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.

The Exhibits: Day One

 The Exhibit Hall!  So exciting!  So many crazed librarians grabbing for books!  Oh the books!  I went in with a plan this time.  I had a list of specific books I wanted to find out if there were ARCS available for, many of them sequels.  I didn't do super well on that front.  Most of them weren't available yet.  I have a hunch I'll be able to get Gail Carriger's Etiquette and Espionage a bit later, and I was told that Marie Lu's next book in the Legend series and Marissa Meyer's next book in the Cinder series would be available when they do signings, so I will definitely try to get those.

I am most excited about getting a copy of the graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time, adapted by Hope Larson, and Rae Carson's second book in The Girl of Fire and Thorns series.

Anna and I went over to the artists alley and met Faith Erin Hicks, author and illustrator of Friends With Boys and Brain Camp, among other fabulous graphic novels.  She was super nice and we had a very nice time chatting with her about what we love about her work and what she's currently working on.

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.