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This year’s conference was such a wonderful experience where I was exposed to so many amazing new books and authors, as well as incredible resources from other librarians around the state. Below find a rundown of the important information and key resources from each of the seven sessions I attended.

Session 1: Fireside Chat with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

• How do you work within and grapple with a system built on systemic racism?

• Brendan–Naive to do anything by oneself to grapple with systemic racism and a broken system. Walk into the fight arm and arm. Patience and kindness and grace when making mistakes. Really important to find your people, nothing should be done in isolation. First step in everything is to make sure you are doing it as a collective. As a group can address issues as they come up. Operating collectively allows for slow, cumbersome, bureaucratic change and effects. Lean into the fact that people have done it before us to give us hope and inspiration. Always keep the kids in mind. Always keep iin mind–the fight is to keep the people in mind and not lose sight of individuals.

• Jason– Fish don’t know it’s in water. Never thought about it until older–it’s just the reality. Fortunate enough to move around and go places where mother and friends would never go and has learned that it is important to remind yourself that racism is systemic and his 1:1 Interactions have been human. Important to say that because it’s easy for guys to go searching for the guilt we believe we should hold. Doesn’t mean you shouldn't hold yourself accountable–it's’ complicated, provides extra work, and soul searching.

• Brendan–every single class he teaches at Seton Hall the students are eager to have stories that reflect their own existence in life, from gender though race. The stories can be any genre–the call isn’t about subject matter but inclusion of all of humanity in its stories. This is also true with younger kids.Have to put the people first before the subject. White kids are not often to wrestle with their white identity in any way, the factors that shape masculinity and the pressures that are there to create how they adopt that. Trying to talk about the identity elements that aren’t examined enough and the examined life is worth living. In the world of iniquity the privilege is we are never asked to reflect on our identity so we should put the identity first and foremost in the story.

• Jason–in the prison the young men are reading romance novels because they project their life into emotion. Everybody deserves everything and kids are constantly changing and growing–that’s the beauty of childhood–they don't have to be bogged down by expectation.Young people have the capacity for it all and they can desire it all at any moment in their lives.

• How do you make decisions about writing novels in verse vs. prose?

• Jason– Story is funny because sometimes you think it is one thing until it isn’t. It comes down to having a bag of tricks. It;s all about play--it’s fun and games, being in a sandbox and seeing what else they let him get away with. It’s about how he wants the story to feel–he looks at it all like music.

• How do you have that grasp of dialogue to keep it fresh?

• Jason–about The Ingredients story–It is and isn’t a story about a bunch of boys imagining the greatest sandwich they could ever eat. The narrative is mostly them talking. How he gets the dialogue that way–that’s him, its how he talks with him and his friends. He loves intergenerational friendships and relationships so he listens to how all people of different ages interact with each other and themselves.You have to be careful because it is easy to slip into buffoonery, especially when you are dealing with cultural texture. How do we walk the line of saying this is textured and authentic without being laughed at or clownish. When he reads it it needs to sound like music and if it doesnt he has gone too far or held back.

• Should librarians only focus on reading books as reading?

• Jason–was a teacher for one year and a student would cuss him out every day because Jason asked him to read and one day he realized it was because the student couldn’t read. We make a grave mistake–books don’t have to be the only option. There are so many other options of reading–sit down and read and discuss what Playboi Carti is saying, that counts as reading. Audiobooks count. We have to get away from the fact that books are the only way. Newspapers count, fashion magazines count, we need to understand that we need them to be literate. The majority of incarcerated people are illiterate or under literate. If you don't have a relationship with language you cant express yourself, think critically, decode the language of yourself. This directly correlates to the ability for individuals to be physically free. You people are trying to connect to getting money so we need to tell the truths about how you need to be able to read a contract.

• Do you write to try and court controversy?

• Brendan–When they wrote all american boys they decided if someone won’t publish it they would put it for free. Neither likes to read reviews. If I feel inspired to write something, and I’m doing the work. Really important to place the onus of the job on myself. If I failed then I failed.

• Jason–I don’t run toward it. Not that much of a contrarian. The first draft of 24 Seconds from Now….was much more controversial, but he has editors. The editors are the business people who are also looking out for them. Never running toward the fire like it’s valiant to be burned by being banned.

• What are you reading right now?

