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This fall, YALSA will be making appointments to the following selection committees and taskforces! Put your passion for young adult literature to work! If you have experience in evaluating and selecting young adult materials, as well as time to volunteer your skills, please consider serving on a YALSA selection committee. The committees and taskforces are:

• Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults
• Best Fiction for Young Adults
• Fabulous Films for Young Adults
• Great Graphic Novels for Teens
• Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
• Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
• Great Graphic Novels for Teens
• Alex Award
• Morris Award
• Odyssey Award
• 2013 Midwinter Marketing & Local Arrangements Taskforce
• 2013 Midwinter Paper Presentation Planning Taskforce
• Readers’ Choice List Taskforce

How do I get on a committee or taskforce?
To serve on a committee or taskforce, you must be officially appointed by YALSA’s President-Elect, Jack Martin. YALSA is collecting volunteer forms from now through Sept. 30 for members who would like to serve on selection and award committees as well as taskforces that begin work on Feb. 1, 2012. If you are currently serving on a selection or award committee and you are eligible to and interested in serving for another term, you must fill out a volunteer form. This is the only way the President-Elect knows for certain that you’re interested in continuing on the committee. Also, please note that selection committee members are required to attend both Midwinter and Annual conferences. Please ensure that you can travel to both conferences before you volunteer.

What Do I Need to Know to Volunteer?
Before you volunteer to serve on a committee or taskforce, you’ll want to learn what the group does and what your responsibilities will be. YALSA has created a free webinar with information about what it’s like to serve on a selection or award committee. Be sure to take the time to view it. You can also contact the chair directly to let him/her know you’re interested in serving and to ask questions about what your involvement will entail. Names and contact information for all the committee chairs are available from the Governance link on YALSA’s website. From the Get Involved link on YALSA’s website you’ll also find information about each of the committees’ functions, size, etc. Lastly, be sure to read through YALSA’s Handbook, especially the sections that list responsibilities for committee members.

Where do I volunteer?
In order to be considered for a selection or award committee, you need to fill out a Selection Committee Volunteer Form by Sept. 30.

If you’d like to be considered for one of the task

My colleagues, my editor, my friends, my students and (especially) their parents have all bemoaned on one occasion or another the term “graphic novel”.  Problem 1: They’re not always novels.  Problem 2 (mostly from parents of students): the word “graphic” suggests adult and/or extreme content.  Well, I’ve made my peace with the fact that the name refers to the physical form of the object (it has a similar appearance to that of a standard novel) rather than the contents, and at this point we maybe too far gone to replace it anyway.  However, this has not come up on the Great Graphic Novels for Teens Committee and I’m interested in a rough general consensus.  Should there be a change?  And to what?  I’ve heard graphics novel, graphics, graphic book, graphic format, sequential book and GN (which sort of avoids the issue and faces it both at the same time), plus plenty of others I won’t labor through here.  Please, tell me: where do you stand and what’s your suggestion for a name change, if you’ve got one?