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My goal is eventually to put together a few curated tweets from the con--seems appropriate since Sheila and I talked about that during our session on social media. But I haven't quite recovered, so for the time being I present you with a few pretty... Read the rest of this post

I went to KidLitCon in October 2015, and had a great time!

I wrote up something about it for School Library Journal: The Five Best Things About KidLitCon.

So if you want to know more about KidLitCon, check out my article.




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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

• Morning, folks. I’ve been looking to expand my knowledge beyond just children’s literature, so I figured a good podcast would be the best way to go.  After reading Bustle’s 11 literary podcasts to get your bookish fix throughout the day I settled on Books on the Nightstand as the closest thing out there to a Pop Culture Happy Hour of books alone.  Yet even at that moment I couldn’t escape the world of kidlit.  The aforementioned Bustle piece also recommended a podcast called Dear Mr. Potter, described as “an extremely close read of J. K. Rowling’s series, starting with book number one. Host Alistair invites comments and thoughts from readers as he dissects each chapter, (there are live YouTube and Twitter chats before the audio is archived for the podcast) and is able to do some bang-up accents of beloved characters like Professor McGonagall and Hagrid.”  Well, shoot.  That sounds good too.

• Speaking of podcasts, you heard about The Yarn, right?  That would be the podcast started by Travis Jonker and Colby Sharp that follows a single book through its creators and helpers.  Having finished Season One, our intrepid heroes had a Kickstarter, met their goal, and are now soliciting ideas for Season Two.  Might want to toss in your two cents or so.  Such an opportunity may not arise again.

• So I say “Proust Questionnaire: Kidlit Edition“, and you say, “Come again?” And I repeat, “Proust Questionnaire: Kidlit Edition”, and you say, “I’m sorry, but you’re just putting a bunch of random words and names together higglety-pigglety.” At which point I direct you to Marc Tyler Nobleman and his interview series. The questions are not too dissimilar from the 7-Impossible Things interview questions, which in turn were cribbed from Inside the Actor’s Studio, (though I forget where they got them before that). For my part, I read the ones up so far and I am now entranced by Jonathan Auxier’s use of the word, “anagnorisis”. Proust would approve.

• The Bloggess likes us, we the librarians.  We could have guessed that but it’s nice to have your suspicions confirmed from time to time.

• Kidlit TV: It’s not just videos!  Case in point, a recent interview with my beloved co-author Jules Danielson in which she says very kind things about myself and my fellow Niblings.  She is a bit too kind when she says that, “Betsy never whines or feels sorry for herself.”  This is the advantage, dear children, of co-writing a book with someone in another state.  They will not see you whine or kvetch in person, thereby leading them to believe that you are better than you are.  Learn from my example.

• As ever, Pop Goes the Page takes the concept of activities in a children’s library (or, in some cases, a museum) to an entirely new level.  Good for getting the creative juices flowing.

• And now it’s time for another edition of Cool Stuff on the Internet You Didn’t Know and Weren’t Likely to Find By Browsing.  Today, the Kerlan Collection!  You may have heard of it.  It’s that enormously cool children’s book collection hosted by the University of Minnesota.  Cool, right?  You may even have known that the doyenne of the collection is Lisa Von Drasek, who cut her teeth at the Bank Street College of Education’s children’s library for years n’ years.  Now she’s given us a pretty dang cool online exhibit series tie-in and if you happen to know a teacher in need of, oh say, primary sources and picture book nonfiction titles, direct them to the Balloons Over Broadway site.  Explore the links on the left-hand side of the page.  You won’t regret the decision.

• Here in Evanston, October will bring The First Annual Storytelling Festival.  A too little lauded art that can be sublime or painful beyond belief, the festival will be quite a bit of the former, and very little of the latter.  If you’re in the area, come by!

• In other news, some me stuff. I was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune.  Which was neat.

• We all know from Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle that it’s the daddy seahorses that shoulders the bulk of the parenting responsibilities in the wild.  Now travel with me over to Portland, Oregon where the husband of a buddy of mine just started Seahorses, “Portland’s first dad and baby store.”  I helped them come up with some of the good daddy/kid picture books they’re selling there.  If you’re an author in the area with a daddy/child title to your name, consider contacting them.  They’re good people.

• Lucky, Baltimorians.  You get to host Kidlitcon this year.  I would go but my October is pure insanity, travel-wise.  You go and write it up for me, so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.  I don’t mind.  Really.

•  Daily Image:

And finally, this is precisely what you think it is.

Yep. Goodnight Goodnight, Construction Site PJs.  Awesome?  You betcha.

Have you registered yet for KidLitCon 2015 in Baltimore? With sessions October 9th and 10th and a fantastic tour of the area on October 11th, you won't want to miss it! (Sadly, I won't be there because I'll be at the Great Valley Bookfest, but I... Read the rest of this post

KidLitCon is coming soon--and the new keeps getting more and more exciting, as we learn that one of the keynote speakers will be The Jumbies author Tracey Baptiste! For more information about that, check out the post on the Kidlitosphere Central... Read the rest of this post

...the Call for Session Proposals for this fall's Kidlitosphere Conference is open! From the original post:This year’s KidLitCon will be held in Baltimore, MD on October 9th and 10th. This year’s theme is Celebrating Young People’s... Read the rest of this post

One of the big draws of KidLitCon is getting a chance to meet your fellow bloggers, find out what their interests are, and discover where they intersect with yours. As you may know by now, here at FW our main focus is on Young Adult fiction, with an... Read the rest of this post

Between the two of us, Tanita and I have done several posts with our notes and impressions from this year's KidLitCon in Sacramento. I suspect for both of us, some of these were necessary in order to come down a bit from that special organizer's... Read the rest of this post

The one and only Floating Head of Shannon Hale! It rocks! It talks! It silences its viewers! I didn't take as many notes as I should have, when author Shannon Hale "visited" KidLitCon on our second day. Mainly because I was on edge, hoping against... Read the rest of this post

I meant to do this post last Thursday, but work spun dizzily out of my control, tossing me into a whirling black hole (do black holes whirl? I feel like they do) of getting-caught-up. Tanita's done some amazing posts with lovely photos of the... Read the rest of this post

This weekend's word is actually a phrase - Cultural Appropriation. I've blogged a bit about KidLitCon over the last week, and talked about how last weekend, Charlotte Taylor, our program director, came up with a great way to keep us thoughtful... Read the rest of this post

Charlotte Taylor, our program director, has clear Leadership Skillz, and came up with a great way to keep us thoughtful during those brief moments when people were at loose ends. She put a note pad up in the foyer space of the library, right next to... Read the rest of this post

KidLitCon: Brought to you by these fine people.l-r: Maureen Kearney, seated. Standing, me (aka tanita), Jen Robinson, Charlotte Taylor, Melissa Fox, Reshama Deshmukh, and Sarah, aka aquafortis. Can't remember the last time I was more excited that... Read the rest of this post

If you, like me, missed Kidlitcon this past weekend, Leila has a delicious recap & link roundup for you at Bookshelves of Doom. I haven’t been since 2010, the Minneapolis gathering, and I had many a pang of longing as the tweets and FB updates came rolling in. But it was delightful to see so many of my blog-pals having what was clearly a Very Good Time.

One reason I couldn’t be there is because I was engaged to speak at SCBWI-San Diego on Saturday. (The other reason is because I have a hundred children and am therefore Always Broke. You know how it is.) I’m happy to say my SCBWI talk seemed to go over very well. The topic was Middle-Grade and Chapter Books, two categories of children’s publishing I can speak about with considerable enthusiasm. What’s more fun than speaking to a full house about your very favorite books? The crowd was wonderful, with really smart questions afterward. The only thing that could have made it more fun would have been having the Kidlitcon crowd there.

Sunday felt amazingly luxurious: nothing was required of me but to read. This was convenient, as the nominee tally in my CYBILs category is currently 100 novels, with more contenders coming in every day. Only two more days, guys, until the public nomination period closes. People are starting to compile lists of worthy books that haven’t yet been nominated; you can find links to those posts here.

Speaking of piles of books, the younger set and I finished The Boxcar Children over the weekend (it’s a mighty quick read) and today it fell upon to me choose the next readaloud. Sometimes I know EXACTLY what book I want to reach for next, and other times I have option paralysis. Today was the latter sort of occasion. I got Rose to go around the house with me, pulling likely candidates off shelves, and when we had a comfortable stack, I decided on a Jane-Rose-Beanie favorite, Rowan of Rin. Chapter one was well received. I’ve never read this one aloud before, and there’s always a risk—some great books just don’t make great readalouds. But so far, so good. So gripping!

In all that I’m going to tell you about KidLitCon, know that the highlight of my weekend was seeing my DIL, SweetPea’s mom, in LA. And I didn’t even think to get a pic.