• Brendan– The Witch’s Boy by Kelly Barnhill and in the adult space reading a lot about Boston history–bus riots, other moments.

• Jason–Amber McBride has a new book coming out and all of Roald Dahl’s stories because he is trying to write a collection in that tradition because black heroes never get to be weird.

Session 2: Author panel with Kalynn Bayron, Julie Berry, and Pablo Cartaya

• If Looks Could Kill by Julie Berry: is about Medusa stalking Jack the Ripper in the Gilded Age Bowery in NYC. Coming out in September. She wanted to find a baddie who deserved to have vengeance come down on him and during research she found that a credible suspect for Jack the Ripper fled London after the last killing and ended up in the Bowery and he became the perfect baddie who deserves whatever he gets.

• Make me a Monster by Kaylynn Bayron: a new horror/romance that comes out in September. Takes place in Ithaca and is about Itaca’s youngest certified mortuary assistant who works in the funeral home her parents own. She is very much in love with her boyfriend Noah until tragedy befalls her and her family. Then she uncovers devastating secrets about the family and the family business which means the dead don’t always stay dead. It is a Frankenstein inspired story in a contemporary setting with strong gothic elements. About navigating grief, consent, asking what you would and wouldn't do for the people you love the most.

• Pablo Cartaya: His 8th grade son was given a prompt to write a free verse poem with a setting he likes. He read us the poem his son wrote. He wanted to share it because there are kids in our libraries that have that poet in them and often you will never know ti but for a prompt or encouragement.

• What are you proud about with your books?

• Julie: The characters in her new book took her by surprise. She wanted young people both living in the Bowery and removed from it. She wanted young people who would come to the Bowery but not live there and she has two girls who are there with the salvation army as volunteers and she has two girls who are trapped into prostitution. What she loves the most is the two main characters Tabitha and Pearl who do not get alone and clash utterly–one is very religiously minded and is over the top zealous and the other is like ew can we just help people. They build such a beautiful friendship with such horrific fights until they find common ground and love. There is a sister bond of friendship and people overcoming huge philosophical chasms of difference to come to love each other.

• Kalynn: I center queer black girls in all of my work. I think that it's something that I didn’t have a lot of representation in the books I was reading as a 15-16 year old girl. Writes towards that for her own healing. Writing about queer black families and girls but about us in spaces we don't get to see ourselves like fantasy, royalty, monster hunters, vampires, etc. Proud of work I get to do in this speculative space. It’s about being present in that space with historically marginalized identities which is a great and inspiring place to write and create in.

• Question for Pablo: did you go on the road trip when you wrote a book about a road trip?

• Speaking to the voice of the middle schooler. One of the great compliments I received was from a principal after one of his shows and they said, “he speaks middle school.” I find that to be such an honor because I am getting out of their way as an author and I let the characters talk, breathe, live. It shows I respect the audience I am writing for, I listen to them, talk to them, and guide them along which gives the kids more openness to listen. I am writing with them–not writing to them or for them. I am letting them dictate the terms of the narrative.

• Talking about music.

• Kalynn creates and posts a spotify playlist for each book of what she listens to when she is writing it and publishes them on her website. She went to college for music and studied opera. Music is a part of everything I do from the writing process to references in the books. When I go on school visits the kids like the playlists.

• Julie: The audiobook of the Lovely War has all the ragtime music embedded into it. In the new book music isn’t as big a part of the story. There’s at least two ways to reach kids where they are: one is to be able to speak in their language, have their voice, inhabit them but there is also another way which is sharing your most authentic self with kids and that authenticity and truth is its own lingua franca. I feel if I tell the truth, it will be authentic, emotional. At the end of the day the heart of any book out there is our take on the world, our actual values, how to be human.. Insight you have on the human condition is what makes a book resonant and vulnerable.If you are real with kids about who you actually are they don't require you to be who they are.

• Pablo–you can write from an authentic place but if you don't do the work to make it feel authentic and make it feel like you're not talking to a young reader or telling them this is what you should be thinking, then it works. But a lot of adult writers tend to use their adult voices to protect the children, you put your adult self in front of it. Don’t tell a reader “this is what you should be thinking.” A lot of times there is a reticence to proceed because they are protecting and sheltering the kid. We want to stay away from the parent in the room trying to dictate the terms of the kid’s story.

• Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett is a great new series that is part fantasy and part police procedural.

