Volume 1, Issue 8 University of Kentucky School of L i b r a r y a n d I n f o r m a ti o n S c i e n c e
April 2012
The McConnell Center for the Study of Youth Literature
2012 McConnell Conference—A Success! Lecture, which had the entire banquet This year’s McConnell Conference began with several breakout sessions we hall laughing! hope you enjoyed, including a On Saturday, we began presentation by Ellen the morning with Jenay Hall on “Bringing author/illustrator Lisa Youth Literature to Desimini, which was Life,” another by Becky standing room only Nelson and Erin Conness before the event began! on “School & Public Afterwards, we Library Collaboration,” separated for breakout and the Caldecott/ sessions with the Newbery and Printz Caldecott/Newbery presentations by UKpresentation, a Meet-the Back Row, left to right: Patsi SLIS graduate students.. Trollinger, Dr. Stephanie Reynolds, and -Author session with Following the breakout Martha Bennett Stiles Row, left to right: Lisa Desimini, M.T. Anderson, and two sessions, M.T. Anderson Front more sessions presented M.T. Anderson, and Jennifer Holm gave the Joy Terhune by local librarians: “Literature and Early Literacy” presented by Mary Landrum and Lowena Latiff, and “Autism in Print” presented by Becky Nelson, Melinda Caldwell, and Jill Barrows. At Saturday’s luncheon, Jennifer Holm shared the inspirations for all of her novels with us—including a picture of her brother that inspired the Squish the Amoeba series, and afterwards, we finished up our breakout sessions with the Printz presentation, Meet-the-Author with Jennifer Holm, Meet-the-Illustrator with Lisa Desimini, and “But Then I’d Have to Kill You: What I Can and Cannot Tell You About Serving on the Newbery Committee” presented by
Peter Howard. We had several signing sessions, and joining us for two of them, in addition to M.T. Anderson, Jennifer Holm, and Lisa Desimini, were local children’s authors Patsi Trollinger with her new book Thrill in the ‘Ville and Martha Bennett Stiles with galley copies of her newest novel Sailing to Freedom which will be available in July. This year was another wonderful Conference for us, and if you couldn’t join us this time, we hope you will be able to in 2013! We’ll have our Save-the-Date flyer out soon!
Table of Contents
McConnell Conference Recap Events Reminder Connecting with Characters Contest Winners! Welcome Mercedes! A Special Thanks April Is… National Poetry Month Roses are Red… Congrats to Our Conference Contest Winners! On the Blog/In the Center About the Center
M.T. Anderson delivering his hilarious lecture.