This was my 10th or 11th ALAN workshop. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I found myself more engaged during the author panels this year than in the past (I usually have to get up and move around constantly or have worked at the book exchange table for the past several years). It was really nice to just sit and listen. There was a great mix of super stars, rising stars, and brand new authors. I was seated near the back and so enjoyed looking across the sea of readers surrounded by stacks of books as I listened to the authors. Kudos to Laura Renzi for an amazing ALAN workshop! 
 
Dr. Marshall A. George

​For me, the theme of this year’s ALAN Workshop is the importance of recognizing and honoring the humanity around us. This means, as many of the speakers, from Jason Reynolds and Brenden Kiely to Steve Sheinkin to Jewell Parker Rhodes, so eloquently reminded us, that we have to be willing to have difficult conversations and to push ourselves out of our comfort zones in order to ensure a more just and free world for everyone. As educators and as humans, we owe it to society, to our students, and to ourselves to engage in the topics that we might rather ignore, and I’m thankful to ALAN for reminding me of this and for providing the tools to help me do this.
​
Terri Suico

"Each year, just days before we celebrate Thanksgiving with our families, related by special bonds or blood, I feel blessed to celebrate another thanksgiving with my ALAN family, related by amazing books. I thank authors, publishers, their representatives, and agents whose gifts bring together teachers, scholars, librarians, students, and close friends."
 
"More than once, the line for autographing at the ALAN Booth was so long that passersby asked, "Who's  ALAN?" or "What books has ALAN published?"
 
This next one isn't an ALAN anecdote exactly, but another interesting thing happened to me. During NCTE, a friend told me that Sharon Draper was signing her newest(?) book,Stella by Starlight (2015), at the Simon and Schuster booth. My grandmother's name was Stella, and I was hoping to get a book for our eight year old granddaughter with a title including her great- great grandmother's first name. 
 
When I left the ALAN booth, I found a very long line. The S&S rep told that I was the end of the line, and that they had run out of Stella by Starlight, but she could give me Draper's Out of My Mind instead. We had used Out of My Mind at the YSU English Festival in 2013 for 7th to 9th graders, so I would have to give the book with the condition that it might be too old for our Sophia. 
 
Wrong. The day before Thanksgiving, I reluctantly offered Sophia the "substitute" Out of My Mind, and she squealed with delight: that was the book her third grade teacher had just started reading to her class, and they were only two chapters into it. And, when she saw that Sharon had autographed it to her, her eyes widened and her mouth opened in awe. For the next few days, I was able to watch the I-Pad set aside, displaced by a paperback book.
 
Of the thousands of book titles in that convention hall from all those publishers, whodathought?
 
Rick Williams

I am displaying All American Boys -- but I had on the cart behind me, all the books I got at ALAN.  One of the most powerful parts of ALAN for me was the opening with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely sharing their stories of police brutality coming from their perspectives of being 'Black and White.'  They reinforced the sad reality of racial divide that continues to plague us when we can't be open to others, can't appreciate the richness of diversity, and can't imagine their reality."

Mary Warner

The most amazing part of the ALAN workshop for me was interacting with Chris Crutcher and Laurie Halse Anderson individually at the reception on Sunday night and then hearing them speak together to all of us on Tuesday morning. Their words of encouragement about the book I'm writing on mental illness in young adult literature were just what I needed to hear as an author and presenter on the topic.

During the Tuesday session, both Laurie and Chris spoke about the power of literature to help youth experience empathy.  Laurie talked about how our brains' "mirror neurons" can be developed and strengthened easiest during childhood and and how reading books can help individuals relate more fully to their peers' experiences as well as their own. This reinforced my choice to include young adult literature in my college humanities courses (gen ed) as well as those focused on English Education. 

