My first ALA Midwinter-Philadephia, PA, January 2014

  I had the pleasure and honor of being able to attend my first American Library Association (ALA) conference. This conference known as ALA Midwinter, was held in Philadelphia. The conference ran from Thursday-Tuesday, with the bulk of activities from Friday Night-Monday afternoon. This conference is known for having many committee meetings, but there are a lot of other things as well. There are also discussion groups, exhibits and networking activities.

  After a little too eventful train trip to Philadelphia, I arrived at my hotel. Late Friday afternoon I met my friends at an Author Talk for popular children's authors who write non-fiction. I did not realize at the time that one of the authors was future Caldecott Winner, Brian Floca. But more about that, later. The panel of authors included: Brian Floca, Kadir Nelson, Tonya Bolden, Steve Sheinkin and Melissa Sweet. By the way, one of Melissa Sweet's books she illustrated, a Splash of Red: the Life of Horace Pippin, won a few awards too. Each author made a short presentation about their books. Many of them were about their latest books. The most dynamic speaker was Brian Floca, although the others were very good too. I am excited to check out some of their books. I have read Locomotive by Brian Floca and the Martin Luther King biography illustrated by Kadir Nelson, but I want to read some of Melissa Sweet's books and Tonya Bolden's book, Searching for Sarah Rector, the Richest Black Girl in America. That was followed by a visit to the exhibitions. Now to anyone who has attended Book Expo America in NYC, that was small potatoes compared to the treasures found here at this exhibition. The highlight was the yummy appetizers and wine at the Oxford University booth. But in all seriousness, I was able to obtain many advanced reader copies (ARCs) from many well known publishers. There were even authors there to sign their books. The lines were not even that long (compared to the lines at BEA in NYC). It is also a great opportunity to learn what books will be published in 2014. To future first time goers to Midwinter, bring a large sized wheeled bag (or at least one you can transport or do not mind checking if you are going on a plane) or mail back the books to yourself at the post office at the exhibition. Yes, you read this right, they have a post office at the exhibition. Who knew?

   Then I visited the Holiday House party at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Which reminds me I have to mail them a thank you note. Also for other librarians out there who may be reading this post, how do you get on the list for the publisher parties? I met one of their authors who was very nice. Her name was Martha Freeman and I am going to look for some of her books. I saw two librarians I knew from the blogosphere. Marge and Jennifer, (you know who you are), if you are reading this, I enjoyed spending time with you. The publisher also displayed some of their new releases for 2014.

   Food on Friday:  The roast beef cheesesteak sandwich from (Reading Terminal Market) DiNics and the Restaurant week 4 course dinner at Spice 28. Both good.

   Saturday: I got to hear Matthew Quick speak at the ballroom. He was very engaging and funny. He seems very nice. In fact, I attended the exhibition again later that afternoon and got to speak to him and he signed my book. He is one of the nicest people I ever met. There were two great stories from his speech. Comment on this post and I will tell you more. I collected more books at the exhibition and added my name to some raffles.

   Food and entertainment: Chicken Noodle Soup from the Hershel's East Side Deli (Reading Terminal Market) and Parma ham pizza at Field House Sports Bar and Restaurant. Both were good. There were two social/networking events I attended this evening. The first one was the Twitter meetup (I am probably getting the name wrong, so sorry Lauren). However it was a fun event at Club Trilogy. I got to meet some librarians I knew from ALA Think Tank. I am glad I attended it. I liked the EveryLibrary/Mango event (Film Fest/dancing) even though I did not know as many people there. It was a little more difficult to meet people because there were so many there. I am sure many of them were nice but they all knew each other for the most part, so they were not really looking to meet new people. I did meet one nice person Holly. It was nice that it is was a fundraiser for EveryLibrary. Here is their website if you want to know more about them. http://everylibrary.org/.

   Sunday: This was the best day in my opinion because I went to two very different but very relevant children's workshops/discussions. The first one was called Guerilla Storytime. If you follow the blog, Storytime Underground, you can learn more about this interesting and dynamic workshop. I will include the link to their website and you can read their review of the program. http://storytimeunderground.wordpress.com/. I will write a little review on a separate post. I will just say here it is a valuable program to learn new techniques for storytime and to network with other children's librarians. The second children's librarian related workshop was a discussion about play in storytime. The group included notables in Early Childhood Literacy such as: Susan McCleaf Nespeca and Betsy Diamant-Cohen (Mother Goose on the Loose) plus many children's librarians from across the US. Basically the discussion was started by Amanda Roberson. She discussed this issue and talked about how she has seen this implemented. Then the discussion was open to us to share our ideas of how we implemented play in story time. It was interesting to see what others have done and want to do in their programs.

