Just back from the Texas Library Association Conference in Houston! 

As always, it was great to see fellow authors and illustrators, as well as the librarians who've supported our books through the years.  And I always enjoy seeing what's new at the publisher booths.

We had a great time for my panel Tuesday afternoon, "What's New with Texas Middle Grade and YA Authors," organized by Susie Kralovansky, featuring Jessica Lee Anderson moderating, and fellow panelists Paige Britt, Cory Putnam Oakes, P.J. Hoover, Cynthia Levinson, Liz Garton Scanlon, Jennifer Mckissack, and Joy Preble.  Conversation was entertaining and enlightening.  

Many thanks to everyone who puts in the work to make TLA the best state library conference in the country!

Here are some pics:

Hitting the road

Rainy Houston from the hotel

Me, Cynthia Levinson, PJ Hoover

Carmen Oliver signs

Jennifer McKissack, Jennifer Ziegler, Joy Preble

Paige Britt and Donna Janell Bowman

Me and the world in the lobby of the Hilton

Signing BORROWED TIME

Janet Fox and Jennifer Ziegler

PJ, Jessica, and Joy

Me and Elaine Scott

Buffalo Bayou on my early morning run

Back in Austin!

The Texas Library Association Annual Conference is next week and we’re so excited to meet everyone! The conference takes place in the George R. Brown Convention Center and LEE & LOW will be Booth #1746!

See below for our signing schedule as well as a few other events that our authors and illustrators will be participating in:

AUTHOR SIGNINGS

Wednesday, April 20

Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Shame the Stars), 11:30 AM-12 PM,  Authors Area Aisle 3

Guadalupe Garcia McCall, 12:30-1:15 PM, booth #1746

Frank Morrison (Little Melba and Her Big Trombone), 3-3:30 PM

Thursday,  April 21

Lulu Delacre (Olinguito, from A to Z!), 9:30-10 AM, booth #1746

Frank Morrison, 9-9:30 AM, Authors Area Aisle 11

Pat Mora Signing (Water Rolls, Water Rises), 3-3:30 PM, Authors Area Aisle 11

OTHER EVENTS

Tuesday, April 19

Donna Bowman Bratton (Step Right Up) @ the What’s New with Texas Authors and Illustrators for Elementary Readers? panel, 2-2:50 PM

Wednesday, April 20

Guadalupe Garcia McCall @ Spirit of Texas Reading Program, 2-3:50 PM, 362 BE, Level 3

Lee & Low Publisher Jason Low @ We Need Diverse Books…In Texas! panel, 4-5:20 PM

Frank Morrison @ Children’s Book Illustrators Ultimate Sketch-Off, 5-6:20 PM, Convention Center 370 A-F

Thursday, April 21

Pat Mora @ Diversity In Action with Elementary Literature panel, 10-11:50 AM

Friday, April 22

Lee & Low Marketing & Publicity Associate Keilin Huang @ Diverse and Digital: Ebooks, Bilingual Books, and More panel, 10-11:20 AM

Hope to see everyone there!

We’re soon to touch down in one of our absolute favorite literary states for the Texas Library Association Conference in Austin! If there’s anything better than talking books, hanging out with authors and librarians, and enjoying sunshine and Shiners, then we don’t want to know about it.

If you’ll be in the Lone Star State, too, please swing by our booth, #1341, for galleys, giveaways, and face time with the HarperCollins Children’s Books School & Library team. We can’t wait to chat and put books in your hands.

But if you’re reading this thinking, “sure, you guys are nice, but we’re here to meet the AUTHORS, silly!” check out our top-notch signing schedule, here:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15TH:
11:00am–12:00pm, Joy Preble, Aisle 7, Finding Paris
11:00am–12:00pm, Melissa Marr, Aisle 8, Made For You
12:00–1:00pm, Kiera Cass, Aisle 8, The Selection Series
1:00–2:00pm, Thanhha Lai, Aisle 8, Listen, Slowly
2:00–3:00pm, Dan Gutman, Aisle 8, Genius Files #5: License to Thrill
4:00–5:00pm, Lauren Oliver, Aisle 8, Vanishing Girls

THURSDAY, APRIL 16TH:
10:00–11:00am, Sherry Thomas, Aisle 3, The Elemental Trilogy
11:30am–12:30pm, Neal & Brendan Shusterman, Aisle 1, Challenger Deep
2:00–3:00pm, Gordon Korman, Aisle 1, Masterminds
2:00–3:00pm, Julie Murphy, Aisle 2, Dumplin’ galleys
3:00–4:00pm, Becky Albertalli, Aisle 1, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

You don’t want to miss our coupon in the aisle by aisle guide, either! It points you to our booth for a free copy of BONE GAP, by Laura Ruby (*while supplies last), and a chance to enter to win a piece of framed original art by Jef Czekaj, from his upcoming picture book, AUSTIN, LOST IN AMERICA.

We can’t wait to see y’all!

The Texas Library Association Annual Conference is next week! Will you be there? If so, we’d love to meet you. Here is our exciting signing schedule below:

Wednesday, April 15

• 10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.: Pat Mora, Authors Area (Water Rolls, Water Rises)
• 2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.: Don Tate, LEE & LOW Booth (It Jes’ Happened)

Thursday, April 16

• 10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.: Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Summer of the Mariposas)
• 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Valynne Maetani, Authors Area (Ink and Ashes)
• 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.: Pat Mora, LEE & LOW Booth (Water Rolls, Water Rises)
• 2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.: Valynne Maetani, LEE & LOW Booth (Ink and Ashes)
• 3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: Andrea Cheng, LEE & LOW Booth (Etched in Clay)

We’ll be at Booth 2051 and look forward to meeting you!

Can I mention how wonderful this past week's Texas Library Association Conference was? Seriously, the state of Texas rocks and so do all the people in it! I seem to do best summarizing these things with pictures, so here we go!


A huge thank you to Tor for having me be a part of the conference!

Just back from the 2013 Texas Library Association Conference in Fort Worth! 

 First, some pics I took when I went running:

Reflected in doors of federal courthouse

Boarded up freight depot

Post office

Gorgeous art deco court building (foreground). New city hall (back)

Monument to JJ Burnett

Daniel Nayeri and onion ring mountain

Candlewick "family" dinner

Steak tartare

Spirit of Texas panel

Cyn and me and this awesome dinosaur book

Signing with E. Kristen Anderson and the Book Festivals of Texas booth

Kathi Appelt poses with her forthcoming release

Debbie Leland and Gingerbread Football guy

Cyn at the Mackin booth

In HOW LAMAR’S BAD PRANK WON A BUBBA-SIZED TROPHY, 13-year-old Lamar is the maddest, baddest, most spectacular bowler at Striker’s Bowling Paradise but he seems to keep striking out with the ladies.  When an older kid talks Lamar into hustling at the bowling alley, he thinks it just may be his chance to get ahead.  Finding himself in trouble, Lamar realizes that sometimes the long way to success is better than the short cut.

In its starred review, Publishers Weekly said that “from the first sentence Lamar will have readers hooked.”

Speaking of gems, debut novelist Crystal Allen is one of them herself.  She recently joined us at the Texas Library Association conference, and we all adored her.  She is laugh-out-loud funny (much like Lamar) and her enthusiasm is contagious.  Want to know more about her?  Check out her website where you can get added to her mailing list and read fun trivia about her.  You can also friend Crystal on Facebook and read this great interview with Crystal at The Brown Bookshelf.

So there are two reports about what I did in Austin, what I ate and what I did at TLA. Sometimes they overlap. That said, this is the what I did at TxLA post. The other one will be over at jessamyn.com. I’ll add a note here when I’ve posted it.

