Tales from a Loud Librarian

Loaded down with swag from ALA I had been planning for the American Library Association's (ALA) annual conference in New Orleans for over a year. I was prepping the students in two of my book groups about what it would be like for them to spend a day with me at ALA, and if they wanted to attend, I made sure that they saved the date well in advance since many of them have camp, travel, or even work during the summer months. I was chair of the Young Adult Library Services Association's (YALSA) local area task force for this conference, so I had many duties throughout the week. I had not attended an ALA conference since Chicago in 2013, so I had booked myself solid from a pre-conference on Friday, June 22 until the afternoon of Monday, June 25. Then life happened. I had to put my 91 year old mother in the hospital on the Tuesday before the conference. We did not think she was seriously ill, but she had been feeling poorly for weeks. She knew about the conference, and ...

Thomas waiting to speak at the YALSA BFYA session Every year during both the Mid-Winter and Annual conferences for ALA, YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) invites local teens to visit the conference one day to speak at the Best Fiction for Young Adult Committee meeting. It is a great day where the kids get to give their opinions on what they have read to the committee members, get fed by Penguin Publishers and meet many of the authors of the books that they have read and loved. I took a group of ten kids when ALA was in New Orleans in 2011. One of the members of Bookmarked, pictured above, spends his summers in Chicago with relatives. He didn't get to attend ALA in New Orleans, so I invited him to spend Saturday, June 29th with me.  Thien Pham on the left and Gene Yang on the right Hanging out in Artist Alley at ALA We started the morning at an interview of author/illustrator Gene Yang by his friend and collaborator Thien Pham . I knew that Thomas...