Tales from a Loud Librarian

A couple of months ago I got an email asking if I would moderate a panel with the author of Parachutes , Kelly Yang. I had not read Parachutes yet, but I was game. The person scheduling the moderators said she found me through this blog and thought that I could do a good job with a young adult author. Since the book festival was going all virtual, they could invite authors and moderators from all the over the world to participate. My husband was disappointed that there was no road trip, but I liked the idea that I could participate on a Sunday afternoon in the comfort of my own home. My first order of business was to read Parachutes . I chose to listen to it. Since it was written from the point of view of two teenage girls, I liked having the two voices of the narrators. This story focuses on Claire, a Chinese parachute, who travels to the US to attend high school while living in a host home far away from her family, and Dani, of Filipino descent, who comes from a very different socio-...

Joy McCullough, author of Blood Water Paint Putting authors in front of my students at Taylor has always been a goal of mine, and I have been lucky over the years to have had many authors visit our school  since 2008. Getting authors to visit in house is not always possible for many reasons, so I have supplemented face to face visits with virtual visits. Skype use to be my method of choice until my school district blocked it. Since then, we have been using FaceTime quite effectively. So far everyone who I have scheduled for a virtual visit has some Apple device that allows us to use FaceTime.  Bookmarked and Girl Up (High School with Joy McCullough) I was early on the bandwagon for skyping with authors, and I could always find an author who had time to talk. Now, it has gotten more difficult as more librarians and teachers are asking for these virtual visits. I have such a small budget that I would rather spend library money on purchasing the author's books for ...

Bookmarked Junior Edition or BJE is a later edition to the stable of book groups at Patrick Taylor. This group needed to be created once the school grew to include three lunch periods rather than two. Though the group meets weekly, there are usually only about four or five regulars. That is fine by me, but when I work hard to schedule a visit with an author, I want to see all the members attend. Yesterday, we had a nice turn out for author, Chelsea Sedoti .  I scheduled this event through SourceBooks. This publisher has made it easy to schedule virtual author visits. Their one requirement is that we buy some of the author's books. That is not an issue because I want the students to have an opportunity to read a book by a visiting author whether the visit is virtual or face to face. For some reason this year, I had a hard time connecting with the sales department at SourceBooks. I planned this event back in September, and I wanted to order the books early. It wasn...

It is always a great day when I have students visit with an author. I first met Ashley Elston at a state conference. Like me, she is from Louisiana. Her presentation to the roomful of librarians was hilarious, and I thought that my students would really enjoy talking to her. After the conference, we connected on Twitter, and I found out that she was happy to schedule a virtual visit with us. We agreed on a Monday in December during one of our regularly scheduled Bookmarked meetings. If I can schedule the author when the group is used to being in the library at that time, it is easier for the students to remember. Ashley came to writing after she had her children. She explained that being a wedding photographer did not mesh well with being a mom with young children. She really did not know what she was getting into but just began writing. She has four published books, and a new one to be published in the fall of 2019. For this visit, we concentrated on talking about her two...

When I  discovered that Skype was not a tool that we could count on, I was worried that it might be the end of our virtual visits with authors. Skype itself was not the problem but the district filtering. Sometimes it worked, and it worked best if we were on the receiving end of the call. However, I could not count on it. We are now using FaceTime for our virtual author visits. This works great on our end with an iPad and is sufficient if the author also has an Apple product. When I was planning our visit with Irish author Patricia Forde , we were not sure if FaceTime would work. Since I discovered that it uses data not phone minutes; it did not cost anything to make the connection. I made a test call with Patricia a few weeks ahead of time, and I knew after talking to her that the kids were in for a treat.  We always start our visits the same way with the author telling us about the book and their writing process. Patricia explained that until she was ten she live...

Today, Bookmarked, the high school book group had the opportunity to chat with YA author Cori McCarth y. She is delightful, and both the students and I were on the edge of our seats drinking in everything that she had to say. Though several of her books piqued our interest, we met today to talk about her contemporary novel,  You Were Here . This one she said is the most personal to her. She lost a classmate when she was in 8th grade right before the school year started. The adults told them that his death should not be discussed. All these years later, her emotional connection to this former classmate was the impetus to write the book.  This book is told in five voices. When she began writing, it was very difficult for her to put words on paper for the character who was mute for most of the story. She decided that his voice would work well in illustrations. She was able to convince her editor to hire an artist to turn his part of the story into a graphic novel...

In July of 2017, I served as moderator on a panel of four authors at a local bookstore . It was great fun, and I used the opportunity to ask all of the authors if they would be willing to schedule a virtual visit with one of my book groups some time. I think that all of them said they would, but I was such a fan of Midnight at the Electric that I choose to schedule Jodi Lynn Anderson with the 8th/9th grade book group, Bookmarked Jr. Edition. I will save the other three for another school year.  Bookmarked Jr. Edition meets at lunch Though she was very willing, it took some work to make it happen. First, I scheduled the visit in November, but then I forgot, and the day before I realized that I hadn't prepared the students and asked them to read her book. She was happy to reschedule, but had to do it in January once the holidays were over. Then school started late after the holidays due to a day off due to bad weather. Then, we had to scrap using Skype because the...

At the beginning of the school year, I planned a skype session for each of the three book groups that I run. On Monday, the high school book group had their chance to talk to an author. Marieke Nijkamp is Dutch and her first published book This is Where it Ends is all American. It is written from the point of view of several characters who experience 54 minutes of school when a student pulls a gun out during a school assembly and proceeds to kill and wound many.  This skype session like all the ones that I do began with Nijkamp talking for 15 minutes about how she came to write this book (she was visiting the US during the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting), all the research that she did (she talked to American friends who experienced a shooting at their school), and how much she has grown to love the characters in the book (she knew ahead of time which characters would live and which would die). Then I left 15 minutes open to questions from the students. I don't ask...

On Monday, October 26th, the members of Bookmarked were treated to a skype visit with author Geoff Herbach . He, like Jen Calonita , is published by Sourcebooks. I took advantage of the publisher's offer of free skype visits for libraries and classrooms as long as you purchase some of the authors' books. I chose Geoff Herbach for the high school book group because we seem to have so many female authors at school. Though the group is made up of a majority of girls, I figured all of the students would enjoy talking to Geoff. I was right.  He speaks without a filter, and the students loved his humor and willingness to address anything that they threw at him. Since he began the skype visit with a story about his son and puberty, one of the older girls asked him if he had difficulties during his own puberty. He told them that being a teenager was not easy for him. All agreed that it is not easy for anyone.  Another student asked him what was up with two o...

Students pose with author, Andrea Cremer, during April 20th   skype visit The students in my two book groups had the opportunity to Skype with four different authors this past school year. I have been asked before if it is easy to find an author to skype. I always reply that it is, and that I have never paid any of the authors to talk with my students. I had met three of the authors who spoke with us this year face to face, but only one of them did I ask about the possibility of skyping at that time. I usually run all my author skypes the same way. I schedule the event for 30 minutes. I ask the author to talk about themselves and their book/s for the first 10 to 15 minutes, and then I allow the students to ask questions for the second half of the session. The students walk up to speak right into the microphone which allows the author to see who is speaking to them. This also makes it clear who is suppose to ask the next question. Very often the author is willing to talk l...