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This past Wednesday, August 15, School Library Journal held their annual online conference for FREE!!!!!! There were so many choices for selection.  I found myself literally virtually attending double sessions, even though I would be able to go back and catch the video.  There was just something about being there LIVE that brought the energy!

The day’s events opened with none other than the fabulous author of “Poet X” Elizabeth Acevedo who literally has the power to send me to war, if necessary, for she simply fires her audience up with what some say is passion.  I call it the eloquence of a lived experience that’s been silenced for so long that it comes out kicking…and she did not let us down!”

She knocked it out of the ballpark to those that caught her opening address which expressed the needs for representation not only in the books we read, but literally in the classrooms of K-12 and Higher Education.  She mentioned the absence of voice in today’s curriculum-chase to master profit-driven standardized tests, which has resulted in the absence of opportunities to exercise student voice.   Her comments on the need to address POCs history and cultural differences which causes us to see with a totally difference gaze than those from the dominant society were so spot on, I felt like I was listening to a testimony in church.

While I’ve gushed on the opening session, I still must say one of the sessions that stood out for me was the Readers’ Advisory session which featured the best advisory praxis for the year from five public and school librarians around the country.  I can’t think of which one I liked the most. There was the social justice presentation on “Reading Woke” presented by a school librarian and another  that matched hip hop and rap turns to books, based on how well the lyrical content matched up with context of the novel.

The presentation at the top is a rendering of the slides from the live presentation for all five librarians in the session.”