Chris's ability to speak from his experiences as a teacher, therapist, and child protection advocate also centered a great deal on helping students develop empathy. He also spoke to the power of books' cultural and contextual relevance to students' reading practices. I volunteer with a non-profit organization that cares for troubled children, and Chris's insight reminded me of the why I spend time gathering YA books to share with the youth who reside at Teaching Family Homes of Upper Michigan. Regardless of why they are not living at home, they need books - to help them relate more successfully to others, to develop empathy, and to better understand themselves. 
 
Seeing Chris and Laurie helped me as a person, a teacher, a researcher/author, and a community volunteer. I am grateful to ALAN for providing me with the opportunity to grow. 
 
Kia Jane Richmond

One of my favorite things about ALAN is "The Box" (of course), but I love getting the books into the hands of students even more. Even though I'm not in a classroom right now, I still have friends who are, so I sent out a tweet on Monday offering some of the books to former students. All the books were claimed by the end of the day, and made their way to my former students before Thanksgiving break. As I make my way through the box this December, I will continue sending more books out and into the hands of students. 
 
Anthony Celaya

The ALAN 2017 Workshop was once again a chance to re-connect with old friends and find new ones...colleagues, authors, publishers, and just book lovers in general..
 
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, the Opening Speakers, spoke openly and honestly - along with Chris Crutcher and Laurie Halse Anderson - about the need to diversify ALAN's reach - the need to bring people of diverse backgrounds into our workshop - so that individuals who represent our diverse communities - are represented in our community of readers and teachers and leaders of young adult books....  
 
Speaker after speaker called for 'authentic voices' to populate the works of young adult books - so that each read becomes a rallying cry for what is good and true and honest in the lives of young people.
 
I was reminded continually of the need for fresh voices - voices of young people, born today and tomorrow - so they can be the everyone 'call their own' - as each generation becomes the voice of what matters most in the lives of young people who are living on the edge of adulthood..
 
I was also reminded of the generous gift of friendship - of all those ALAN Members - who give so warmly of themselves - to each other and to our community of readers and teachers and authors - so that all kids - real kids and 'kids at heart' - can find books that speak- seemingly - just to them.
 
I applaud Laura Renzi, and her partner-in-crime, Mark Letcher for their remarkable and steadfast leadership to make this year's ALAN Workshop 2017 - an event to be remembered in mind and photos, forever...
 
Finally, I also applaud Lois Stover - this year's Ted Hipple 2017 Award winner - for her service and scholarship to the ALAN and the young adult literature community at large.

"A big congrats to Sean Connors - this year's ALAN Review Journal Article of the Year Award winner - for his outstanding scholarship....."
 
Jeff Kaplan

At my first session of NCTE '17, I had my mind cracked open by Renee Watson, an author whose work was unfamilair to me before the conference. During a panel on sexuality, power, and rape culture, Renee Watson said that students deserve to read about a character "who isn't a mirror, but a window." This simple statement was the beginning of my questioning of my current and future curriculum. I then scoured the program for Watson's name and was thrilled to hear her speak on her writing process three more times, the final time at ALAN. This year's panels were all moving and jump starting, but Watson really spurred my own reflection. I can't wait to share Piecing Me Together with my students.
​
Kate Youngblood