Session 3: Fireside Chat with Ann M. Martin

• What inspired you to write The Babysitter’s Club? I always enjoyed babysitting and then my editor at scholastic was thinking of starting a series about girls who have a business called the babysitters club and that was as much as she told me. I had a lot of experiences to draw on so I came up with the idea of the club and wanted to be able to tell the stories about this group of girls who were very different but worked well together and could all bring their various strengths to the club. Always enjoyed writing about a big cast of characters from the kids, families, town, etc.

• My overall favorite book is A Corner of the Universe. It is the most personal of all the books and based on my family and loosely on an incident in my family. My favorite The Babysitter’s Club book is Kristy's Great Idea.

• How do you feel about the impact you have had on readers? It is incredibly gratifying and a little overwhelming. None of us expected the series to have the legs it has and to reach multiple generations of readers and take forms like graphic novel versions. It’s incredibly gratifying, especially because reading was so important to me growing up. We went to the library all the time and it was such an important part of my life.

• If you could have dinner with any characters from your books? I think I would like to have dinner with Hattie and Adam from A Corner of the Universe. I would like to have dinner with a dog someday so Rain from Rain Reign and if I could have dinner with a Babysitter’s Club member it would be Kritsy because she was everything I always wanted to be when I was growing up. I would love to have the spark and confidence Kristy has.

• Any advice to writers? For people already writing I recommend connecting to SCBWI which is the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. For people getting started, write about the things that interest you and what I always tell kids is to become familiar with all different forms of writing and try to decide what you like and don’t like and why or why not you do/don’t like it.

• Lisa Library’s is an organization that friends and I started in 1990 in memory of a publishing colleague named Lisa who was a huge champion of cauldron’s books. They collect brand new children’s books from publishers, agents, authors, and illustrators and connect with organizations who need books for kids in underserved communities, the foster care system, kids who never had a chance to own a book before. We can tailor a donation of new books to whatever the organization needs.

• Do you have anything in the works? I am semi-retired but there are a few things I can’t talk about yet but I can say t The Babysitter’s Club and Little Sister books will continue to come out in graphic editions and original editions and the doll people will also be coming out as a graphic novel.

• She finished Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World and is now reading Paul Rudnick’s What is Wrong with You?

Session 4: AASL and You!

• Presented by Amanda Kordeliski

• Highly encourage people to attend national conference in September.

• Vision: Every school librarian is a leader and every learner has a school librarian.

• The AASL empowers leaders to transform teaching and learning

• The library standards came out in 2018. There is a second edition of the standards book coming out that will be available in October. No significant changes to the standards, just tweaking.

• The AASL member forum is an online forum where any AASL member can post and get advice, have questions answers, etc at www.ala.org/aasl/connect

• Knowledge Quest is the journal included with AASL membership. School Library Research is the peer reviewed academic journal that is open source and can be accessed from the website at www.ala.org/aasl/slr

• AASL sends out a Friday Forecast every week with updates including free online workshops at www.ala.org/aal/enews

• Promotional events include the different heritage months and are great resources for curating books to recommend to students at www.ala.org/aasl/promo. Also includes activities and lesson plans.

• AASL 2024 Best Tools for Teaching and Learning

• Book Creator, ClassHook, Copyright & Creativity, Drift for Teachers, EarSketch, Khan Academy Kids, KidLitTV, Masters of Tradition, MusiQuest, New American History, Parlay Ideas, PebbleGo, Pixton, Seesaw, Sora, TeachingBooks, Wild Classroom, Write the World

• School library videos: www.ala.org/aasl/playlist/admin. Created for school administrators who may be unfamiliar with how school libraries work, the AASL standards, and the ways the library and librarian are the hub and the heart of the school. Almost all videos are less than 3 minutes. The people in the videos are not school librarians–they are administrators.

• There are recordings from previous AASL national conferences available on www.elearning.ala.org

• There is a blog called Knowledge Quest available at www.knowledgequest.aasl.org. You can apply to be a continual writer or you can just write a one-off blog post and submit it.

• AASL Gatherings are a collective way for all types of school librarians to share resources and ideas at www.ala.org/aasl/gathering

• AASL sets national standards and they have been adopted across multiple states as the information literacy standards

• There are many publications available, several from New York Librarians and there are 6-7 publications coming out in the fall. All of them connect to the standards, have scaffolds, lesson plans, language for advocacy, etc.