  I also attended two Book Buzz sessions and Library Family Feud. A Book Buzz session is when the publishers discuss upcoming childrens and adult books from their collection. Sometimes they give out ARCs at the event. Library Family Feud was great. There was a library team (librarians from Philadelphia and the Metro Philadelphia area) and authors. The authors/publishers gave out their books to sign after the program. It was a nice treat. The program itself was funny and entertaining. And also very educational.

  Food/entertainment:  For lunch I went with my friends and had a yummy turkey wrap sandwich from Original Turkey at Reading Terminal Market. Basically you cannot go wrong there. The food is good and the prices are reasonable.I got to see my cousin (actually my husband's cousin) and she took me out to a nice dinner at Max Brenners. In case you do not know that place, it is a restaurant started by a chocolatier with a lot of chocolate themed foods including entrees. It was great. It was great to also catch up with her.

  Monday: It was my first time to see the Youth Media Awards (where they give out the Caldecott and Newbery, among other awards). I made sure I got there early and I was able to get a seat in the main ballroom. The room was buzzing with excitement. There were many other first time goers to this event. Some people were talking about possible contenders and winners. Finally the awards were announced. We all cheered. There were some surprises and some ones we almost expected to win. Congratulations to all the winners of the awards.

   I attended two Pop Top (Popular Topics) talks. Basically in these talks an author discusses their upcoming books and then stays to sign them after the program. The two I attended were: Tom Angleberger (Origami Yoda series) and Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules series). In the Tom Angleberger talk we got to make our own Origami Yoda. I met both authors and they were both very nice. I bought the Origami Yoda book and Tom Angleberger signed it. I also finally went to the post office at the Exhibits and got a number of my books boxed and mailed to be sent out to me. Wish I had done this earlier and prevented some back pain (ouch). But this is a great feature of the exhibit. I went around the exhibits one last time. If I had known I would have gone a little earlier. Several publishers were either selling their paperbacks or hardcovers very cheap or giving some books away. I was only able to buy one paperback book for $1, but it was nice.

  Finally I decided to bring my yummy turkey wrap sandwich leftovers to the Uncommons and eat there. It was my curiosity that introduced me to two lovely women with whom I spent most of the afternoon. One woman Ellen had an adorable baby boy. Another woman Chelsea and I went to see the cute baby and were talking with Ellen. We decided to go to the closing event (James McBride and some very talented musicians). It was innovative because it was a reading of James McBride's book mixed with Jazz/Gospel songs that fit the time and sentiments of the book. That gave us just enough time to stop by the Library Camp discussion group. I wish we could have stayed longer but both Chelsea and I had trains back to NYC. However it was interesting to hear some of what the other attendees found interesting at the conference.

  Not much on food. Basically it was just quick food on the run but good stuff.

Here are the links to the places I ate if you are interested:

http://www.readingterminalmarket.org/

http://www.fieldhousephilly.com/

http://maxbrenner.com/

There isn't a website for Spice 28..but here is a link to the Yelp reviews:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/spice-28-philadelphia

Holiday Teen Program-Decorate a Cupcake

  Some of you may have noticed I haven't posted in a while. There were several reasons for this. First of all I was too busy. I was taking on the Teen programs and at first was overwhelmed. Also I had felt bad that many people were not reading my blog. I then realized that I could continue to blog and keep it as a record for myself if others do not read it.

  I wanted to share my fun decorate a cupcake program. I spent a day making cupcakes (using a cupcake mix) for the program. I got pink and green frosting for them to use to decorate. They also used sprinkles and candies. At first, I opened this program to tweens (ages 9-12). We had some extra space, so I let a few children ages 5-8 attend. The children were so creative and enjoyed decorating their cupcakes. I also got them sugar cookies to decorate after the cupcakes. I also had soda for them to drink.

  I was also surprised that there was not as much mess as I had previously expected. I recommend this program as a fun alternative to Gingerbread House decorating. In the future, I would have some tweens help me make the cupcakes.