Winter online course registration now open YALSA opened registration this week for its winter session of online courses. Get teens engaged with reading after taking Booktalks Quick & Simple with Nancy Keane and rev up  your special events with Power Programming for Teens with Amy Alessio.  Classes last four weeks. Pricing starts at $135 for YALSA members (10% discount for groups of 10 or more). Learn more at YALSA’s Online Courses page or by contacting Eve Gaus at egaus@ala.org.

YALSA Events at Midwinter Join us for our two ticketed pre-Midwinter events, Libraries 3.0: Teen Edition and Games, Gadgets and Gurus.  Details and how to register for them after the jump (you can read about everything we have planned for Midwinter Meeting at the YALSA Midwinter Wiki).

Libraries 3.0: Teen Edition: Join YALSA from 9-4:30 p.m on Jan. 15 to learn how you can take advantage of free online tools and social networking options to enhance and expand the services for teens, discover strategies to gain funding for technology initiatives and buy-in from administrators, and hear speakers like Stacy Aldrich (futurist & acting California State Librarian), Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing.net, Little Brother), Laura Pearle, Wendy Stephens, and Buffy Hamilton. Lunch included! Libraries 3.0 costs $195 for YALSA members, $235 for ALA members, and $285 for nonmembers. Full details on this event, and all of YALSA’s plans for Midwinter, are available online at http://bit.ly/yalsamw2010.

Games, Gadgets & Gurus: Join us from 8-10 p.m. on Jan. 15! Spend a fun evening networking with colleagues and learning new skills to take back to your library! Come play games – both board and video; demo gadgets like e-readers, mobile phones, digital audio recorders, video cameras and the latest software; and take advantage of the opportunity chat one-on-one with a tech guru. Other participants include Galaxy Press, PBS’ Digital Nation, and Tutor.com. Mingle with colleagues! Enjoy some refreshments! Play with neat tech toys! And go home with great swag! Tickets cost $40; full details online at http://bit.ly/yalsamw2010.

Sign up for both and save! Tickets for both cost $215 for YALSA members, students and retirees; $255 for ALA members; $300 for nonmembers. Register through Midwinter registration or, if you only want to attend these two events, by downloading this form (PDF; skip section I) and following the directions at the YALSA wiki. Want to add these events to an existing registration? You can add events two ways: (1) By phone: Call ALA Registration at 1-800-974-3084 and ask to add a workshop to your existing registration.; (2) Online: Add an event to your existing registration by clicking on this link. Use your log in and password to access your existing Midwinter registration and add events in the “Your Events” section (screen 6). Then simply check out and pay for the events you’ve added.

Apply for $40K in awards & grants from YALSA YALSA members can apply for more than $40,000 in grants and awards! This year, we will award up the YALSA/Baker & Taylor Conference Grants, theYALSA/BWI Collection Development Grants, the YALSA/Greenwood Publishing Group Service to Young Adults Award, the MAE Award for Best Literature Program for Teens, the Frances Henne/YALSA/VOYA Research Grant, and the Great Books Giveaway. Applications for all YALSA member awards are due by Dec. 1. Details on all the awards and grants are available online at www.ala.org/yalsa/awards&grants.

Connect with YALSA members for First Wednesdays YALSA’s new networking initiative launches Dec. 2! Use YALSA’s informal monthly online chats as a centerpiece for face-to-face networking in your area. Find out how to get involved on YALSA’s First Wednesdays page.

YALSA’s Lit Blog Manager Search extended Interested in editing YALSA’s new blog, focused exclusively on teen literature? We’re extending the application period until Nov. 30! Find out what we’re looking for and how to apply here.

Apply for a YA Lit Symposium travel stipend Join YALSA in 2010 for the Young Adult Literature Symposium, Nov. 5-7, 2010, in Albuquerque, N.M, with a theme  of “Beyond Good Intentions: Teens, Literature and Diversity.” We’re also giving away two stipends to offset travel costs, one for someone whose worked directly with teens in a library setting for ten years or less and one for a student in an ALA-accredited MLS program (you must be enrolled in an MLS program at the start of the symposium); stipend applications are due by Jan. 4, 2010. Details on both are available at www.ala.org/yalitsymposium.

Teen Tech Week registration open Register now for Teen Tech Week 2010! This year’s theme is Learn Create Share @ your library. Registration gives you access to this year’s theme logo. Teen Tech Week will be March 7-13. Visit the Teen Tech Week website for activity ideas, planning and publicity resources, and more!

That’s it for this week’s update! To stay up to date on the latest from the YALSA Office, sign up to follow YALSA on Twitter or become a fan of YALSA on Facebook!

When I walked in my library this morning, I had no internet. No intranet, even–I couldn’t load the high school home page at all.

On another morning this might have sent me into a panic, but I already knew I had a light schedule for the day and wouldn’t be giving out many library passes because today’s an advisory day for frosh and sophomores, so I headed over to the front office, remembering that one of our secretaries was out for the day and her counterpart might need a hand.

Half an hour later, I returned to find that one of our paras had graciously stepped up and made a pencil and paper list of passes for juniors and seniors as well as one for a handful of book checkouts.

Low tech? Absolutely. Just as effective in a pinch? You bet!

Technology is absolutely woven into my daily life. I spend most of the day at work in front of a computer, whether I’m checking the library’s Google calendar or renewing a book or asking colleagues reader’s advisory questions via Twitter. But the more I think about it, the more I realize I still have a lot of low-tech tasks in my life–for better and for worse.

On the annoying-but-perhaps-necessary side, there are things like hall passes (written by hand) and purchase orders (multiple carbons for each order).

But then there are the helpful things–notes to myself, post-its on books or magazines I leave in teacher mailboxes, handwritten lists of call numbers when I’m pulling reserve items, a bulletin board with clippings from school sporting events or plays.

Could I be using technology for these tasks?

Sure, I could use email or Google docs to leave notes for myself. I could send emails to teachers instead of using post-its. I could print out call number ranges and write about recent events on the library blog instead of sitting at the paper cutter in the morning and carefully stapling football articles to construction paper.

But do I really want technology for these tasks?

So often we engage in the Big Picture debates when it comes to technology and libraries. How do print books stack up to e-readers? What role does social networking play in learning and teaching? Do teens need libraries to be full of shelves or monitors?

But the big picture is made up of so many little pictures. By saving ourselves time and energy, are we losing out on face time with colleagues–or teens? I communicate with teachers a lot by phone or email, but I’m thrilled when they come down to the library in person. Just yesterday one came by to say she’d read my interview in the student paper and thought I might be interested in a movie that mentions The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. How much nicer to get a DVD handed to me than an email suggesting I add it to my Netflix queue!

So what low-tech tasks are still a part of your daily life? Which ones do you treasure, and what kind of carbon copies do you wish would catch up to the times?

As I have visited other libraries and talked to many librarians across the country I can’t help but feel very thankful to live in Idaho. Why is that you may ask? Because Idaho partners!

I’m amazed at the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICFL) and all of the partnerships that it has and shares with all of the libraries across the state and the partnerships that my library here in Rexburg, Idaho has. I would like to share a few examples.

Idaho Family Read week falls in November. This year the theme is “Idaho is Wild About Reading.” The ICFL formed a partnership with the Be Outside organization. This partnership allowed all the libraries across the state to receive or have access to wonderful materials for their program. There were posters, bookmarks, handouts, and many great program ideas that came to any library who wanted them. In my eyes, everyone involved benefited greatly from this partnership.

The other partnership I wanted to talk about was the partnership between our library and the state Juvenile Correction Center (JCC) that is located near our town. The last few years we have received a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to put on The Big Read. In our advertising we attracted the attention of a patron who was interested in the program for herself. In talking with her we learned that she is an instructor at the JCC. We told her we would love to include her students. She was very excited and told the other teachers who quickly wanted to be a part of the program as well. One thing I learned is that the teens who are out there love to read. It is in a lot of ways their escape from their world and their only involvement with the outside world. In my mind, who better to partner with than the library? “…May I add how grateful I am to have gotten involved in that conversation! It has been an incredibly rich experience for all those involved out here!” said Stacey Bergeson, instructor at the JCC. We were able to involve them in our program and have plans to keep the partnership going and hopefully help some of these teens find a better life.