• 2024 Emerging Leaders Project have people attacking individual standards at standards.aasl.org/collaborators. You can download and print them. Gives a lot of guidance and language around each standard.

• AASL offers professional development at www.elearning.ala.org

• Standards Portal is a separate website at www.standards.aasl.org. It is not behind a log-in of any type.

• ALA has an Office of Intellectual Freedom at www.ala.org/oif filled with staff and resources to help you walk through any issues with books or challenges that arise. You can report censorship at www.ala.org/challengereporting and find information about banned books at www.ala.org/bbooks

• The Freedom to Read Foundation and the Merritt Fund are the activist arms that will help you if you lose your job due to censorship/book bans/etc www.ftrf.org

• Unite Against Book bans does not have ALA branding on it at www.uniteagainstbookbans.org and they have book resumes that are not behind a paywall. Action Toolkits have great graphics you can download

Session 5: Fireside Chat with Pablo Cartaya

• The importance of unbottling yourself and taking a moment for yourself–The Hero’s Guide to Summer Vacation is very much a book about a kid that comes to a point of saying no i'm going to take my moment. It’s an “exhale novel” of characters going through really hard things they have kept inside

• Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish the kid is searching for his dad and gets to a mountaintop and is so frustrated by holding everything in that he gets to a mountaintop and he just yells and the echoes fall through the hills and engulf the entire area because they kid has been going through so much that he finally lets go

• You do you on your own time when you're ready and don’t let anybody dictate the terms of how you feel about yourself. The day that you find your power how much power you really have is going to be the day that those idiots don't make a difference anymore and it doesn't bother you. It isn’t until you get to claim your power to say no i'm not going to do that, i'm actually really sad, i'm actually really happy and I don't care what you think, I love musicals

• Trying to claim your identity as a Cuban American but also as passing asd a white man–You end up trying to become anything anybody sees you as or you hide it as much as you can. Was told as an actor to change his name because he didn't look Cuban enough so he did and then his dad was upset at him. His dad was tortured and imprisoned in Cuba and exiled. He wrote a letter to his grandfather to apologize for failing and he realized he was named after his father’s grandfather to carry on the legacy. He realized the importance of his name and it became the catalyst to reclaim that space. He needs to feel how he feels about his culture, his family, his community. The perception you are supposed to look like is something out upon us and we accept it and we take it. It applies to kids we classify as “jocks” or a “ditz” and kids start to form ideas about themselves that external forces are putting upon them. You get to claim what you want for yourself, you get to claim who you are, you get to claim who you love, you get to claim who you want to be in this world and the external factors you need to keep at bay and that is when you truly free yourself. Growing up you put up barriers against yourself.

• Presenting to kids without a slideshow–it’s a 45 minute stand up. The intentionality of how I talk has added a performative level but adding more education models to it. My presentation has gotten better–activerly putting in terms and educational modes that are woven into fun stories, embarrassing stories, talking about my crush. The show is very tied to my story, why I wrote the books I write, narrative around identity claiming your space with anecdotal funny stories. Able to adjust to the needs of the audience.

• It’s ok to be different people in different spaces. We become versions of ourselves and that’s not a bad thing. But they can't be suppressed. It;s about claiming power for yourself, we contain multiple things, we contain multitudes. I want kids to know there are layers to their lives–they aren’t one thing.

Session 6: Talking Books with Mychal Threets

• Kindergarteners are walking intrusive thoughts

• Louis Sachar Sideways Stories from Wayside School and Holes are some of his favorite books. Loves to introduce books to students that are turned into movies because kids don’t often know they were books first. Great way to hook kids into reading and is the power of books.

• The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

• Another way to hook kids is to emphasize that all reading is reading,including graphic novels and comic books. Reina Telgemeier and Scottt McCloud The Cartoonists Club

• Weido by Tony Weaver Jr it’s all about his life as a weirdo and it helps kids to see themselves

• There Was a Party for Langston by Jason Reynolds

• When talking about books ask kids many questions–what they are reading, what they want to hear next, don’t be afraid to read picture books such as Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems outloud to high schoolers. High schoolers are still kids and they like to be cherished and have read aloud time.

• Important to talk to kids and show them that they all belong in books–talk to kids who are autistic, dyslexic, add/adhd. Feelings aren't too big for them.

