinks we have a bit of time before this gets too too popular – text books first, once video, 4-color, and audio elements can be included, then commercial publishing.)

1:30-3:30PM – Hey! I Want to Do that Too!: Gaming and the Elementary Age Child. (presented by ALSC’s Children and Technology Committee, which is chaired by the aforementioned Sr. Borawski)
I attended only a mite of this presentation, ultimately sacrificing full attendance to spend the evening with some SoCal family* I don’t see but every few years. I wish I’d been able to stay for more as Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review, promised to be a knowledgeable authority on the topic. (Chris wrote about this presentation in his ALA summary, too.)

(*Yes, this means I also by-passed the chance to hear the Caldecott and Newberry speeches. The ticketed banquet opens to non-banquetty conference goers after diners complete their meals and in time for the acceptance speeches. *scribbling in Important Notes Notebook: Must make a point to attend in the future….*)

Monday 6/30: First task of the morning: drawn like moth to flame (or myself to donuts) by I scurried to the exhibit floor to have Jacqueline Woodson sign a copy of Show Way. (Had I read After Tupac and D Foster yet, I’d have snagged a copy of that, too. If you haven’t yet, I can’t recommend it enough.)

10:30 AM-noon: ALSC awards ceremony and membership meeting. I stumbled across this event last year in DC and made a point to find it again this year. So many other award ceremonies charge to attend, while this one sits quietly in the middle of a Monday morning, ushering in the ALSC membership meeting, and with yummy breakfasty goodies to boot. Mo Willems was hi-larious – he gave an “easy read” acceptance speech – and Peter Sís was equally charming.

I spent the afternoon with my ALA roomie, a classmate from UMD-CLIS, then ran back to our room to get ready for the AIYLA reception.

5:30 PM - AILA Youth Literature Awards Reception. Fangirl that I am, when I saw Sherman Alexie would be awarded the American Indian Youth Literature Young Adult Award for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I knew I had to be at this reception. The ceremony included a grass dance, jingle dance, and a fancy bustle dance, performed by a 10 year old, a 6 year old and a 5 year old respectively. Alexie and the other winners, Tim Tingle (for Crossing Bok Chitto) and Joseph Medicine Crow (for Counting Coup), each spoke with passion and not a little humor. And ultimately, hands down, this reception was the highlight of the conference for me.

Tuesday 7/1: 7:00 AM – Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast. I knew from attending this breakfast at ALA last year that this would be a great event. Poets Charles R. Smith, Jr. and Ashley Bryan gave wonderful speeches, with Bryan including the audience in a call-and-response of several of Langston Hughes’s poems. I snuck out early to be sure of catching my flight home and missed Christopher Paul Curtis’s acceptance – aggravating! – I ought to have known better and next year I’ll definitely be sure to schedule my flight home so I can stay for the whole thing.

All in all, the annual conference invigorated me. So many library-loving, service-minded professionals in one place made for an electric and inspiring atmosphere. I’m looking forward to Denver and Chicago in 2009.