So in the end I realize that there are many other partnerships we have here in Idaho that really allow us to reach out. I wish I was able to share the all! How many partnerships can you have? You will only know if you will try. Go ahead, ask! That is how you find out.

Ray Lusk
YALSA Member
Partnerships Advocating for Teens Committee Member

For the past few months, YALSA has been holding informal online chats in ALA Connect on the first Wednesday of each month. Beginning in December, we’d like to encourage YALSA members to connect with each other in person as well as online.

We’re thrilled to announce First Wednesdays with YALSA — a chance for our members to use our monthly chats as a tool for gathering with other members in their area to socialize, exchange ideas, network, and exchange news and tips about YALSA and the profession as a whole.

The next chat (focusing on teens and technology) takes place Dec. 2 – read on to find out how you can be part of First Wednesdays with YALSA!

Begin by hosting an event. Use the tips from this WikiHow manual or from YALSA’s First Wednesdays tip sheet to start planning. Find a place to host the event, make sure you have Internet access, and start inviting YALSA colleagues. List your event on the YALSA Wiki.

Invite YA library workers in your area! Think about who you’d like to attend:  school librarians, public library staff, grad students, YALSA members, etc. YALSA can help you find members in your area to invite. Contact the YALSA Office at yalsa@ala.org or 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4390, and ask for a list of members in your area. Be sure to specify if you’d like email addresses with your request.

Distribute YALSA stuff. YALSA has a new page of downloadable flyers, handouts, and other tools that you can print out and share at your event. Members can also order up to 100 copies of most of these handouts and other swag. Visit www.ala.org/yalsa/handouts for more details.

Hold your event. Get there early, make a point to welcome everyone personally, and make sure to answer questions about YALSA (or write them down to send to the office, if you don’t know the answers!). Test your Internet access beforehand and make sure you can log in to YALSA’s ALA Connect space.  When you join the chat, let us know about your event! Find more tips on YALSA’s First Wednesdays tip sheet.

Future planning. Take notes and let us know what worked and what didn’t at yalsa@ala.org. Talk to attendees and see if you can make this a rotating event, with a different person chairing each month’s session.

Questions? Contact us at yalsa@ala.org!

Being a student member of ALA and YALSA I have learned a few things about being a librarian that can’t be taught in school:

1. Being a librarian requires a love of learning that never fades
2. Librarians are innovative, always coming up with new and creative ways to reach teens
3. Librarians love to share their ideas on wikis, blogs, via Twitter and Facebook, at conferences, and in podcasts

It is for all of these reasons that there is nothing else I would rather do than be a librarian. And it is also for these reasons that libraries and librarians really have the opportunity to inspire teens this Teen Tech Week.

We on the Teen Tech Week committee have been doing our best to provide librarians with the tools necessary to make this Teen Tech Week successful. However, in keeping with what librarians do best, we want to encourage all of you to share your programming ideas on the Teen Tech Week 2010 Wiki so other librarians can learn from them and use them to engage with and encourage the teens in their communities to Learn Create Share this Teen Tech Week. These can be programs you’ve done throughout the year that were successful or programs you are planning to try during Teen Tech Week. You can also post your thoughts and ideas for promoting Teen Tech week.

Don’t forget to register for Teen Teen Tech Week 2010. Doing so will give you access to this year’s awesome logo.

Fairy tale retellings often feel like a dime a dozen.  Whether they’re modernized or grounded in the past, gender flipped or boundaries blurred, the heart of the fairy tale must remain.  Otherwise, the retelling feels cold and disconnected, lacking all the magic of the original story.  But sometimes, a retelling gives the fairy tale a new complexity and shading.

