Myers

OELMA Conference - Friday, October 22, 2010

A  ttending the OELMA conference on Friday was a fun experience with interesting sessions, authors, vendors and more school librarians than I   have    ever seen in one place! Here is a snapshot of my day.

I began my day by attending a session by Elaine Fultz, librarian at Magsig Middle School in Centerville, called "Great Books for Tweens 2010." I found Elaine's session very enjoyable, her book suggestions were interesting, timely, covered a wide variety of genres, and were well thought out. She not only mentioned books for kids, but included a podcast for librarians(and others) called //Text Messages:Recommendations for Adolescent Readers//. //Text Messages// is a monthly podcast from readwritethink.org hosted by Jennifer Buehler, Ph.D., and is focused on providing in-depth book reviews and recommendations for tween and teen readers. Currently there are 31 episodes available at http://www.readwritethink.org. Some of the books Fultz recommended include: //Manny Files// by Christian Burch (realistic, family, humor), //Finding my Place// by Traci Jones (historical fiction, school, African-American), //Charles and Emma// by Debroah Heiligman (biography, science), //Poetry Speaks Who I Am// (poetry with audio CD), and the //Bedeviled// series by Shani Petroff (fantasy, chicklit). She also spoke of a relatively new magazine that is published with tween girls as the target audience, called KiKi. I had the opportunity to look at a sample issue of __KiKi__ while exploring the vendors and found it to be a cute, stylish,glossy, no ads included, magazine that many tween and teen girls will enjoy. Unlike other magazines geared to girls of a similar age, there is no mention of sex and some of the other subject matter that could be a middle school librarian's nightmare!

Overall, I was really glad to have chosen to start my day with this session. As a new LMS student, I am looking for as many resources as I can find, especially when it comes to finding good books for a variety of readers. After this session, I walked away with not only several authors, books, and series suggestions, but a podcast that I think will provide yet another interesting voice in the wild world of books for tweens!

 After spending a few minutes wandering the exhibitor hall, I found my way to author, Chris Crutcher's session, "Turning Real Life into Fiction." Crutcher, author of several books including, //Deadline// and //Angry Management//, presented a highly entertaining talk about how he has turned events that happened in real life into gist for his fiction mill. Crutcher interspersed readings from Deadline and at least one other book into his talk. I found myself laughing out loud at his retelling of events from his childhood, then wiping away tears as he shared the tale (true) of a child's dealings with grief. During his talk he discussed why his books are frequent targets for banning. The belief among some that adolescents cannot handle tough subjects (abuse, poverty, and prejudice), strong language, and homosexuality are all reasons his books are targeted for censorship.

I found Mr. Crutcher quite entertaining and enlightening. I have not read any of his books, but have put them on my must read list and look forward to experiencing his particular brand of fiction. I appreciate that he writes the hard stuff, but uses humor to lighten the tone. Teens often want to read about what they are experiencing in their lives and Chris Crutcher uses his gifts as a writer, educator, and psychologist to get into the heads of his characters and consequently of the teens walking around our schools.

Finally, I enjoyed exploring the wares toted in by a wide variety of vendors. There were publishers, booksellers, hardware and software vendors, equipment for libraries and schools, including SmartBoards and Variquest machines, ebook and audiobook vendors, even a seller of "librarian-wear." I even learned how to use a polyester film to turn paperbacks into hardcovers, and walked away with a book and several samples! (I plan on experimenting with a couple of my much loved books!)

Ultimately, I found the conference quite interesting and would love to continue attending. Opportunities for networking with other school librarians, authors, and professionals in the field are many and there is a vast pool of information to be shared. I particularly appreciated knowing that the presenters for many of the sessions were working school librarians from Ohio. In my opinion this lends credibility to the sessions and the conference overall. Who better to speak to Ohio librarians than other Ohio librarians? We are all in the same boat, facing similar issues, regardless of our geographic location. If you get the opportunity to attend this conference, I highly recommend it!

~Michelle