How to use this Page

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. I admit, I was having trouble with this concept until I listened to a webinar from Infopeople called Improvisation at Work! Communicating and Innovating in Your Library. Part of it covered the idea of “Yes, and.” When I did an improv program for the teens at my library this past summer, one of the things that we covered is keeping the scene going versus shutting it down. I didn’t know it was called this at the time, but I was teaching them “Yes, and.”

One of the applications of “Yes, and” is brainstorming without judgment. We’ve all probably been in those meetings where we’re asked to brainstorm ideas on how to do something or come up with something new and innovative. If you’re saying, “Been there, done that,” you’ve also probably encountered the person who always wants to point out the negative aspects of a suggestion. Whether their naysaying is legitimate or not is not the problem. The problem is that the naysayers can stop us in our tracks and keep us from being truly innovative.  (Try making a rule in one of these brainstorming sessions that you can only make positive statements and see your results. You may come up with something truly amazing that you never would have thought of before).

So what will be the trends of the future? What genre is going to be the next vampire-craze? Our teens are changing, so how will that be reflected? What is the Next Big Thing? Start a dialogue of “Yes, and,” see where it takes you, and then share it in the comments or bring it with you to St. Louis!

Mark your calendars!  St. Louis will be hosting the YALSA 2012 Symposium November 2-4.  The theme is “The Future of Young Adult Literature:  Hit Me with the Next Big Thing.”

There is still plenty of time to send in your proposals for programs or paper presentations.  We want to know what you believe will be the developing and evolving trends in young adult literature.  Let your voice be heard about why and how the youth of today will interact with new materials and formats.

Enhance your experience by visiting http://yalitsymposium12.ning.com/ Updates about the symposium will be posted as they become available.   Continue to look for information posted on the YALSA Blog and The Hub.

While in St. Louis, find time to see some of the Downtown attractions, including the Gateway Arch, City Museum and St. Louis Union Station.  If you have extra time to explore, take in the grandeur of Forest Park and its many free museums, Missouri Botanical Garden or The Delmar Loop.