Beauty
Robin McKinley
Published 1978

The youngest daughter of a shipping merchant, Beauty is happiest with books and horses.  Neither of those care how you look, and Beauty knows she’s plain, especially compared to her beautiful older sisters.  But when their father has a catastrophic business failure, the whole family must leave the city and move to a small village.  Everyone works hard to survive, in the little house by the dark enchanted forest.  No one should go into this forest, but during a snowstorm, while taking a shortcut, their father gets lost in the woods.  In the middle of the forest, he finds a magnificent castle.  He is served by invisible servants who provide clothing, food, a warm bed.  But at the end of his visit, he decides to pick a single rose for Beauty.  And that one action will change Beauty’s life.  For in exchange for the rose, the Beast that lives in the castle demands that either her father, or one of his daughters, come to live with him.  And Beauty cannot let her father do this.  Staying with the Beast, Beauty is exposed to a life of luxury, of learning.  And although she comes to have a friendship with the Beast, she wishes that he wouldn’t ask her the same question after dinner every night:  “Will you marry me, Beauty?”  She can only say no to him, and she can tell how much it hurts him.  It’s only after disaster and heartbreak that Beauty is able to give him a different answer.

McKinley’s first novel takes the time to lay the backstory of Beauty and her family.  While it is only forty pages before the traditional beginning of the story–the father’s encounter with the Beast–those forty pages does much to establish not just Beauty, but her whole family.  We see that Beauty’s sisters are not stereotyped as beautiful but shallow and mean; in fact, they’re both kind, generous women, very willing to help shoulder the household tasks that the three girls have to perform.  We learn that Beauty’s father is kind and devoted to his family, although perhaps a bit too fond of business risks.  Even characters that are briefly seen are sketched vividly.

An intriguing aspect of McKinley’s retelling is that Beauty’s nickname is an ironic one.  Beauty describes herself as plain, with light brown hair and brown eyes.  Compared to Grace and Hope, her beautiful sisters, Beauty knows that she will have to make the most of her other talents.  And while her nickname stings at times, at least it’s better than her given name of Honour.  While her sisters reassure her that she’s just a late bloomer, Beauty doesn’t believe them.  Once she lives with the Beast, she dismisses his compliments as well.  It’s not until the end of the novel, when Beauty can see herself in a mirror for the first time in years, that she realizes that they were right: she is beautiful.  Because she never considered herself as pretty, Beauty instead focused on her brains because it allowed her an escape from the superficial world of the city.  Once the family moved to the village, she worked so hard that she was too tired for reading, yet this was also another skill that she developed.  Beauty, by the time she goes to stay with the Beast, is an intelligent, sensitive young woman, unafraid of hard work.  It’s just as much these qualities as her appearance that makes the Beast fall in love with her.  And it proves that Beauty’s nickname reflects more than her physical aspects, but her character.

Touches of the fantastic highlight the world of the Beast.  There are magic roses that are in perfect bloom for a month, and rose seeds that can grow and bloom a week after being planted.  There are invisible servants that serve every wish of the Beast or anyone in the castle.  And there is a very large library, that contains many books: some of them not yet published.  For someone like Beauty, a bookworm denied, the library holds great appeal, and not just for the books for the future.  As she is able to read and study, she has the chance to develop her mind even more.  It’s the library that allows Beauty and the Beast to start building their friendship.

A retelling that will strike familiar chords with teens, thanks to the use of similar ideas in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, McKinley’s additions to the original story are welcome ones.  By removing the unrealistic sweetness of the fairy tale’s heroine, Beauty features a strong, well-rounded young woman, one who is able to see past the exterior of the Beast and fall in love with his soul.

This was the first time for me that a library conference was held in the city where I work. As a public librarian it was a great experience to hear the perspective from school librarians and network with a lot of great colleagues. Though the conference was a blend of academic and public librarians as well.

YALSA’s Happy Hour led to networking with local school librarians and the pre-conference session on Libraries that Game was excellent. Brian Mayer and Christopher Harris’ book on board games aligned with the curriculum, Libraries Got Game couldn’t have had better timing.