Before attending #ALAN17, I knew the familiar joy of reuniting with admired colleagues, the anticipation of picking up my ALAN box, the beauty of stacks and stacks of popular YA titles waiting to be signed, the inspiration from panels and keynotes featuring my favorite writers.  But this year, I discovered that I didn't know as many of the authors as in the past, and a busy fall teaching load had kept me from fully familiarizing myself with their work. Walking into the authors' cocktail reception, I scanned the room, noticing bright red "AUTHOR" buttons matched with unfamiliar faces.  And with that, I set my introvert self aside and charged ahead, introducing myself and seizing each opportunity to learn as much as possible about each "new-to-me" author I met.  Talking to Amy Reed about the plot of The Nowhere Girls, I learned that we shared a favorite book, E. K. Johnston's Exit, Pursued by a Bear, which addresses similar themes of empowering and supporting victims of sexual assault. Shaka Sengor and I spoke about Writing my Wrongs and about how he'll be visiting west Michigan this Spring; we exchanged contact information so that we could touch base then. I had a chance to tell Kathleen Glasgow that my daughter had forbidden me from reading Girl in Pieces--that she'd wanted to keep her reading experience all to herself--to which Kathleen said reassuringly, "That's ok.  Let it be hers," and then told me about her newest writing project (which I'll stealthily read before my daughter).  Of course, the reception also allowed me to meet up with authors I did know--Julie Murphy, Nina LaCour, Brendan Kiely, and Chris Crutcher--but my greatest joy came from meeting "new to me" authors, and conversing about their work, their inspiration, and their writing process. Over the course of the evening, one final joy became ever more apparent:  young adult authors work without ceasing to reach, and save, young readers. I can't wait to meet more remarkable authors--familiar and unfamiliar--at #ALAN18.
​
 Dr. Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil

The ALAN workshop was its usual celebration of YA books and authors.  From the opening keynote by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely reminding us of the racial inequities in our society, to sessions by Joseph Bruchac and others celebrating diversity, to a compelling conversation between Laurie Halse Anderson and Chris Crutcher on Tuesday discussing our attitudes toward sex and sexual orientation, the workshop affirmed its theme:  "Opening Minds, Changing Hearts, and Giving Voice to Adolescence."  I'm halfway through Chris Crutcher's new book, Losers Bracket(due out April 2018).  Vintage Crutcher, filled with adolescent issues and sharp dialogue, with a female protagonist this time.  
 
Gary Salvner

​I presented a round table discussion at NCTE and shared how my work with students in Arlington, Virginia has been enhanced by YAL, in particular "Aristotle and Dante" by Ben Saenz.
 
As a classroom teacher with a diverse student population, I rely heavily on materials which are of high interest.  Students often check out when the material doesn’t reflect their own experiences and background.  Dante and Aristotle are both boys who are of mixed identities, gay and latino.  A significant number of my students are openly gay or have someone in their lives who has suffered discrimination.  Reaching out to the students after reading a chapter and connecting the text to self has been very useful to build language skills in Fluent Spanish I and II.  Spanish speakers in particular talk about their lives and their role as a change agent under the current political climate.  There’s sharing, discussions, but also a larger project where I have the students pick a scene in the book to recreate.  As shared in my round table, students bring in clay, design backgrounds to later animate with an app on their phone, such as iMovie.  While touching, emotionally important and relevant to their lives, the outcome of enhanced language performance has been measured using standards based assessments.  The standardized method of testing verified to my county that significant learning is taking place within the classroom at my school.  
 
I hope to one day do more research into the effects of YAL on Fluent Spanish Speakers classes, which traditionally have few YAL titles listed in the official school curriculum.  
 
As a side note, I’ve had many ESOL students from other classes come to me after hearing that I have cool books.  I’ve shared Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Beetles and Angels by Asgedom, various titles by Meg Medina just to name a few.  Students are anxiously awaiting the sequel to Ari and Dante and can’t get enough of their images in Tumblr.  Fan art is a beautiful thing.   
 
Books change lives, keep kids in school, and over time, can make the world a better place! 
 
Thank you!
 
Travis Reyes

My highlight at this year's ALAN Workshop was Jason Reynold's taking hundreds of book-loving teachers to task. We have handcuffed our students of color, forced them face down in our stifling curriculum, in our tightly-regulated classrooms, in the panopticons of our schools. We have not only let students of color tumble through the yawning cracks of our educational system, we have been complicit in their disappearances into the school-to-prison pipeline. It's past time to give them back their agency, to get our knees of their backs, to throw away our handcuffs. The writing and reading they engage in must be theirs, not ours.
 