I went to TxLA to give a talk about the digital divide. I had done a talk the previous month for SXSW but really it was mostly me introducing my co-presenters and then letting them go. I have a little page for that here and you can listen to how it went here. I was pleased with it, but it wasn’t the talk I wanted to give for TxLA. Here is the talk that I gave for TxLA (an all new talk, one that I’m very happy with) and here is a blog-report of it. I felt like it went well, though one of the downsides to being at a giant conference is that a lot of the talks, even ones that I thought would be crazy popular, were only about half full. Here is what else I saw

• The American Warn on Sex – Marty Klein has written a book by the same name. He does a terrific talk about how encroaching fundamentalism is causing people to basically self-censor in order to “be polite” and it’s shifting our ideas of what it means to be American, and how to participate civically. He’s a funny guy with a very professional talk and I think everyone should hire him to speak at their library conference.
• I saw Aaron Schmidt’s talk on user experience. While I know the things Aaron talks about generally, I haven’t seen him give a talk in a long time and it was neat to get to see him really untangle what we can do to make our websites more usable.
• I saw John Scalzi and a host of other authors on a Sci-Fi panel–Science Fiction: Beyond Earth’s Boundaries–which was great fun. I know John Scalzi online through MetaFilter and was mostly going to say hi. The panel itself turned out to be wonderful. Six very different authors who spoke briefly and then answered questions for an hour, talking about their craft and the world of epic fantasy and how they got into the business. Enthusiastic audience and a really great moderator made this a fun panel.
• Library Book Cart Drill Team requires no additional explanation. Was terrific. It’s always terrific. Here’s a video you might like.
• Did I mention that TXLA had an app and a very well-curated Twitter feed and hash tag? Both of them were great ways to see what was happening at the conference in real time. For people with non-app phones that could still use browsers, there was a really simple mobile site that functioned well. Big props to Chris Jowaisas for the work he did on this as a newish TLA member.
• Oh I think I forgot to mention the rally! There was a huge Rally for Texas Libraries which happened on Wednesday. That’s what the photo is from. There were more librarians on the statehouse lawn than there ar in the entire state of Vermont. It was impressive, well-organized and well-planned. Short and to the point and they even got a few reps to come out and say a few things. I
  3 Comments on What I did at TXLA – the library version, last added: 4/19/2011
  Display Comments
  John Farrier said, on 4/19/2011 7:30:00 AM
  

  Did you get to see the Unshelved booth? Both cartoonists were there when I went. It was cool to see two library celebrities.

  David Bigwood said, on 4/19/2011 9:48:00 AM
  

  Hi Jessamyn, I was sorry we only met in passing. That’s the problem with a large conference. I too saw lots of excellent sessions but they were different ones. At the large parties it is difficult to bump into folks. Did you get to hear the band, Del Castillo, at the Presendent’s Party? Excellent.

  jessamyn said, on 4/19/2011 10:33:00 AM
  

  Hi John, yeah I definitely hung out with those guys some, it’s been nice to see them so busy and so well-loved. And David, so happy to shake your hand, I didn’t go to the bigger events for the most part. Yours is one of the longest-running library blogs that I read.

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I didn't go to TLA this year, but Capstone was there in full force. My boss was sent down to Austin with directions to not return unless he brought a signed copy of one of the Kylie Jean books for me. Our wonderful author Marci Peschke did a signing at the show, and the books were a huge hit--she signed over 200 copies.

The first thing Michael did this morning was hand this over to me. Yay!

I am excited to announce that I have survived my very first TLA setup day all by myself.  I've only been to TLA as part of Blooming Tree.  CBAY has never exhibited before, and it's very exciting to have enough books to fill a whole booth.  I posted some pictures over on Facebook if you're curious to see the booth.

My plan for this week is to do a bunch of tweets, Facebook, and video updates throughout the conference.  So, be sure you're subscribed to everything so you can see the fun!

© Copyright 2006-2011 Madeline Smoot. All rights reserved. May be excerpted and duplicated for educational purposes.

When Nora’s father, Arturo leaves their home in Mexico to search for work in the United States, Nora stays back with her mother, Aurora and her grandmother. Nora struggles to make sense of her loss as the three women live in abject poverty in wait of Arturo’s return and a better day. When the letters and money stop coming, Nora decides that she and Aurora must go to Texas to find Arturo. After a harrowing and dehumanizing border crossing experience, Nora and Aurora find themselves all alone in a new place and not speaking the language. Befriending kind strangers in Texas, the two are offered employment after purchasing work papers, but their life in America is filled with challenges.

