ALA, Sunday

Sunday I attended several strictly "librarian" meetings, beginning with "Communicating Up and Down: the Yo-Yo Effect. One of the speakers was Beverly Izzi, Children's Coordinator from Calvert Library here in Maryland. Several tidbits:
1) Don't dig a hole and jump in. -- This was explained that, when you are in a meeting and you see that nobody agrees with you, STOP arguring. Attack the problem with private discussions with other members of the meeting so that when you next bring it up, you will have supporters.
2) You may have supporters you never expect -- People in the general public may hear you speak about a problem/ solution and then might then contact the Director of your library system, or other people in the administration voicing their support of your proposal. Without you even knowing about this groundswell of support.
3) There was more, but these are the ones that stood out.

This ended early, so I slid into the Random House Fall preview of books. Despite Betsy Bird's reports on her BLOG of the yummie food at publisher's book Previews, there was no sign of eatables. :-( However, there was a great goodie bag of Reader's Copies of books and bookmarks and freebies (like a flip-flop key chain) and the news that StarGirl has a sequel -- book enclosed in the bag. (In fact the bag itself had art from the book on it.) Nobody gets to read it until I finish it. Then I'll pass it around the branch.

Ooops, DAvid Lubar was signing his books at TOR right afterwards -- so I rushed down to the exhibits to get TWO freebie copies of his books and to talk to him a bit.

Back to the hotel to drop off the piles of goodies I had gathered and to quickly eat a salad. Then back to the convention center where --

The afternoon meetings. I wanted to attend two of them. At the same time. How to do that?
First I went to Snips and Snails -- Every Boy Ready to Read. It actually sounded as if it were going to be boring. A psycologist talking and talking and talking. But it wasn't. boring that is. How neat to discover that boys learn differently than girls. And -- whereas in previous centuries girls were considered stupid because they couldn't learn with boys -- these days women teachers are teaching to girl's style and the boys are considered unteachable.

One amazing fact was that girls learn best in a warm room, sitting still. (sound familiar) Whereas boys learn best ON THEIR FEET in a room 5 to 10 degrees colder. Ah Ha! That's why boys wiggle and tap and make noises and general are what we consider disruptive. IT'S THE WAY THEY CAN CONCENTRATE AND LEARN. Talk about fastinating! How many of you have husbands that pace when they're thinking things out? boys/ men do that. It's why private boys schools are so successful. They have cold rooms with few chairs. (some boys do need to sit and think, but most would rather walk around.

This person was advocating single sex schools and he made a good case for it. I have to agree that one of my daughters was much more successful in her girl's high school than she had been in public high school.

Then I jumped next door to the other program I wanted to attend --
Search and Research: How Three nonfiction Writers Navigate Information Overload. Sneed Collard with his editor Judy O'Malley (Charlesbridge) Sy Mntgomery with his editor Kate O'Sullivan (Houghton Mifflin) and Elizabeth Partridge and her editor Regina Hayes (Viking) Along with Julie Corsaro who discussed the Sibert Committee and how they chose the best Non-fiction of the year. I gathered up a bunch of handouts from this one to send to the HCPL children's librarians.

Next, I jumped on the Metro to attend the Author Reception at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library sponsored by Capitol Choices. Completely missed the Book Cart Drill Team back at the convention center , which was narrated (is that the right term) by Mo Willems. I do hope that it shows up on U-Tube and that Betsy Bird will post them on her site one of her Video Sundays. I saw some of the costumed teams leaving just as I re-entered the convention center.

And then on the the Newbery/ Caldecott/ Wilder banquet. (all right, yes I did change my dress -- into a red one in honor of the Newbery winner, The Higher Power of Lucky.) The banquet floor was sprinkled with red dresses -- along with a few men in red shirts. The speeches were entertaining. Susan Paton and her expressive eyebrows kept us laughing, even when she discussed the uproar that one word in her book caused.

And I got back to the hotel at a semi-decent hour.