Crag Hill

I was privileged to introduce?  I truly loved both The Mosaic by Nina Berkhout, and Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough; both are debut novels for these authors, although Nina has written a number of volumes of poetry and Joy has written plays.  Both books have language that sings, both create a sense of time and place, both give us characters who stick with me as a reader because of their strength, their ability to carry on in the face of very difficult circumstances, their voice.  The environments in which the main characters operate are quite different.  The setting for Mosaic is a contemporary mid-west in which the landscape is dotted with missile silos, while the setting for Blood, Water, Paint is Rome in the early 1600s; in each case, the environment functions as a character, shaping the lives of those who inhabit it.  In both, the main characters are artists; in both titles, the authors take us, are readers - as well as the characters - into a realm that is about creation and beauty in spite of the destruction and violence surrounding them.  In Blood Water Paint, the main character, painter Artemisia Gentileschi, resolves to show the world "what a woman can do;" at the end of The Mosaic, the call goes out from photographer Twyla to all of us to "take in this still life."  Both authors and their characters show us the power of art to respond to the challenges of life, to live it fully, and to find beauty in the face of ugliness. 
​
Lois Stover

Meeting author Nina LaCour was definitely a highlight of this year's ALAN workshop. I have read two of her books -- Hold Still and her most recent book We Are Okay. All of her books are haunting, quiet, and beautiful. The books are elegantly and thoughtfully written exposing us, as readers, to the grittier side of the human condition, and calling us to take notice of our inner, private voices. Not only are Ms. LaCour's books lovely, so is she. I am glad I was able to meet and talk to one of my favorite current YA novelists, at the ALAN reception, and then hear her talk about her work during the workshop. Nowhere else can you mingle with English teacher heroes and heroines, i.e. book authors, quite like you can at ALAN. 
 
Michelle Falter

I really appreciated Jason Reynolds and Brenden Kiely’s sharing of their stories with us in Monday morning’s keynote, particularly Jason’s admonition that “brutality is about more than death.”  He then challenged us to recognize the role we play in that brutality against our students of color.  “This is what love looks like,” Jason told the audience. “Our honesty is what love looks like.”
 
Katie Cramer

​Highlights for me were meeting Nic Stone. I book talked Dear Martin today as a book that is on my To Read list (and I have a copy for my classroom library) and it's been not just checked out, but wait-listed about 10 students deep! The panels about identity, culture, and voice were inspiring to me as a teacher. I was excited to see so many authors of color there doing the hard work of writing their truths so students like mine can have "mirror" texts.
 
Katie Sluiter

Now that ALAN ’17 is over, I have had a few moments to breathe and reflect. Being able to work with the publishers and authors has been a highlight of my professional career. There is nothing as exciting as seeing all that planning come to life, and I couldn’t be more proud of everyone that volunteered to moderate panels and introduce authors. It was an amazing time!
 
There were so many wonderful moments, and I don’t think I could choose just one as my favorite. There were three very powerful moments for me. It began with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s  (All American Boys) keynote Monday morning. They began a conversation that is so needed in our classrooms and communities. My favorite quote was from Jason, “you can’t be more loyal to your fears than you are to your futures” This conversation continued with Jewell Parker Rhodes (Ghost Boys), Nic Stone (Dear Martin), and Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give) – powerful, honest, and truthful.  The third moment was a planned conversation between Chris Crutcher (Loser’s Bracket) and Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak). I knew when we planned this conversation that it would be entertaining, but when Chris and Laurie decided to talk about sex, and sexual harassment, and the lack of conversations that we have with adolescents about relationships and feelings.
 
These three moments were just a small snapshot of the amazing conversations that were started at ALAN ’17. The challenge was raised to all attendees to take these conversations back to their schools, their libraries, and their communities. Thank you to everyone who made ALAN ’17 one of the best moments of my life.
​
Laura Renzi

Every year I am glad I attended. I hope to see you there next year. If you can't wait a year and you want to continue the conversation. Come see us at the YA Summit in Las Vegas. Details here:  https://tinyurl.com/y82htjn5
Registration will be open soon. 

Until next week.