In her debut novel for teens, ILLEGAL, Bettina Restrepo shares a slice of the American experience that is compelling and harrowing, yet hopeful and uplifting.

In its starred review, Booklist said:

“The teen’s immediate first-person narrative will grab readers with its gritty specifics, honest anger and sorrow, and the small acts of kindness that occur throughout the harrowing journey.”

Get to know Bettina – this certainly isn’t the last you’ll be hearing of her!  You can meet her at the Texas Library Association conference next month: she’ll be on the “Crossing the Border: Migrant Stories” panel on Wednesday, April 13th from 10:15-11:50 am, and she’ll sign in the author aisles afterward from 12:30-1:30 pm.  Stop by to say hi!

Bettina is also on Facebookand Twitter, and make sure to check out her website for information on school visits,  discussion questions for ILLEGAL, and a list of events.

April: Texas Library Association Conference
May: International Reading Association Conference
May: SLJ Day of Dialog/BEA
June: ALA Annual Conference

It’s crazy…but we also have lots of fun.  First up is TLA in Austin where we have a phenomenal line-up of authors signing with us:

Wednesday, April 13th
10:15 am – 11:00 am Pat Mora (author aisles)
10:15 am – 11:00 am Rafael Lopez (author aisles)
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Lauren Oliver (author aisles)
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Will Hobbs (author aisles)
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Bettina Restrepo (author aisles)
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm Crystal Allen (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Sophie Jordan (Harper booth 1824)
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm Tera Lynn Childs (Harper booth 1824)
3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Suzanne Harper (Harper booth 1824)

Thursday, April 14th
9:00 am – 10:00 am Diane Stanley (author aisles)
11:30 am – 12:00 pm Jason Henderson (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Jennifer Archer (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Kevin Henkes (author aisles)
3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Don Tate and Audrey Vernick (Harper booth 1824)

And don’t miss JAMIE LEE CURTIS as the Keynote Speaker on Wednesday, April 13th at 9:00 am!

Aside from our outstanding authors, we’ll have galleys galore at our booth (#1824) and we hope you’ll stop by to say hi to Patty, Robin, and me!

See you in Texas!

~ Laura

Greetings from sunny Tampa and the National Title I Conference!

A DREAM

For 6 months now I've been working on a project with the Region IV Head Start Association's Executive Director, Myra Ingram.  Talk about inspiring!  I've visited Head Start classrooms, talked with parents and teachers and children and today we have a chance to make a bigger dream real.

TLA was simply amazing! Those aren’t the four most powerful words. But they come close. The Texas Library Association is a great chance for those of us who spend most of our life at quiet desks, tinkering with nouns and verbs, to meet the people who give life to books by connecting them with kids and readers. Librarians and media specialists are the best conversationalists you’ll ever meet. And I had some great conversations.

I talked with a woman who said she was finally able to raise a young student’s test scores because the girl became an enthusiastic reader of our Library of Doom series. In fact, the girl brought four of her friends into the school library to turn them on to the books too.

One media specialist thanked me because the Stone Arch books were the only books that one of her problem boy readers would pick up . . . and finish!

Joan Berge, the president of Stone Arch Books, Heather Kindseth, the creative director, and I hosted a breakfast focus group with a dozen librarians.1 We discussed everything from scary books to comic superheroes to the popularity of the Twilight series. 2

One day on the exhibit floor, scores of high-school students were roving in nomadic bands, hunting for advance copies and posters and fun giveaways3. It was fun to talk about graphic novels as well as traditional novels with these young people. They were so passionate about their favorite books.

