YA Authors

M.T. Anderson is so freakin' awesome.

That's all.

Thank you.

Familiar Face

Luckily, the second half of my Emerging Leaders experience made me feel much less like a guilty teenager struggling to stay awake. I'll admit that it wasn't the content but my jet lag that had me feeling a bit drowsy (and perhaps a bit cranky). The Diet Coke at 10:30 a.m. also may have helped :).

As we were wrapping up our poster session, my library director walked into the room. She had told me that she likely would not be able to make it to the program, so I was so pleased to see her. And she was a face from home!

We hadn't moved our poster out of the way yet, so she get to see that and chat with my group members. She had traveled with someone important in the library community (not that she's not, but someone with a more direct position of power), and I got to chat with her a bit, as well.

All in all Emerging Leaders was an incredibly worthwhile experience. I'm sad to say goodbye to the constant communication with my group members, but I'm also happy about getting to talk to them about more than our project!

Alright, it's off to the exhibits and then a committee meeting.

Wish me luck!

At Heart

At ALA now...learning oodles about leadership and all that good stuff.

I'm also realizing why I make a halfway decent YA Librarian. I'm still a bored teenager at heart.

I really WANT to pay attention. I want to care. I want to write down every last word, but I find my mind wandering, my fingers reaching for my cell phone to check for messages (there are none, as I'm currently three hours ahead of anyone who cares about me), and I just feel guilty.

In a room full of real adults, it's still hard to believe I am one.

Librarians on the Loose

Librarians! Everywhere!

Okay, so I got to DC day early for the conference, but I swear I saw some Librarians on the plane. I think I may have even seen someone from my Library School, but it was 2 a.m., and I could be wrong.

So, what happens when the YA Librarian flies the coop and goes to play amongst her peers? Well, right now, all it means is that my suitcase hit the weight limit due to the various items I needed to bring to meet my various responsibilities while at the conference.

Upon picking me up, my friend said, "I thought you just showed up at a conference."

"Not when you're on a committee,"I replied, "Then you have to bring stuff."

My suitcase will be lighter on the return trip. Noting my box full of books brought back to Seattle, though, someone else commented, "You know that books weigh more, a lot more, than the stuff you brought right."

"I'm not going to get that many books. This time I'm bringing them back for other people, not to keep my own stack going."

"..."

So, we'll see. I've arrived with my 51 pound suitcase, have recovered from reading what I believe may well be the worst YA book I have read since some of the forced reading in Library School, have taken a nap to overcome the red eye flight and am raring to go for Emerging Leaders tomorrow.

Raring may not be the right word. But it will be after a good night's sleep!

Hey, Whatever Happened with that Mentoring Survey?

Remember this?

Well, we're done with the project, just putting on those nice, shiny, final touches.

Come visit us at ALA Annual to see what your answers to the survey helped us do! The poster session and the reception will be from 3-5 PM on June 22 (Washington Convention Center—Room 144 A-C.

Drop by, say hello and see what all the fabulous Emerging Leaders Project Teams have accomplished in the past six months!

The Dead Father's Club

I attended a booktalking workshop a few months ago that was hosted by Michael Cart. He did a few outstanding talks, including one on The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (he cried), and another on The Dead Father's Club (he didn't cry). Not one to truly enjoy being moved to tears by a novel, I chose to go ahead and read the latter novel when it finally came to my library in April.

It was so worth the wait. Mr. Cart described it as in the same genre and narrative style as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and he was absolutely right. Although I'm a bit uncertain about the ending, I found this book to be utterly engaging and completely readable. It's certainly an adult book, but told from the perspective of an 11-year-old boy.

Alright, this needs to become more of a review...here goes:

Eleven-year-old Philip Noble has major problems. Not only has his father just passed on, but his Uncle Alan is making a move on his newly widowed mother, and his father's ghost is pestering to kill Uncle Alan. No, not just because Alan's moving a bit fast, but because Philip's father believes that Uncle Alan clipped the break wires on his car, causing the accident that lead to his death. Philip has until his father's birthday, a few short weeks away, to get his father's revenge by killing Alan, or else his father will spend an eternity experiencing what he describes as "the terrors." Told in a narrative style reminiscient of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (although Philip is simply young, not a boy with Asberger's Syndrome), set in England, and something of a modern re-telling of Hamlet, Matt Haig's novel exceeds expectations and creates a marvelously engaging story that should capture the attention of older teens (yes, despite the 11-year-old narrator, older teens may well enjoy it), as well as their parents.

This could also make for an interesting companion piece to teachers using Hamlet or The Curious Incident in their classrooms.

Happy Reading!