What does a dramatic performance by a 13-year-old have to do with English Language Arts or with Young Adult literature, for that matter?

Too often, classroom English instruction is removed from the concerns and activities of the adolescents we are trying to teach. We know that many of our students are carrying baggage right below the surface.  Byron Stringer, the director of the Toe Tag Monologues would symbolically call this baggage a toe tag. Some toe tags can be removed, but others are the real markers that police, EMTs, and coroners place on the toes of those adolescents who die from shooting, bully, drunk drive, abuse, and suicide.

The classic texts are rife with the very issues that modern students face: racism, broken homes, betrayal, substance abuse, and greed. Name a vice in a piece of classic literature, and it exists today.  Many of use believe that culturally responsive pedagogy is important in the classroom. Equally important are activities that are empathetic, that break down the emotional barriers that might keep us from really connecting with students who needs us to support them through the actual life threatening challenges of their lives.

R. Byron Stringer theatrical troupe address through Toe Tag Monologues. Through assemblies at schools these young performers bring awareness to the issues that effect the lives of students. In most cases, after a school performance students approach the actors and share with them that one of the stories they just heard is their stories. Byron hears reports for teachers, school counselors, and administrators indicate an increased number of students who open up to them and their friends.

Our goal is to promote the idea that students in classroom settings can write and perform their own monologues. In addition, we promote the ideas that the topics of these monologues exist in young adult literature as well as in the classics. If the issue of body image is to close to a student, then perhaps reading a YA novel that centers on the issue might help them write a monologue in the voice of the character. 

This is, of course, not new; however it seems that in the age of constant testing we have neglected drama as way to let students practice speaking and listening through performance. Come watch and listen to these performers as we explore strategies to include more writing that moves to performance in the classroom.

Using YA to find and define an Identity.

Nuts and Bolts for helping the Novice Teacher

Remixing and Going Digital!

If you follow research surrounding Young Adult literature, you have heard people talk about a "youth lens." Of course, any time you try to reduce a concept to only two words, it is problematic. Sophia Sarigianides, Rob Petrone, and Mark Lewis have been writing articles and presenting on this issue for at least five years. In addition, they were guest editor for an issue of the English Journal (Vol. 104 I. 3) with the theme of Re-thinking “Adolescence” to Re-imagine English. 

Their thinking and hard work has paid some dividends. They have a book published by NCTE that will help people contextualize this framework. It is my pleasure to offer them some space to discuss the book. I hope that you will add it to your collection.

If we are honest, for a long time in our careers as secondary English teachers and now as English teacher educators, each of us has experienced a great deal of ambivalence reading and teaching Young Adult Literature (YAL). On the one hand, we saw how excited our secondary students would get when they were able to read books with protagonists who resembled them in terms of age and circumstances. Often, we found this engagement with contemporary YAL particularly significant for students of color, LGBTQ+ youth, immigrant youth, and poor students for whom the secondary literary canon was especially marginalizing and violent due to its implicit, taken-for-granted White, nationalist, middle class, heteronormative hegemony. For many of these students, YAL offered an opportunity within the official curriculum to read books that reflected their own positionalities in a way that much of the required curriculum did not.
 
And yet, each of us continued to be troubled by YAL as we watched our students reading it. When we began working with future English teachers through courses on YAL, our uncertainties began to sharpen in focus. It was in those classes that many of our students, in their discussions of which YA texts they would teach, how they would teach them and why, would consistently rely upon ideas embedded within broader cultural norms about teenagers as justification for their pedagogical reasoning. Most of these assumptions about youth are rooted in developmentalism and have become so commonplace and normative that they were unremarkable to us at first as well. “Well, we all know that teenagers are (insert stereotype), so therefore, this would really be a book they could relate to.” “Teenagers are just too impressionable at that age; therefore, I wouldn’t allow them to read this book in my class.” As our experiences in these classes developed, so too did our understandings of our mixed feelings and apprehensions of YAL: it was the way in which youth were so easily and unproblematically known, universalized, and normalized as homogeneous. Folks in our classes would never speak about other groups of people in the ways we spoke about youth.

