Yes, and Hit Me with the Next Big Thing

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This November, YA librarians and authors will descend upon St. Louis for the 2012 Young Adult Literature Symposium. If you haven’t been to this before, I highly recommend it. I went in 2010 and met a lot of fabulous people and rubbed elbows with a few authors (perpetuating my girl-crush on Lauren Myracle) and came away with a lot of great information. This year the theme is Hit Me with the Next Big Thing.

I started thinking about what exactly that means. How can we predict the future of what’s going to be hot and what’s going to flop? It’s not always easy to find what will be successful for your library, even when you’ve seen it be successful everywhere around you. Read More →

Lauren Myracle and Intellectual Freedom at Midwinter

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As’ a YALSA Intellectual Freedom Committee member, I have my choice of a smorgasbord of Intellectual Freedom meetings and’ activities to attend at Conference. ‘ However by far, the best part of my trip to Midwinter was attending the Freedom to Read Foundation’s‘ Fourth Annual Author Event’ featuring Lauren Myracle.

Lauren’ specifically addressed’ the banning and challenging of her books.’  She’ spoke about how she could empathize with parents who’ find her books’ objectionable.’ ‘ ‘ Because the world is truly a scary place,’  protecting your children is a priority.’ ‘  Read More →