• Talking books is talking about library joy and embracing it at all times. There is no perfect way to do a book talk.

• Talking to kids and people about his favorite books from when he was a kid and a teenager–Beverly Cleary, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Bud Not Buddy is the first time he saw himself in the character and in the cover

• Chris Crutcher is favorite author as a teen–loved Whale Talk good for introducing racism, bullying, topics of diversity.

• Jean Ferris Love Among the Walnuts zany kind of one flew over the cuckoo's nest for the young adult crowd

• Loves biographies and memoirs, and thrillers, esp C.J. Tudor, Lucy Foley

Session 7: Author Panel with Loree Griffin Burns, Doogie Horner, and Mylisa Larsen

• Loree: has a PhD in biochemistry and writes science books for kids. She also has an MFA and teaches writing.

• Mylisa: has a wonderful array of picture books and middle grade novels. Great ability to write for middle graders in ways they understand.

• Doogie: is the author and illustrator of the Invisible Boy series. As a writer and illustrator is able to show the entire creative process. His message is that you don’t have to be perfect at the thing you do to create.

• Loree: One Long Line is the latest title. First book in a series. It’s an easy nonfiction chapter book series and each volume tells an actual science story that happens but is very narrative driven. About caterpillars who live in large sibling groups but whenever they leave their nest to feed they travel in a long single line head to tail. It’s about a man who saw that behavior in his backyard and wonders why and how they do that and started watching them as an experiment to understand the how and the why. He learned a lot and then 40 years later another scientist repeated the experiments but with new knowledge that required us to change what we think. It’s about science as one long line of learning.

• Mylisa: Quagmire Tiarello Couldn’t Be Better is about the one kid in turnaround that didn't really get to tell his story because he’s not one of the jazz kids and he has a very different life than some of the others. He’s a punk and is that kid that you ask if you have to make everything harder for yourself all the time but once you get to know his story he is one of your favorite kids ever. Playing through the Turnaround is about a group of kids and their safe spot at school is their ensemble jazz lab and they hear through the grapeline about budget cuts and the jazz lab is on the chopping block. They start talking to other kids who have other things that are going to be cut. It’s an exploration of the problem of us not listening to kids as adults and the system makes it tough for us to do what we need to listen to them. Told from multiple points of view. Stories about young people learning that you can find where the levers of power actually are and go there and have a voice, About activism and involvement and having a voice at a scale that kids can perfectly understand. Interesting touch point between kid concerns and adult concerns. Tailor made for the kids starting to notice that the world doesn’t work exactly how it’s been said.

• Doogie: The Adventures of Invisible Boy is a middle grade graphic novel series about a young boy named Stanley and his family moves to a new town and is so anxious about making new friends he wishes he could disappear and thanks to an accident at a science fair he gets his wish and then discovers that being invisible might not be as great as he thought. Funny, fast paced adventure that celebrates the true superpower of childhood chaos and creativity. Book 2 he learns he can turn the invisibility on and off and some burglars rob Stanley’s dad’s store so they are going to have to sell their house and downsize so he has to use his super power to save the family home. When he was writing he was thinking about his son and writing the kind of comic books his son was writing–simple, fun, good natured adventure where things work out, no huge major problems. To kids little problems feel big so he tried to make comics that had low stakes that felt big to kids that kids could relate to that were a little more realistic than Dogman but still as fun and funny and easy to understand as Dogman.

SLS Resources Tips and Tricks has been discontinued in favor of a weekly bulletin called WSWHE Wisdom. You can find previous editions of WSWHE Wisdom on our LibGuide.

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• The New York State Library and Office of Early Learning are excited to host a live webinar event for library staff focused on supporting the State’s latest literacy initiatives on Thursday, May 22, 2025, from 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
• This session will offer insights on research-based literacy practices, strategies for enhancing the home-school connection, and methods to involve families in creating a robust literacy foundation for their children.
• For more information on this event, please visit the New York State Library website.
• Interested parties can register for the Libraries Supporting Best Practices webinar here.
• Please contact Sharon Phillips with any questions or suggestions at Sharon.Phillips@nysed.gov

Kerrie Burch, School Library System Director

Karin Howansky, School Library Media Specialist

Laurie Doyle, Information Processing Specialist

Deb Massa, Information Processing Specialist