​The book presents our attempt to demonstrate how a reconfiguration of youth and adolescence can fundamentally shift literacy teaching practices, especially related to YAL. Building on the central assumption that adolescence is a social construct, we examine a range of ways this premise potentially opens up curriculum, instruction, and assessment for English teachers and their students.
 
Most pertinent for YAL teachers, we add to our existing writing on YAL with a chapter in this book on critical readings of a group of YA fiction around key assumptions of adolescence.  The chapter looks at how these novels work within and/or against dominant conceptions of adolescence, knowing that often texts do both, sometimes simultaneously. To get at these broader questions, we utilize four typical taken-for-granted assumptions of adolescence as discussed by Nancy Lesko (2012) in her foundational analysis of adolescence, Act Your Age: A cultural construction of adolescence:
 
1) youth can be signified by their specific age;
 
2) youth are intent on peer-orientations over relations with younger children or adults;
 
3) youth are governed by their hormones; and
 
4) youth experience a slow, coming of age into adulthood.
 
For each of these assumptions, we examine 2-3 well-known YA texts to reveal the ways they are perpetuating and/or subverting dominant conceptions of adolescence.
 
For instance, in the section where we discuss age, we offer readers an approach to examining how age functions in the novel. So often in our culture, age and our ideas attached to age go completely unnoticed as a construct, often taken as common sense. And yet such beliefs wield tremendous power to shape our consciousness about and behaviors in relation to others. Therefore, we encourage as one way to unearth assumptions of adolescence the concept of age. Based upon two overriding questions—How does age function in the novel? and How does age as used in the novel render adolescence, young adult characters, adults in the book, and the possibiltlies for these characters, including their interactions?—we propose the following questions as a way to start the analysis:

• Does the book reference the protagonist’s or other youths’ ages?
• Does the book refer to adults’ ages or just those of youth?

• Does the book represent the character in ways that contradict your expectations of age?
• How does the text use age in characterization and plot development?
• Does the book use age to attach social expectations of youth—and adults—to that

character? If so, to what effects?

In the chapter, we offer brief analyses on representations of age within Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s 2012 award-winning novel, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and Francesca Lia Block’s 1989 novella, Weetzie Bat. We demonstrate  how age can offer a useful entry point to examine how YA texts draw upon, reify, and/or subvert normative understandings of adolescence and youth.
 
Similar to age, the chapter then moves through Lesko’s other three concepts, offering short analyses of other popular YA texts, such as Sherman Alexie’s (2007) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Walter Dean Myers’s (1999) Monster. Our hope with this chapter is to bring more attention to how these stories send messages about adolescence/ts to youth and adults. These four entry points offer teachers and students opportunities to challenge and critique stereotypes that may exist in these texts; something we believe is imperative for all students but especially for those who are already othered by dominant social discourses and institutions, like schools. It is our belief, too, that not only does this approach open up more critical vantage points to engage YAL but it also opens up more stimulation and perhaps even more fun.  We hope the book does some introduction of critical views of adolescence for those of you for whom this is new material. We also hope the book extends thinking around adolescence and texts about and for youth for those of you doing the work already.

References
 
Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little Brown
Books.
Block, F.L. (1989). Weetzie bat. New York: HarperCollins.
Lesko, N. (2012). Act your age! A cultural construction of adolescence (2nd ed.). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Myers, W.D. (1999). Monster. New York: HarperCollins.
Sáenz, B.A. (2012) Aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe. New York: Simon &
Schuster.

Thanks for following. Until next week.

One of the things I really like about hosting this blog is the opportunity to introduce new authors. Here I go again.

