Closing Session: Octavia Spencer

At last, we reach the closing session of ALA 2013.  We were introduced to all the new presidents of all the various divisions of ALA (there are a lot of them) as well as the members of the board.  Then out-going president Maureen Sullivan introduced the new ALA president Barbara Stripling.  We school librarians have high hopes for Barbara Stripling, who was a school librarian herself.  We hope that advocating for school libraries will become more of a focus for ALA.

Barbara introduced the closing speaker, Octavia Spencer, who has written a middle grade book called Randi Rhodes Ninja Detective: The Case of the Time-Capsule Bandit.   Octavia grew up reading Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown and loved Scooby-Doo and wanted to write a mystery book that was similar to those.  The book was talked about briefly, but it was mostly about her acting career.

Octavia was friendly and personable and a lot of fun to listen to.  Something she wanted to clear up was that her mother's primary job was not a maid.  Her mother worked a lot of different jobs, and she did clean houses at one point.  The book is dedicated to her mother.  Octavia's mother said she could do anything.  When Octavia said she maybe wanted to be an actor, her mother said, "maybe not that."  Her mother wanted her to go to college, but Octavia had started getting some acting jobs and didn't know if she wanted to leave to go to school.  When she was working on The Long Walk Home, Whoopie Goldberg took her under her wing.  She told Octavia to go to college.  Acting would be there when she was done.

Speaker Series: Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick

 On the last full day of ALA I heard Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick speak.  They had a new documentary, The Untold History of the United States which they also made into a book.  As they worked on the documentary they realized that it was going to be so controversial that they needed a book to back it up.

Peter Kuznick talked about their research process.  He used many libraries, but mostly America University's library.  In the book he acknowledges several librarian because they were so crucial during the research process.  Kuznick said he probably checked out between 700-800 books.  And he hasn't returned them all yet.  The book goes from the 1890s to the present, so there was a lot to cover.  He had nine graduate students as researches.

Oliver Stone was asked what he thought of how history is taught and represented in schools and libraries.  Stone said it was depressing.  In textbooks that talk about the atomic bomb, there is not discussion or look from the Japanese perspective.  The Soviet Union is rarely mentioned in the context or WWII.  Stone said it was the Soviet invasion, not the atomic bombs that ended the war.  Americans need to learn their own history.  Science and math is not actually our weakest subjects, history is.  Stone claimed that children are bored by history because it's so sanitized.  "Kids like horror movies, they like fear.  Let's put some fear back into history."  Student have no idea how many Vietnamese were killed during the Vietnam War.  We'd be horrified if German students didn't know how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, but Americans don't know how many Vietnamese died.  The focus is just on the Americans who died.  It's bigger than that.

The moderator asked Stone and Kuznick what they thought the biggest threat to democracy and free speech were.  This is the point where if you weren't aware just how far to the left they both were, you found out.  A major problem they brought up was secretiveness and information being classified.  There were problems with this under Bush, but it really hasn't been much better under Obama.  They felt the America love of money is a serious threat.  Everything is done for money - sports, news, etc.  Money has taken politics victim, and it is ruining the democracy.  "Greed does drive certain people," Kuznick said.  "I don't think it drives most people who become librarians."  Kuznick expressed frustration that America's values are upside down.  People who do good don't get rewarded.

Their final thoughts were that people should keep speaking up.  There will be people who change things and make a difference.  "...can count on librarian to continue to stand up for the truth."  Librarians are one of the front lines in the fight against censorship.  Right at the end they mentioned that they were in talks with Simon & Schuster about doing a YA version of The Untold History and possibly a graphic novel adaptation as well.  That would be very cool.

Speaker Series: Khaled Hosseini

On the second day of the conference I went to hear Khaled Hosseini speak.  Khaled Hosseini, of course, is the author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.  His new book is And the Mountains Echoed.

Hosseini said that books were always a big part of his life.  There weren't any libraries in Afghanistan so he had to save money to buy them.  As a child the kids told stories to entertain each other, so Hosseini has been telling stories his whole life.  His family moved to Paris just before the upheaval and if they hadn't, his life would have been completely different.

Hosseini arrived in California when he was 15, speaking little English.  "By the time I figured everything out it was time to graduate."  He went to college and studied biology and went on to medical school.  I had no idea he had a science background!

And the Mountains Echoed is about injury, wounds, healing, and how we help each other.

The moderator asked Hosseini about the creation of his female characters.  Hosseini says he doesn't approach them any differently then any other character.  He tries to have empathy for all his characters.  It's when he tries to approach them differently that he gets into trouble.  Hosseini spends a lot of time with his characters in his head.  The more time spent with them the more real they become.  "When you know the heart of a character they can then become the point of the center of the circle everything radiates."  He tires to write his characters truthfully.  Hosseini said he worked harder on this book, and was harder on himself, then ever before.  He feels And the Mountains Echoed has more nuanced characters.  I have no doubt it will be excellent.

Closing Speaker: J.R. Martinez

You probably recognize J.R. Martinez's name in relation to the Dancing with the Stars television show which he won in 2011. You also might have heard of his quite remarkable life story: how he was in Iraq and drove over a landmine and 40% of his body was covered in severe burns.

J.R. was a talented motivational speaker, he's obviously got his talk down and tailors it rather well to the group he's speaking it to. He does a nice job weaving his own life experiences in with his world perspective. And he has a strong lead by talking about his experience on Dancing with the Stars, and how that influenced his life.

