We had a great time this year at the American Library Association in Anaheim! It’s been a while since we were out on the West Coast, and it was fun to be able to see old friends who we haven’t seen in a while and make some new ones, too. Attendance was high, enthusiasm was up, and we had a lot of fantastic conversations about both bookish and non-bookish things. A few things I learned from the people I met at ALA, in no particular order:
1. E-books haven’t wiped out hard copies of books yet – especially picture books, and especially in school libraries. “Please don’t stop printing your books,” one school librarian told me. “We can’t do anything with e-books; we need hard copies.”
2. Everyone loves nonfiction these days. Or, if they don’t love it, they’re still looking for more of it, thanks to the new Common Core State Standards.
3. The West Coast equivalent of the Mets/Yankees “Subway Series,” a game between the Angels and the Dodgers, is called a “Freeway Series.” Go figure!
And here are a few photos of what went on in the Lee & Low Booth:
Author/illustrator Christy Hale shows off her forthcoming book, DREAMING UP, during a signing.
Author Guadalupe Garcia McCall chats with a fan during a signing of her upcoming novel, SUMMER OF THE MARIPOSAS
Illustrator Ken Min accepts the APALA Award Honor for his picture book, HOT, HOT ROTI FOR DADA-JI
The Morris Award finalists (from left: Ruta Sepetys, Jenny Hubbard, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, and Rae Carson) gather with the 2012 Morris Award committee
Librarian Alma Ramos-Mcdermott has some lovely photos of the Pura Belpré Celebración, and we’ll be posting more of our own photos soon on our Facebook page. If you’ve posted photos from the conference too, feel free to link to them in the comments!
And if you weren’t able to make it out to California this year or didn’t manage to pick up ARCs at our booth, Summer of the Mariposas and Diverse Energies are both up on Netgalley, so you can still read early copies.
