Printz Awards

We dashed directly from The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the Printz awards and made it with seconds to spare.  Unlike the Newbery and Caldecott awards, all the Printz Honor recipients get a chance to speak.  This year there were four honor books.

First up was Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler with art by Maira Kalman.  It was like watching a stand-up comedy routine.  They played off each other so well.  It was hysterical.  After thanking people, Daniel told us that he and Maira had a song for us.  It was amazing.  Please see below.  They received a standing ovation.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Advanced Movie Screening

A few last overdue post from ALA!  After the conference was over I headed to LA and then went to Colorado and have only just returned, so I didn't get to write about the advanced movie screening of The Perks of Being a Wallflower we went to, or the Printz Awards.  That will come next.

So the evening of the 25th was quite busy.  My fabulous library director, Liz, had given me a heads up that there was going to be an advanced screening of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which does not come out until September.  We felt very special that we were in California and going to an advanced movie screening!  I'm surprised it wasn't more widely advertised.  I wouldn't have known about if Liz hadn't told me.  It was probably in Cognotes, but I never get around to reading Cognotes.

When we got to the theater (conveniently located down the street from out perfectly adequate hotel), there was of course a line, because there was a line for everything, always.  Luckily it was not a very long line, and the theater could fit 300 people so we had no problem getting in.

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.

Newbery Caldecott Award Banquet

Jamie, Ari, and I were lucky enough to go to the Caldecott and Newbery Banquet that's hosted by the Association of Library Services for Children, Jamie and I went for the banquet (where we met some lovely librarians) and Arianna joined us later for the actual speeches. Sidenote: did you know that the books that are nominated for the Caldecott and Newbery are first selected by the publishers? Also that the fifteen ladies and gentlemen on the committees must keep all discussion absolutely secret? Fascinating.

In case you didn't know the Caldecott Honors went to Blackout by John Rocco, Grandpa Green by Lane Smith, and Me... Jane by Patrick McDonnell. They had a little introduction and went up for their pictures, I was quite excited to see Patrick McDonnell and Lane Smith.

Chris Raschka was the winner for this year, and spoke for about twenty minutes. He had some rather delightful anecdotes about drawing and what it takes to be an artist. His speech was quite inspiring for artists and children with the dream of becoming artists. There were some funny bits, especially when he described feeding goldfish to his pet turtle, and some charming bits, like having a sit down meal with his good friends, and overall it went rather well. I will say this though, I think there's a rather clear delineation of why artists draw/paint/create and writers write, and this was made quite clear to me as Chris Raschka spoke.

The Newbery Honors went to Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai and Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin. This was interesting because I hadn't heard of either of these books, but they both sound quite intriguing which I don't always think when hearing about the Newbery books.

Of course Jack Gantos was the winner of the Newbery, and I would just like to point out that he has a very distinctive voice. I'm pretty sure that you would never guess that Jack Gantos's voice was anything but his own. Anyway, needless to say he was hilarious and riveting. I eventually had to stop taking notes because I just wanted to soak up what he was saying. He is a brilliant and accomplished speaker, and it was an absolute pleasure to hear him speak. Bonus, did you know that Daniel Radcliffe bought the rights to Jack Gantos's memoir?

YALSA Coffee Klatch

You might remember that we went to the YALSA Klatch last year, and met some really great authors. This year we have to admit that we were highly disappointed with the fact that there was no food nor tea served, it really started the entire klatch off on the wrong foot. Sad. Now to the fun stuff, this year we met:

The Exhibits: The Final Day

By this point, I already had way too many books and was worried that my bag was going to be over the 50 pound limit for checked baggage (it turned out to only be 37 pounds, I could have gotten more!).  Also, I don't really like being at the exhibits the last day they're open, because things can get vicious!  As the day goes on, vendors start selling off everything they have for pretty low prices that get lower and lower.  I understand that this can be a great opportunity for librarians to get books for their libraries, especially if you don't have a lot of funding.  It's just...it can be a little scary.  So Anna and I only went for a bit, and then we got the hell out of there before anyone got hurt.

We saw Thanhha Lai, who wrote Inside Out & Back Again, a Newbery honor book.

Eugene Yelchin, author of Breaking Stalin's Nose, also a Newbery honor book.