Stephanie Kuehn (Complicit, St Martin’s Griffin, 2014)

Summoning the Phoenix: Poems and Prose About Chinese Musical Instruments author, Emily Jiang

Those KidLitCon ladies were wiped out at the end of things on Saturday. I applaud not only their hard work, but the fact that they stepped out there and planned a conference on the theme ‘diversity’. As necessary as diversity is, as much as the call for more diverse books has become in the world of children’s lit, using that term will still have you preaching only to the choir. The attendance numbers were small, I’m sure much smaller than previous years. No doubt, those who needed to be there were.

This issue of not enough brown faces in children’s literature has been around since Langston Hughes published the Brownies’ Book magazine in the 1920s. Damn near 100 years ago. And, we still think we can get publishing companies to produce more books for, about and with children of color, and queer children; those with exceptionalities those of varying income levels. You think it makes perfect economic sense, but please realize how empowering books are. They plant ideas.

KidLitCon reminded me of the power of networking. I’ve been hanging out here pretty much on my own for quite a long time. I miss the days of Reading in Color, The HappyNappyBookseller and Color Online. Maybe that’s why it has been so hard for me to get back into this. Maybe I need to change things up.

“Diversity” dilutes the need for representation for people of color, for queer teens and those with exceptionalities. We then devolve into diversities based upon size and

Nathalie, Laura Atkins and Zetta Elliott

location and handedness and on and on because it’s just too hard to focus on queer, brown, different people. Friends, we have to.

A mediocre cry for diversity will give us a mediocre response: a limited run of a few more books with no real changes inside publishing houses, with authors of certain backgrounds being boxed into writing certain kinds of books (such as Latinos being stuck writing reality fiction) and no books by authors of color

Teen Blogger @missfictional

that continually will win the National Book Award or the Newbery.

This movement began over 100 years ago. I’ve been doing this blog since 2006, so I have to bow to those who came before me and are still at it and yea, I even have to bow to those who came in after me who are really getting some things done. There’s room for all because there’s no single story that’s going to get this done. There is, however no room for status quo or mediocrity. We’re at a point in history where so many resources exist to change how books are financed, created and distributed. We’re at a place in time where our children can no longer afford to be left behind. No, not today; not in the information age. Not when it is critical to have the literacy, the power, to maneuver one’s world.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to a lot of people to find out what they’d gotten out of the conference. Will we as bloggers find new ways to collaborate for books and literacy causes? Will some look that much harder for books with characters of color? And, will we be more critical of those writing outside their own experience?

I’m rambling. I thought things would come together for me as I wrote, but they’re not. I think I’m thirsty.

I’ll stop here and add some photos. I hate that I didn’t get any of my co-presenters, they are such amazing and adorable ladies. Next time!

Nathalie Mvondo of Multiculturalism Rocks and Mitali Perkins (Tiger Boy, Charlesbridge 2014)

Jewell Parker Rhodes (Sugar; Little Brown Books, 2013) and Maya Gonzalez who creates more than will fit this space, so click this image to visit her site.

Libertad & Guinevere of Twinja Book Reviews with Tanita Davis (Happy Families, Knopf, 2012)

In my closing comments at this past weekend's KidLitCon in Sacramento, CA, I included a few notes I jotted down over the course of the conference. These were just some insights that sprang to mind over the course of the conference, and which seemed... Read the rest of this post

I have not been staying on top of the Kidlitosphere Central news. I've been aware of it, just not passing it on in a timely manner.

As it turns out, this year's Kidlitcon is taking place today and tomorrow in Sacramento, California.  Those of us who aren't there can follow what's going on with the #kidlitcon hashtag on Twitter.

....this weekend! And we are excited. Even if you're not formally registered, if you live in the Sacramento area (and beyond) and want to attend the informal Author Mingle, you can! It's free and open to the public, with books for sale by Avid... Read the rest of this post

I just wanted to make sure you all know that Cybils Awards judging panels will be announced this week--Wednesday, to be exact! It's always an exciting time because I know, once the panels get announced, it's time for me to start thinking about books... Read the rest of this post

Charlotte's been dropping programming peeks down on the Bookshelf lately, so I felt I had to throw down with another mini-poster, now that I know that Stephanie Kuehn is going to be at the Con on Friday! Knowing how socially limited I am, I'm just... Read the rest of this post

That's right--it's time for our weekly plug for this year's KidLitCon! (Are you going? Are you going? Are you going??? We are!!) This time, though, I thought I'd entice you by re-posting my recap of last year's conference in Austin, which was, as... Read the rest of this post

Have you registered yet? No? Then go! I just did, and I couldn't be more excited about how plans are shaping up--we have a fantastic team of organizers who are setting up the program of events, including a couple of meet-and-greet opportunities for... Read the rest of this post