The welcoming and literate and diverse crowd at the conference reminded me of my first introduction to Texas hospitality, when I worked at the Renaissance Festival outside Magnolia, Texas a number of years ago. I was part of a wandering troupe of players that would improvise stories yelled out from the crowd – “Rapunzel! Jason and the Golden Fleece! Cinderella! Ben Hur!4”

It seems every time I’m in Texas I’m either telling a story or hearing one. I heard some great stories and anecdotes from the media professionals about the stories that our authors tell in our books. It was like a powerful chain reaction of literacy, or a massive Southern oak sprouting from a seedling. Oh, and those four most powerful words – tell me a story. Thanks to all the people who told me their stories in Houston this year.

Michael Dahl
Editorial Director


1 Why don’t they serve biscuits and gravy up here in Minneapolis? Yum!

2 Several librarians said that their girl patrons loved the books not because of the romance between Bella and Edward, but because of the vampires. Vampires, it seems, never lose their cool quotient.

3 We literally had girls (and boys!) screaming with excitement over our lenticular Superman/Batman bookmarks. I have to admit, they do look cool.

4 Uh, yes, one afternoon we improvised a version of Ben Hur. Complete with a chariot race and a sea battle of Roman warships.

I am freshly returned from the Texas Library Association Conference in Houston. I do not know the numbers in attendance, but if my observations were correct, there were thousands upon thousands.  Handouts from the sessions are available here for those of  you interested (http://www.txla.org/conference/handouts.html). Here are a few things I noticed:

1.  There were many of us using Twitter to provide some updates on sessions and hot books to be had.

2.  Facebook friending (and posting)  was occurring at an alarming rate.

3. Publishers were thrilled to see interest still in books as well as technology.

4. Authors were blogging and tweeting and posting to FB, too.

5. Librarians are eager to learn about anything they can use to keep teens (and kids) connected to learning. They brought along administrators and teachers this time.  You should have seen the wide eyes when those first-timers saw the bounty of the exhibits and the conference sessions. 

I guess this was an affirmation of a couple of  things I hold to be true but needed some evidence:  Web 2.0 is alive and well.  These apps can exist nicely alongside books. 

Posted by Teri Lesesne

We’ve been busy (hence the lack of posts lately): Michael, Heather, and Joan were manning the booth at TLA, where they met with a ton of awesome librarians. Back at the ranch, the editorial and design staffs have been in the throes of finishing up our Fall 2009 books. About half of our 100 or so books for that season have been sent to the printer, and we’re already starting to see proofs (the last stage during which we can make changes).

While we’re all either flying across the country or spending lots of time at our desks, finishing up the season, we’ve all been thrilled to take some time out to enjoy the buzz about our Super Hero contest. (Check out our list of links, to the left.) I hear from the art department that the sketches for the book THE KID WHO SAVED SUPERMAN have just come in, and Bob, our art director, said he’s sure contest winner Hakeem is going to love seeing his likeness in the book.

We will be back soon with pics and a recap from TLA. In the meantime, check out the links and enjoy...and rest assured we’re busy making awesome books that’ll be available in less than four months!

(Administrative note: We’ve added some check boxes to each blog post. Please let us know what you think. We want this blog to provide what you’re looking for, so if you have additional comments or ideas, you can leave a comment or email me.)

I’m still riding the high of my Poetry Round Up at the Texas Library Association conference this week! Five fabulous poets, John Frank, Juanita Havill, Alan Katz, Linda Sue Park, and Adam Rex, worked their magic on an audience of nearly 200 participants. It was fantastic! John Frank read from How to Catch a Fish and his new collection, Keepers, in his deep and steady voice. Juanita shared excerpts from her new novel in verse, Grow, that brought several audience members to tears. Alan Katz had us in stitches laughing over poems from his new book, Oops, and his upcoming follow up, Uh-Oh. What fun to feature Linda Sue Park as a POET as she read her sijo poems from Tap Dancing on the Roof, plus a brand new sijo on explaining baseball to an alien. And Adam Rex wrapped it up for us with his deadpan delivery accompanied by slides from his hysterical collection, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, as well as the upcoming sequel, Frankenstein Bakes a Cake. (Thank you ALL for coming and sharing!) [Unfortunately, poet Tracie Vaughn Zimmer was not able to come due to an illness, but we hope she is well soon and will join us for the Round Up next year!]