A couple of months ago, Laura Renzi, the current ALAN President, asked me to review a book for this year’s ALAN Workshop. She asked me to review a first novel by a new writer. Well, not a new writer, but a new novelist. I am not sure, but I don’t think Laura knew that Aaron Levy and I have known each other for over ten years. Many of the ALAN members know Aaron as a university professor and a playwright. He is the author of the young adult play, Pizza with Shrimp on Top.  
I already had a copy of Aaron’s novel and he and I had talked about highlighting it on Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday at some point. Now is the right time as we get ready to attend NCTE and ALAN.

Blood Don’t Like is a wonderful new addition to YA coming of age fiction. Aaron was kind enough to make sure I had a copy. I have to say, not all book covers draw me into the book. In this case, however, the cover was clearly a teaser for the action and the trouble to come. For the plot of the book, Aaron draws on his Jewish heritage to heighten the tension of this coming of age story. I was impressed how the book draws on the themes of religion, bullying, war, violence, and family. As you can tell, I am trying to figure out how to talk about this book in thirty seconds. This is probably impossible. In my mind, this book deserves more than 30 seconds. It deserves the time you need to read it.

You should follow Aaron on Facebook and on twitter @AaronHLevy. His book getting quite of bit of play in Georgia, where he lives. My guess, is that he would be willing to visit schools in a lot of places.

Below, you can find Aaron’s answers to my interview questions. If you are at NCTE and ALAN, I am sure that Aaron would be willing to answer more questions.

Thanks for following. If you would like to contribute a post or you know an author I should cover, please contact me at steven.bickmore@unlv.edu

A couple of weeks ago, a friend was contemplating the amount of negative information that flows through the various avenues of social media. He suggested that more of us should focus on positive messages. He issued the challenge to his friends to post a brief comment about a person who does positive work five times a week for a year. I thought about it and I realized I can participate. I decided to focus on people who write in some way connected to Education. My first focus will be young adult writers, but I will also post about academic writers as well. I won't only focus on YA authors, or living authors for that matter. If you are interested in helping let me know. If you can think of an author or writer that I should highlight let me know. I will post it on Facebook on Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday Page and I will also list it on a new page within Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday Webpage. You can find it here. This has been interesting so far. I am taking the opportunity to look at writers who are well established and new authors who are doing positive work through their writing.  Once again, looking at the body of young adult literature reminds me of the wonderful people involved with this large community. I feel fortunate to associate with so many great people. The authors below are the first five.

I am attending and presenting at the 2017 KidLitCon in Hershey, PA. It is this Friday and Saturday November 3-4. I am trying to learn a bit more about blogging. The Conference in in its seventh year and I am looking forward to meeting a host of librarians and readers who blog about young adult literature. I will be presenting with teacher and Nerdy Book Club Blogger, Cindy Minnich and Media Speicalist, LeighWoznick. This years organizer has put together a great program and a remarkable number of authors will be presenting. You can read the program and wish you were here as well. Some of the authors that will be there are in the gallery below.

The NCTE Conference is just around the corner. I hope you are going. The blog will post more about events at the conference over the next two weeks. I hope you are planning to attend. I want to point you to two session: One with Benjamin Alire Saienz and one with R Byron Stringer and his troupe of actors with the Toe Tag Monologues.

First, who doesn't want to be in a session with Benjamin Alire Saienz. He will be the keynote speaker for the session and then we will have a number of roundtable sessions with experts talking about "Recapturing the YA Voice in Literature: Culture, Family, and Identity." 

Second, when I arrived in Las Vegas. I meet a great educator. R. Byron Stringer is a retired police officer who is spending his retirement helping kids. He is the founder of the Vision Theatrical Foundation. As part of that foundation, he writes, produces school and community performances through Toe Tag Monologues. Each monologue discusses an issue that kids face that can cause death if they don't get help. We know these issues, body image, bullying, gang violence, domestic violence, and sexual orientation. I invite you to attend our session and look for impromtu performances as the young toe tag actors help us see the possibilities of including drama in classrooms so that kids can write, act, and discuss these issues in an open and safe environment.

Thanks for following and there will be more next week.