Hopefully YALSA blog readers have had a chance to visit SLJ blogs and AASL’s blog to grab excerpts from the conference. If you attended AASL, feel free to leave a comment or post about your experience.

Register for YALSA’s pre-Midwinter events Registration is now open for YALSA’s pre-Midwinter events! Sign up for the Midwinter Institute, “Libraries 3.0: Teen Edition” (featuring Cory Doctorow and others) and Midwinter Social Event, ”Games, Gadgets & Gurus.” Register for both and save! Register through Midwinter registration or, if you only want to attend these two events, by downloading this form (PDF; skip section I) and following the directions at the YALSA wiki. Want to add these events to an existing registration? You can add events two ways: (1) By phone: Call ALA Registration at 1-800-974-3084 and ask to add a workshop to your existing registration.; (2) Online: Add an event to your existing registration by clicking on this link. Use your log in and password to access your existing Midwinter registration and add events in the “Your Events” section (screen 6). Then simply check out and pay for the events you’ve added. You can see all of YALSA’s plans for Midwinter at the YALSA Midwinter Wiki, http://bit.ly/yalsamw2010.

Apply for $40K in awards & grants from YALSA YALSA members can apply for more than $40,000 in grants and awards! This year, we will award up the YALSA/Baker & Taylor Conference Grants, theYALSA/BWI Collection Development Grants, the YALSA/Greenwood Publishing Group Service to Young Adults Award, the MAE Award for Best Literature Program for Teens, the Frances Henne/YALSA/VOYA Research Grant, and the Great Books Giveaway. Applications for all YALSA member awards are due by Dec. 1. Details on all the awards and grants are available online at www.ala.org/yalsa/awards&grants.

After the jump, apply to manage YALSA’s new blog,  apply for YA Lit Symposium Stipend, and register for Teen Tech Week!

YALSA’s Lit Blog Manager Search Extended! Interested in editing YALSA’s new blog, focused exclusively on teen literature? We’re extending the application period until Nov. 30! Find out what we’re looking for and how to apply here.

Apply for a YA Lit Symposium travel stipend! Join YALSA in 2010 for the Young Adult Literature Symposium, Nov. 5-7, 2010, in Albuquerque, N.M, with a theme  of “Beyond Good Intentions: Teens, Literature and Diversity.” We’re also giving away two stipends to offset travel costs, one for someone whose worked directly with teens in a library setting for ten years or less and one for a student in an ALA-accredited MLS program (you must be enrolled in an MLS program at the start of the symposium); stipend applications are due by Jan. 4, 2010. Details on both are available at www.ala.org/yalitsymposium.

Teen Tech Week registration open! Register now for Teen Tech Week 2010! This year’s theme is Learn Create Share @ your library. Registration gives you access to this year’s theme logo. Teen Tech Week will be March 7-13. Visit the Teen Tech Week website for activity ideas, planning and publicity resources, and more!

That’s it for this week’s update! To stay up to date on the latest from the YALSA Office, sign up to follow YALSA on Twitter or become a fan of YALSA on Facebook!

In this YALSA Podcast,  Seattle librarian Laurie Amster-Burton, a 2009 Baker & Taylor Conference Grant recipient,  shares her experience at ALA Annual, including attending events, going to the exhibits, meeting teens and other YALSA members, and more.

Listen

In addition to the Baker & Taylor grants, YALSA gives more than $40,000 in grants and awards to its members each year. Learn more and apply by Dec. 1 at www.ala.org/yalsa/awards&grants.

You can also download this podcast, and others, at YALSA’s Podcasts site.

Resources applicable for school and public libraries to celebrate Teen Tech Week this March (7-13) can be found here.

Learn Create Share @ Your Library is the theme for this year’s upcoming Teen Tech Week. New resources and programming ideas can be found on the site as well as previous year’s sites.

Your own ideas are encouraged to be added to YALSA’s wiki for Teen Tech Week. The more we can all contribute, chances are the ideas will reflect the diversity of resources and creativity of ideas we all have.

Don’t forget to register for Teen Tech Week which allows you access to the fun and inspiring logo!