Your Local Librarians = Awesome. Love Them. Help Them.

I recently attended a great panel organized by my local SCBWI chapter. It comprised two elementary-school librarians, a middle-school librarian, and the collection development specialist for our public library system. They talked about their most popular requests, what makes a good author visit, the importance of reviews, and how authors can help librarians promote literacy...

KIDS' MOST REQUESTED BOOKS
Fiction
manga
supernatural/paranormal romance
bilingual
monsters (silly ones)
super heroes
scary stories
science fiction
fantasy

Nonfiction
how-to sports
manga
physics of roller coasters [!]
Biblical
picture books on character building and social skills
super heroes
biomes
weird facts

AUTHOR VISITS
The middle-school librarian said she schedules few author visits because YA books tend to be long enough that a whole class won't have read them. The elementary librarians do schedule visits, though their money resources differed: one can have 2 authors per year at less than $1,000 per author; the other said her PTA funds author visits well, with several visits per year and up to $2,500 available for each author.

The well-funded librarian said her PTA will purchase books at a discount from publishers for sales and signing at author events. She also said they often plan for the same author to visit several schools while in town.

So what makes a good author visit? Kids love making a connection with an author, so your presentation should be engaging and visually interesting. Kids want to know who you are as a person, so show them -- photos of you as a kid will probably go over well.

Also important: your presentation should be age-appropriate for the group you're visiting (one implication being to have presentations for a range of ages). And kids love to know the Story Behind The Story, so if you have one, share it!

To extend your author visit, the panelists emphasized the importance of your author website. It gives kids a chance to make (and maintain) a personal connection -- especially if your site is interactive.

By the way, author Kate Messner has a great article about using Skype (and other videoconferencing software) for author visits.

REVIEWS: GET THEM
One thing the panelists agreed on was that reviews are essential to acquisition. Librarians simply don't have time to read every kidlit book published, so they depend on reviewers to point them toward quality books. The credence that reviews lend a book comes in handy if/when someone challenges a book in a library collection: all of the panelists said they will point to a positive book review to defend their acquisition of that book.

Some review sources they mentioned:
Voice of Youth Advocates (VoYA)
Library Media Connection (LMC)
The Horn Book
Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

...and blogs.

HOW TO SUPPORT LITERACY AND LIBRARIANS
To the first point -- supporting literacy -- the panelists had one big suggestion: talk to kids about what you're reading. Tell them what you're enjoying, what's exciting or different or funny or topical -- they will be interested!

How to help librarians? Besides pointing kids to good books and being an exemplary visiting author, it really helps to align your presentation to state education standards. (In Texas these are the TEKS.) Doing so will help librarians justify (1) the expense of bringing you in for a visit, and (2) the time away from classroom (curriculum-based) activities their students will take to hear you speak.

Personally, I plan to link to the standards of every state on my author website. You can find these on a state's Department of Education website. The panelists didn't say so, but I bet working up a study guide for each of your presentations would be a great idea; once you have the states' standards bookmarked, it's easy to personalize your study guide for each state/grade level. As the person at Magik who collects teacher feedback on our production study guides, I can tell you it's very helpful to tell teachers what standards any given activity covers. They really appreciate knowing.

Thanks to Noemi Lopez-Rohstall, Jennifer Eckert, Jennifer Smith, and Bev Golden for participating on this panel, and to Catherine Stier for coordinating and moderating it!

**UPDATE** From my mom, a former teacher in Bloomington, IN:

"MCCSC [the local school district], among other drastic things, has proposed cutting all elementary and middle-school librarians. I don't know where this logic came from, I guess the school board thinks all they do is re-shelve books. This just goes to show you how fragile the life of a librarian is, and how undervalued they are, at least here. The vote is Friday. Duane Busick's Facebook page has become an advocacy forum for librarians. His wife is the media specialist at North. He started it last Wednesday when the cuts were announced and it has grown like wildfire since."

If you live in the Bloomington area, or just want to show your support for librarians and everything they do, head on over to Mr. Busick's page and say so! For good measure, here's Adrianna Busick's page -- great profile image (added at top)! And here's the Support Public Education in Monroe County page.

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