MLA Conference

The MLA conference created a nice opportunity to attend the following sessions: The General Session: Paul Holdengraber, NYPL, shared his insights about how he found a niche in extremely competitive market The opening sessions are very crowded - so - one must get there early.

The two children's/YA author sessions featured Wong Herbert Yee for the Blue Crab Award (an award given by the CSD Division of MLA) and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (sponsored by Palinet and OCLC.) Both were quite interesting. Wong talked about the production of his book and Naylor talked about how her work was based on her real life.

The star of the presentation sessions was What's New in Young Adult Literature because Jennifer Rothschild, PG Co., had lots of handouts from YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) of ALA. She tlked a lot about YALSA's actvities as well as publications.

Partner Perfect: Connecting Libraries and Schools Through Career and Technology Education presented the Carroll Co. group. Nice presentation. However, we in Wash Co have been doing that with our Career Technology School for years. I may ask our group if they would like to present at next year's conference. My last session was with the Talk About Teens: Teen Interest Group with Stefan Freed. Stefan was ahead of the time with the "teen interest" growth because he was one of the first (if not the first) to really pay attention to that population and share that interest with the rest of us in meetings and the PSD sub-group, Teen Interest Group. He was also instrumental in first bringing Patrick Jones to Maryland.

Visiting vendors was interesting - not a huge amount specifically for Children's/YA but I came away with a box of free books. Frances was embarrased with how "bold" I was with asking for things! She was a delight to travel with and we even stopped in Cambridge for the local fried chicken, soft shell crabs and biscuits!