I also went to the Penguin Book Buzz.  There were book buzzes from different publishers all throughout the conference, where you can hear about what will be coming out in the fall.  Unfortunately there was so much crossover, this was the only one I was able to get too.  I was excited to hear the there's a new Patricia Polacco book coming out called Bully.  I love Patricia Polacco books.  She's really quite wonderful.

Other books I thought sounded worth looking in to were Almost Home by Joan Bauer, out in September; Darkwater, the new book from Catherine Fisher, author of Incarceron, also out in September; Burning Blue by Paul Griffin, out in October.

Day Three: The Exhibits

Oh man.  I was doing pretty well the first few days with not overdoing it, but now it's all ruined, and it's all the fault of the lady at MacMillan.  Today I went around to the publishers saying how I worked in an all girls' school and to tell me about what was coming out soon that was new and exciting that would appeal to them.  I would hear about various books and they'd usually give me two-four ARCs, which was perfect.  But then!  I went to MacMillan and the woman was so enthusiastic and excited about all the stuff that was coming out she loaded me down wih TWELEVE books.  Oy.  And so, with one fell swoop, my brilliant plan of not heading home with three million books was ruined.  It's very hard to discard them once you have them, you see.  I will do my best.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the day for both me and Anna was getting to meet Sharon Creech, author of Walk Two Moons and Chasing Red Bird and many others.  She was my favorite author in middle school.  I read Walk Two Moons over and over again.  To my delight, Sharon was incredibly nice and sweet and insisted we get in the pictures with her.  Her new book is The Great Unexpected, which I got an ARC of.

We also saw Abby McDonald, who wrote Getting Over Garrett Delaney.

And Daniel Handler.  I think here he might be signing as a representative as Lemony Snicket.  Lemony Snicket, of course, is a recluse and never comes to his own signings.  He does, however, have a new book out, 13 Words.  Daniel also signed as himself for Why We Broke Up. 

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.

The Exhibits: Day Two

Day two: things get serious.  I was very controlled my second day in the exhibits.  I only came away with 12 books, which is way better then some other people, who will remain nameless, did.

 Sherman Alexi, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Brian Selznick, author of Wonderstruck and has an essay in the new book The Letter Q: Queer Writers: Notes to their Younger Selves.

 

David Levithan.  Also has an essay in The Letter Q: Queer Writers: Notes to their Younger Selves. 

Day 3 Giveaway!

I'm going to admit that we're getting a bit tired. So many books, so little sleep. This is an international giveaway, just so we're clear. This is open until 7pm PST. Anyway, here's day three's giveaway:

• Amber House by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, and Larkin Reed
• Pinned by Sharon G. Flake
• Chasing the Skip by Janci Patterson
• Auracle by Gina Rosati

Giveaway closed

Not Your Mom's Graphic Novels

Arianna and I presented at the ALA poster session today. It was a little over an hour and a half of us making conversation about graphic novels, girls, and collection development. We had a rather pretty poster and we had a great mix of people stop by and speak to us about our topic. There was never really a moment when there wasn't at least one person that we chatted to about graphic novels and girls.

Whether it was just title recommendations, graphic novel history, or our own interest in the topic, we had a wide range of people coming up to us from different libraries and backgrounds. Fun times. It was quite nice to hear others support our topic and validate the importance of it.

I also got asked whether or not we had been published at all, which obviously we haven't other than on this blog, and it's led Arianna and I to start talking about where we want to go next with this topic. Perhaps this poster session will lead to bigger things...

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.

Kill Shakespeare at Graphic Novel Stage

Anthony Del Col, co-creator of Kill Shakespeare, spoke at the Graphic Novel Stage about the creation of the graphic novel and how they're continuing the development of the series. He describes the series as a combination of Lord of the Rings, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Shakespeare in Love. So essentially he and Conor McCreery squished together: classic Shakespeare, high fantasy, action-y graphic novel, and a rather sweet romantic movie, to create a book that reach and excite a new generation of readers.

Anthony and Conor first brainstormed the idea for this book nine years ago as a video game and then later realized that it would be better as a graphic novel. I liked his reasoning that Shakespeare is intended to be a visual performance not as a static literary form, thus making the transition to a graphic novel quite natural. So they took some of Shakespeare's best known characters as a jumping off point to suck people into Shakespeare. They've put their own spin on the storyline but stayed very true to Shakespeare's characterization of them. Clever.

Conor and Anthony are continuing to develop the series even though it has ended for now. They are continuing to develop it into different medium: video games, enhanced graphic novel applications, and movies. And unofficially it was announced that Anthony and Conor would be continuing the Kill Shakespeare universe, incorporating more of Shakespeare's characters. This new project could be out early 2013... but no promises.

I reviewed Kill Shakespeare a while ago, and really enjoyed the twist on the characters and the plays to be incorporated into one book. I think you can tell that the graphic novels were written by someone that knows and loves Shakespeare's works. So it was quite neat to actually hear one of the creators of the book speak about the genesis of the series. It didn't hurt that he was attractive.

Day 2 Giveaway

It's the second day of the conference, and the initial frenzy has worn off (for some of us at least) and we're being a bit more picky about what books we take and ask about. The next couple of books are up, you have 24 hours. Here's what's up for grabs:

• Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan
• Flock by Wendy Delsol
• Lost Girls by Ann Kelley
• The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer

This giveaway is now closed.

Opening Session

So we arrived slightly late to the opening session, and got there in the middle of the awards. Of note: the South Carolina Library Association for the their work to overturn the governor's in only a week. Awesome.

Rebecca MacKinnon was the keynote speaker. She is a noted journalist who has worked in China and works with global internet policies through Global Voices. There is a struggle for internet freedom, or rather a struggle to maintain a freedom to access information regardless of the information source. She talked a lot about the grassroots struggle to allow political movements onto the internet and not be policed by the government. Case in point The File: A Personal History by Timothy Garton Ash, where a reporter went back to Berlin and was able to read his Stasi file and see who had reported on him during the Cold War or the Egypt state security files that were discovered to have information collected from the internet containing very personal information: Skype calls, emails, tweets, etc. Rebecca continued to give examples of internet platforms and applications that police the information on their servers. She then talked about the "Werner von Braun" by Tom Lehrer, and how the ethics of information is getting muddled. We see this coming into play more, as the relationship between citizens and the government is becoming more mediated by the internet. Rebecca wants to know how we can keep the internet neutral so that we may continue to gather information from all sources. Regardless of whether or not that source might be considered offensive or extremist. There is a slow movement ensure that our 'sovereigns of cyberspace,' i.e. Facebook, Google, Apple, are maintaining transparency when dealing with governments and reporting. Rebecca highlighted two movements stokholmprinciples.org and fightforthefuture.org that she thinks are moving in the right direction.

Day One Giveaway

Whoops! A little late, but you know how these things are. Here's what we'll be giving away in the next 24 hours. Enter, and I'll try and ship them out Monday, priority.

• Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama 8/12
• Tiger's Destiny by Colleen Houck 9/12
• Betrayal by Gregg Olsen 9/12

This giveaway is now closed. Check back for more giveaways this weekend

Because I'm doing this a bit late I'm also doing a second giveaway for the next 24 hours.

• Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara 8/12
• In Need of a Good Wife by Kelly O'Connor McNees 10/12

This giveaway is now closed

Lovely Day in California

 Well.  Southern California is lovely.  Quite lovely.  The weather is delightful.  70s during the day and gets nice and cool at night.  Our hotel is completely adequate.  Anaheim itself seems to be comprised completely of Disneyland, hotels, and every single chain restaurant you can possibly think of.

Also, everyone in California is really nice.  Like, really, really nice.  We're not sure if this is because people in California are just that nice, of if it's that Disney owns everything and people are contractually obligated to be perky and happy at all times.  Let me give a few examples.

We went to breakfast.  Before we'd even sat down, we'd been enthusiastically greeted by three different people.  On our way out, three different people enthusiastically bid us goodbye and wished us a nice day.  After breakfast we rented a car and drove to the lovely Huntington Beach since the actual conference doesn't start until this evening.  As we paid for the parking, the guy asked us where we were from (apparently we clearly stand out as not from around here.  Are we radiating aggressive East Costness?) and when we said we were from Boston, he chatted a bit about his trip to Boston.  There were two cars waiting behind us.  No one honked.

While at the beach, we saw dolphins.  Seriously, two dolphins, frolicking in the water.  WHAT IS THIS PLACE?  Is it  the constant sunshine?  The close proximity to the happiest place on earth?  We're sort of disconcerted, while also being in awe.

The only thing that could make this day any better is free books.  Man, are we ever in luck!  And maybe some ice, for Anna's sunburn.