The second YALSA YA Lit Symposium abounded in riches for the inclusive title hungry: where to mine for new GLBTQ books, how to evaluate requests from teens for street lit, when to stop and do a good readers advisory interview instead of just stocking the shelves and expecting the goods will be found by the readers who want them. Pam Spencer Holley called out the difference between a teen’s reading interests and that of his or her (overprotective?) parent.  Robin Brenner showed off sequential art panels that speak louder than words.  Author, educator, and activist Sophia Quintero reminded all that discussion is a necessary adjunct to reading tough stuff. (more…)

There’ve been some great summaries of sessions at the 2010 YA Lit Symposium here, and I’ve written in detail about all of the sessions I attended on my own blog, but now that I’ve had some time to process everything I heard and talked about over the weekend and what I’ve read about the symposium since then, I thought I’d share some of my overall impressions from the entire conference here to continue the discussion.

One of of the themes I saw come up across multiple sessions was that reading allows us to vicariously experience things that are not part of our own lived experience, so reading books about people who are different from us helps educate us, allows us to test our values, and de-Others people like the character. In “Beyond Good Intentions and Chicken Soup: YA Lit and Disability Diversity: How Far Have We Come?” the presenters mentioned that for a lot of teens, reading a book about a person with disabilities may be their first experience with disability. Making sure that portrayal is balanced rather than stereotypical and that the character’s disability isn’t the primary problem in the story gives teens a more accurate portrayal of what people with disabilities can be like–that is, that people with disabilities are people, too. (more…)

And a great time was had by all!

What an interesting group of presenters and authors.  This Symposium really brought the mind’s focus around to incorporating diversity in all aspects of your collection – print, non-print, and web-based.  I particularly liked the fact that some of the authors gave us lists of their favorite diverse books (Cynthea Liu – http://www.cynthealiu.com) and that booktalks were everywhere.

I came home with lots of lists to use in buying and creating my own more diverse resource lists and in making displays. I came home energized and excited to try my own 30 books in 30 minutes program and Yack and Snack book discussion group.  I came home with determination to promote my audio collection to teachers as well as students.  And I came home with two autographed copies of Pat Mora’s Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems About Love  (Knopf, 2010) for my high school boys who will copy the poems for their girlfriends.

Hurray YALSA!  Conference job well done.

If you’ve never made a presentation at an event like the YA Literature Symposium, watching the speakers might make you wonder how it all comes together.  Those polished, funny, engaging speakers must have done some hard work, but they must also be lucky, right?  Yet the process of crafting the presentation and actually making it isn’t a mysterious one, as this tongue-in-cheek timeline for a speaker at the YA Lit Symposium illustrates.

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The thing I was looking forward to least about the whole YALSA Teen Lit Symposium was the Author Happy Hour. Neurotic me imagined me sitting by myself at a table while all the other tables were mobbed.

When the librarians started streaming in, I took a picture because it was just this mob of people coming in, like the Running of the Brides at Filene’s Basement in Boston. And then you mobbed us all! It was thrilling. (more…)

As I filed out of the excellent Images & Issues Beyond the Dominant: Including Diversity in Your Graphic Novel Collection (more on that later), I was surprised to see a milling mob of librarians waiting in the hallway.  Then I remembered the Author’s Happy Hour(s): two hours of YA author superstars, signing free copies of their books, plus snacks and alcohol.  Ah…. The eager chatter and press suddenly made sense!

Each attendee was given a small tote bag and five tickets, good for five books.  However, with over 30 authors in attendance, each one of us had to make some serious decisions about which authors we needed to gush to and whose books we must have. (more…)

As I was unable to make it to the YA Lit Symposium’s Pre-Conference Session: On Beyond Stonewall, I decided to head to a local bookstore Friday night for an intimate and informal discussion about LGBT issues in teen literature.  Present were authors Malinda Lo (Ash), Lauren Bjorkman (My Invented Life), Megan Frazer (Secrets of Truth and Beauty), Alexandra Diaz (Of all the Stupid Things) and Kirstin Cronn-Mills (The Sky always hears me and the hills don’t mind), all of whose books feature characters dealing with LGBT issues. (more…)

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m fat.  Yep.  And I have green eyes (and hair, right now), and I’m tall, and have a tattoo.  These are all descriptors of me.  Our fearless leader, Angie Manfredi, opened the session much the same way (except she doesn’t have green hair).  For me, someone who’s been an on-again-off-again size activist for years, it was the perfect way to set the stage.  Angie’s unapologetic view of herself and her infectious energy created a few hours that went by far too quickly.  I would have happily spent all day.

She began talking a little about size acceptance (and by that we mean *any* size, not just large) and continued on to a full literature review.  Her list included titles that were (by her definition, and this author’s as well) actually positive, from authors who had good intentions but just missed the mark, and those titles that featured body issues but were sending problematic messages.  She also talked about adult titles with teen appeal, some recommended reading for adults and a few choice titles about disordered eating too.  I appreciated her list immensely (if you’ll pardon the pun).  She only included YA titles published in the last 5 years (acknowledging that there were other good older titles) so it was fresh. (more…)

Presented by Teri Lesesne, Rosemary Chance, and Janie Flores, and featuring amazing, award-winning authors Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Margarita Engle, this session explored the importance of books and authors that feature Latinos/Hispanics/Chicanos (there was a small discussion of labeling and its drawbacks) and their ability to allow Latino teens to see themselves in the literature made available to them.

Benjamin Sáenz spoke about the fact that he was firstly a poet and a writer for adults until he was asked by a publisher to consider writing for children and then young adults.  And aren’t we glad he said yes.  Mr. Sáenz read passages from his books Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood and Last Night I Sang to the Monster that related to the fact that adults so often fail to really see teens, and that teens in turn look to each other to be seen and understood.  And on the subject of becoming an author, he shared his philosophy that “we become writers by discipline and desire” and that talent is not just a gift that some writers have, but something that they have to work for.  His next book, coming out in 2012, is called Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and will feature a gay, Latino romance set in the 1960s. (more…)

In this session, Pam Spencer Holley presented lists that she and co-author Julie Bartel (who was unable to attend) compiled for their book YALSA Annotated Book Lists for Every Teen Reader. Realizing that one of the biggest problems librarians have is finding the right books for a wide variety of teen readers, they looked to the YALSA-BK discussion list, reading through six years of archives and mining it for categories based on regularly asked questions.  Bartel and Holley used recommendations offered by others on the listserv, adding newer titles if needed, and also winnowing down when their lists grew too large.

Each attendee was given a long list of recommendations in twelve categories, and Holley spoke briefly of every title listed, beginning each category by discussing the questions that prompted it.  Some of the categories included were: (more…)