A Year of Programs for Tweens / Coming Out in Print

Well folks, ALA is slipping further and further into the past as the days stretch forward into August.  It's hard to believe that July is gone and the conference was well over a month ago.  Here in Indiana we are suffering from the worst drought we've had in 30 years.  It is all around us, from the brown grass, to the trees that are dying and losing their leaves.  It looks like Africa instead of Indiana.

But, back to California! 

Brianne Wilkins-Bester presented an awesome session on programming for Tweens.  She put together a great website on this session that you can see here:  Programming for Tweens.

She focused a lot on programs based on TV, which to be honest, I would suck at.  I just don't watch enough freaking TV.  So, there are programs based on The Amazing Race, Iron Chef, Mythbusters, The Price is Right, and CSI.  But she also had other great ideas not related to TV:

• "Would you rather" ice breaker
• Feed them and give them swag (anything...they just want stuff)
• I loved her Anti-Valentine's Day Party...make Gocks, rip up a Teddy Bear, beat a pinata, write fake break-up letters, make black roses out of duct tape!
• Urban Legend programming using the website Snopes.com
• YouTube Video contests
• Wee Bit of Fun St. Patty's Day program
• Jersey Shore Dance Off (Insert name of your town instead!)
• Also, serve Yoda Soda (anything green) at your next Star Wars program!  That is if you don't have a moral issue serving cokes to kids.  Yeah.  I struggle with that.

At the end of this session, Sammy had an opportunity to interview Tom Angleberger, author of the Origami Yoda books.  That was just amazing.  It was definately the highlight of Sammy's conference.  Agghhh!

The last session I attended was Coming Out in Print:  The LGTB Literary Landscape.  This session talked all about the literature available today with gay (I'm using that term to talk about everyone...hope that is okay) characters, story lines, by gay authors, etc.  The panel was very thoughtful and lots of great questions were asked and answered.  Two things stuck out in my mind...first thing, items with gay themes can be hard to find.  Catalogers have to do a really good job putting information in their records so that people wanting to find these items can...even information regarding secondary characters is helpful.  The second thing that stuck out in my mind is the fact that its seems we had a bubble maybe 5 years ago with lots of titles published, but the panel thinks that we are currently in a little bit of a drought.  They think it's because publishers believe that titles with these themes don't sell as well.  Whether or not a book sells is just a crap shoot.  There are SO many factors that go into it.  Luck is a big one.  The clout of the publishing house is another.  The online presence, word of mouth, the blogesphere...all those things affect all books.  So, somehow not publishing this particular kind of book now, when the audience is only just going to get bigger, is really dumb. 

Well readers, that's it from me.  The American Library Association conference was an amazing experience.  I really hope I continue to get opportunities to attend such great professional development events.  Happy reading!