I am going to admit that I generally don't like motivational speakers, I find their experiences too exceptional to reach me and influence my outlook. One thing I did appreciate though was the fact that J.R. made a point that he hopes people take his words and treat them like loose change, tuck it away until you unexpectedly need it and it can surprise you and get you through the day. He put it more eloquently than that, but that was the general point. We'll see if that happens.

He also talked a lot about how everyone sets goals: long term, short term. We all make them, and life never really allows us to follow through with the original plan. It always needs to be tweaked, adjusted, or scrapped. This is where he brought in a lot of his own life experiences as examples starting from his childhood to his current life. He had wanted to be a professional football player and now he just wants to be the best motivational speaker he can be. It's pretty incredible what he experienced, how he overcame it, and how he's now able to share those experiences with others. And he's only 28! Yeesh!

Ari and I left before the Q & A, but he did a really nice job. Way to motivate the librarians J.R.

PLA President's Program: Sherman Alexie

 The PLA President's Program begins with the bestowing of various awards and grants to librarians and library programs.  Then we heard from keynote speaker Sherman Alexie, which I was quite looking forward to as I'd heard he is a very good speaker.

Sherman Alexie began with his impressions of a library conference.  "There's an idea that it's boring and sedate, which it kind of is. But they get a little crazy by the time night falls."  He also compared him going to a library conference with some guys going to the Playboy mansion.  It was amusing.

Sherman Alexie talked about the oral tradition of storytelling, which is traditional in his culture.  In some ways, making the oral tradition official (writing it down) killed the tradition.  Then he seemingly randomly stared talking about Mike the Headless Chicken, and asked if anyone knew about it, which no one did.  The short version: Mike's owner tried to behead him for dinner, but did a poor job of it, missing most of the brain stem.  Mike lived on for 18 months, and he had his owner became Vaudeville performers during this time.  Sherman's question was, "how could we have forgotten something like that?"  How could we forget the amazing things that happen?  Why don't they get passed on?  His answer was that we're flawed, we can't possibly remember everything, not even the amazing things that happen in our own lifetime.

This is why we have books.  Writers preserve for us the amazing things that have happened, or their perception of the amazing things that have happened.  And we have librarians to give people the perfect books.  He ended by saying, "[I have the perfect book] should be tattooed on your ankle instead of some Chinese symbol.  You're magic.  You're amazing.  So why the fuck did you forget Mike the Headless Chicken?"

A librarian's job is "I have the perfect book."  A writer's job is "it happened." 

And then, the second, literally the second Sherman Alexie finished speaking and me began to applaud, the fire alarm in the convention center went off.  Interestingly, it was the exact same fire alarm we have at my school.  The one with the loud siren that pauses to tell you, "Emergency, emergency.  This is not a drill.  Please proceed to the exits."  So we did.  Well, most of us did.  I don't know if the people in the exhibit hall actually evacuated.  It turned out it was a false alarm.  To the left is a picture of a gaggle of librarians waiting under palm trees to be allowed back in.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Panel

I go to the science fiction and fantasy panel every year.  This year it was especially exciting because George R. R. Martin was there.  Each year, a bag of books with some of the books of the authors that are on the panel are giving to the people who come.  Apparently, people were lining up outside the door hours before the panel started.  I showed up ten minutes before it started, so I did not get a bag of books, but that's quite all right.

The panel was made up of George R. R. Martin, Blake Charlton, and Lois McMaster Bujold.  I haven't read anything by Blake or Lois, but I enjoyed listening to them speak.    The topic was "the influence of science fiction and fantasy on the world today."  Each writer talked about the topic in a different way.  Blake talked about how science fiction and personally effected him.  Blake is the author of Spellwright and Spellbound.  He said fantasy was the most empowering thing in his life.  As a child, he was told he would never go to college.  Blake was dyslexic, and didn't really learn to read until he was 13 or 14.

Auditorium Speaker Series: John Irving and Teens Making a Difference

 The first speaker of the day was John Irving. I was kind of surprised to find that he was quite funny. I don't know why I was surprised. I just wasn't expecting it. He was a very engaging speaker. He spoke about how for him, the plot of a book is just as important, if not more important, then the characters themselves. He never starts writing a book until he knows what the end will be, and he lets the reader know what's coming. It's the small details that keep the reader reading. The plot is the engine that drives the story, you know something is coming that's not pleasant.

John Irving's new book is called In One Person and is about a bisexual man in his 70s. He read us part of the beginning. He's an excellent reader. I'd like him to do the audio book version himself. I would totally get it. The section he read was the main character, Billy, reflecting on when he was 13 and had his first crushes on both his mother's new boyfriend and the local librarian, who is a transsexual woman. A favorite line was the librarian Ms. Frost telling Billy, "Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in the attic. Or anyone named Heathcliff." Words to live by.

Auditorium Speaker: Chris Colfer

Chris Colfer is probably best known for being an actor off of the television series Glee, and if you don't know him from that then you must live under a rock in the middle of Antarctica because even my dad would be able to recognize him. Anyway, Chris has written a middle grade book called The Land of Stories which is due out on July 17th and is the first in a series. It's the story of twins that find themselves in a land where fairy tales are real.

First off I would like to state that Chris Colfer is absurdly adorable and charismatic. He started his talk by questioning why we were all sitting in the conference center when we as a group could be storming Disneyland, because obviously Disney wouldn't want the bad publicity of arresting a thousand librarians and Chris Colfer. It'd be only one step above beating a baby seal. Hilarious and completely had us all sucked in. Chris went on to describe his relationship with the library and librarians. His stories about his love of the libraries weren't contrived, but felt very natural and adorable.