What fun! What variety! The different voices, styles, and approaches helped the audience see the tremendous range of poetry available for young people today. PLUS, the experience of HEARING poetry was moving and exhilarating. People stopped me throughout the rest of the conference to tell me how much they had enjoyed the session. One woman said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I loved just soaking up the words of the poets, sitting back and taking it all in. But I also realized that I was getting ideas about how to share the poems with kids, how to connect the poems with various activities, and get kids involved.” EXACTLY! We spend so much time at conferences attending informational sessions, learning new strategies, networking, etc. But so little time just reveling in literature, hearing the lyrical language of literature, remembering what motivates us all to work as librarians and teachers—sharing our love of literature with kids and hoping they’ll love it too. And in my experience, nothing captures that quite so well as experiencing the literature firsthand through reading and listening—especially to literature read by the creator. It’s primal!

I’m proud to say we’ve brought 26 poets to Texas over the last four years including: John Frank, Juanita Havill, Alan Katz, Linda Sue Park, Adam Rex, Jaime Adoff, Tony Crunk, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Charise Mericle Harper, Heidi Zingerline Mordhorst, Eileen Spinelli, Marilyn Singer, Calef Brown, Felipe Herrera, Kathi Appelt, Nikki Grimes, Stephanie Hemphill, Carole Boston Weatherford, Walter Dean Myers, Joyce Sidman, Quincy Troupe, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Janet Wong, Kurt Cyrus, Pat Mora, Susan Pearson. What an embarrassment of riches! Each voice has been a delight. I encourage you all to seek out poets and poetry and share them OUT LOUD with kids you care about. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s like a rock concert experience, a night at the theater, or meeting the President (any president!).

Some of the most interesting literature for children today can be found in poetry-- from humorous rhymes to verse novels. How do we create a welcoming environment for poetry? Poet and teacher Georgia Heard put it this way, “Kids need to become friends with poetry…. They need to know that poems can comfort them, make them laugh, help them remember, nurture them to know and understand themselves more completely” (1999, p.20). This session helped participants become familiar with some of the best poets writing for young people today with a panel of acclaimed poets sharing favorites from their own work through reading aloud or performance. Modeled after the “Poetry Blast” session first sponsored by ALSC at the 2004 ALA convention, this session reminds us all of the pleasures to be found in the spoken word. Look for it again next year at TLA in Houston—and in Anaheim at the ALSC Poetry Blast on Monday, June 30. See you there!

Picture credit: www.rccsd.org

We've come to the last day of TLA. I'm actually here in the convention center at the Maximum Ride Internet Room. Yep, that's right. Even something like the Texas Library Association manages to find corporate sponsorship for their stuff. No one is immune. I would like some corporate sponsorship for my corporation. It seems unlikely.

I was to tired to list the readers I was excited to get, but I've got a few moments until the exhibit hall opens, so I'll do it now.

• Skulduggery Pleasant 2: Playing with Fire -- I'm not a big fan of sequels. I often love the first in a series only to be vaguely disappointed in the second book. Sometimes the third book redeems the series, sometimes it only makes it worse. However, in the case of Skulduggery 2, I liked it just as much as I liked the first book. The tone and voice are still just as witty and sarcastic. I actually found myself grinning on the train last night as I commuted back last night. I rarely make an expression while reading. And the story itself was still an exciting fun read. So, look for the book when it comes out. Atrocious new jacketing aside, it's going to be a fun book.
• Hunger Games -- Collins Gregor the Underlander series (I forget the actual series title) would be an example of a series that fit the usual excellent first book/downhill from there series. Still, I know she can write a good first book, so I grabbed her new one, Hunger Games. Much to my glee, it's a science fiction real game story - kind of a survivor TV show with more violent outcomes. I read 80 pages on the train this morning, and now I don't want to man my booth but sit in a quiet little corner somewhere and finish the story.
• Madapple -- This reader has been floating around for a while. It's apparently a brilliant but disturbing book that no one knows what to do with. I'm dying to read it.