2020 YSS Luncheon Recording, Now Available on WLA's YouTube!

Did you miss out on the 2020 YSS Virtual Luncheon?  Or maybe you just want to revisit the fun of hearing Kashmira Sheth and Geoff Herbach share their stories?

Boy howdy, do I have some good news for you!

Chris Grabenstein will be the YSS Luncheon Speaker at WLA 2018

photos by Elena Seibert

Here's one reason to attend this year's WLA Conference in LaCrosse, WI on October 23-26, 2018 - Chris Grabenstein will be the YSS Luncheon Speaker!

You can visit his website HERE or read this article from Brightly that he wrote on "Not Just for the Laughs: The Value of Comedy in Middle Grade Reads."

WLA Sneak Peek - YSS Luncheon Speaker

It was just announced last week that the YSS luncheon speaker for Wednesday Oct 18 will be Angela Davis Pinkney!! Here's what our YSS board representative writes:

​We are thrilled to announce that Andrea Davis Pinkney is the Youth Services Section Luncheon speaker for the WLA Conference this year!  Andrea Davis Pinkney is the New York Times best-selling and award winning author of numerous picture books, novels, and narrative nonfiction for children and teens (including The Red Pencil, A Poem for Peter, Hand in Hand:  Ten Black Men Who Changed America, and Let it Shine:  Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters).  Ms. Pinkney is a respected children's book publisher and editor. Her love of libraries, her perspective on diversity, and her energetic and inspiring speaking style will leave you ready to continue your terrific work in libraries across Wisconsin!

Interview with Bill Konigsberg, YSS Luncheon Speaker at WLA 2016

Submitted by Ashley Bieber, Teen Services Coordinator
L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, Eau Claire, WI

YSS Past-Chair, Ashley Bieber, interviewed author Bill Konigsberg, in advance of his appearance as YSS luncheon speaker at this year's WLA conference. She also shared this link of his Banned Books Week 2016 Virtual Read Out! video on YouTube.

https://billkonigsberg.com/

So, Bill, you're coming to Wisconsin in a couple of weeks - have you ever been to Milwaukee?  

What do you expect to find?  And what are your feelings about cheese curds?

I have been to Milwaukee, yes. I used to travel as part of a softball team, and we went to several tournaments in Milwaukee in the 90s. I think of Milwaukee as a Pittsburgh kind of town--nice mix of blue and white collar people, diverse in lots of ways. I admit I have a weakness for midwesterners, so that helps, too... I married a South Dakotan. I think it's that repressed thing that some midwesterners have that I am attracted to. It's yin and yang, you know? I'm the kind of person who has never had a thought I didn't think I ought to express, so I guess midwesterners find me kind of ... amusing? I don't know. I love all things cheese, but I can't say that cheese curds are at the top of my list. I'll eat them, but they aren't my fave. But you melt pretty much any kind of cheese in a nice bowl of chili and I'm a very happy guy.

You must meet a lot of librarians across the country - do you have any impressions of us as a group?  (careful with this one, haha!)

Well that one is easy... I adore librarians. How can you not adore a group of people who are so devoted to books, who are so well read? It's hard not to find something to talk to with any librarian, because, unlike the general public, you can always fall back on, "So, read any good books lately?" They will most certainly have an answer! Joking aside, librarians are my heroes because I believe that young people who read are the solution, and librarians foster that love of reading.

Any tidbits about your books you'd like to share or why librarians should read and share them?

It's always a little awkward for me, that self-promotion thing, but hey, since you asked... For one, they're funny. None of them are "comic novels," but each of them seem to make people laugh a lot. I love laughter through tears, and there are lots of moments like that in my books. I think another thing about my books is that they are a unique combination of accessible and complex, fun and literary. Many readers write me to say that one of my books is their new favorite, and I think a lot of those notes come from kids who wandered onto my book and found it a surprisingly affecting experience that they didn't expect. It's like with Openly Straight and The Porcupine of Truth: you're going along with a fun read and you don't even notice that they've seeped their way into your heart and mind... That's the kind of book I like to read--something that seems like a fun read that winds up opening my heart to a new feeling or my mind to a new idea.

To see all the WLA conference posts:
Stellar School Age Services Preconference
Wednesday Conference Programs
Burr Worzalla Award Winner
Luncheon Speaker Bill Konigsburg
Thursday Youth Events
Konigsburg Book Discussion
Friday Youth Conference Programs
Social Events at WLA

How Rocket Learned to Read Wins Irma Black Award

Tad Hills, the 2011 YSS luncheon speaker at WLA, has won the Irma Black Award for his book "How Rocket Learned to Read"

From SLJ online...
By Rocco Staino April 26, 2011

Tad Hills's How Rocket Learned to Read (Random, 2010), a story about a friendly bird who teaches a white dog with black spots to read, is the winner of the 2011 Irma Simonton Black & James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature.

Sponsored by New York's Bank Street College of Education, in partnership with School Library Journal, the award invites first- and second-graders nationwide to vote for one of four picture books that best uses words and illustrations to tell a story. This year, some 9,550 students from 94 schools participated in the selection process.

With the help of SLJ, the total number of voters increased by almost 300 percent from last year—and the number of participating schools and libraries increased by 800 percent.

"As the weeks went by, the children were really interested in the process and couldn't wait for the next book." says first-time participant Margaret Tice, a school librarian at P.S. 139 in Brooklyn, NY. "The children took the voting very seriously and looked over the books again carefully before voting."

Third- and fourth-grade students at the Bank Street School for Children, which is affiliated with the College of Education, nominated four titles as part of a picture book evaluation curriculum that asked students to critically examine the art and words in picture books to determine whether they were relevant to younger children.

This year's nominees included Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown (Little, Brown, 2010), about a young bear who finds a boy in the woods and decides to keep him as a pet; A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black (S & S, 2010), illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, a book that explains why pigs aren't cut out to march in unison; and Dust Devil by Anne Isaacs (Random, 2010), illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, a companion to Swamp Angel (Dutton, 1994) that has Angelica "Angel" Longrider, the "wildest wildcat in Tennessee," looking for a horse powerful enough to carry her until she wrestles a violent storm.

Rocket beat the others for various reasons, including the fact it accurately portrays that learning to read takes time, said one Bank Street student who advocated for the book. Another said he loved the illustrations, his favorite one shows Rocket writing the ABC's in the snow. One student even compared the book to Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand (Viking, 1936), saying that both characters liked to nap under their favorite tree.

The award will be presented May 19 at the Bank Street College of Education during a ceremony that's open to the public. Perri Klass, medical director of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy organization that works with doctors and nurses to promote reading aloud to young children, will be the keynote speaker.

For more information, check out the award's Facebook page and Twitter feed. The hashtag is #IrmaBlack11.

This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping.