Here’s a little taste of something that isn’t on the conference floor and will be here for you the next time you come to Chicago:
My co-worker and I are attending the conference together (We’re both first-timers) and the first thing I dragged her to was the amazing new American Writers Museum that just opened this past month.
The first room is the Children’s Literature room which obviously sent me into fits of delight.
It focuses on a few different books such as Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte’s Web, Little Women and Langston Hughes’s The Dream Keeper.
All of the exhibits are interactive and feature a wide range of writers and writing. You are encouraged to slide, spin and touch everything in the different rooms. I am encouraged by the diversity of writers featured in the exhibits as well as the focus on different types of writing. From speeches to song lyrics, it is all there.
My favorite part is the room of typewriters. I had only used one once before and found it to be quite delightful. It has me wondering how many I could find and use for a writing event at my library…
The reading room focuses on the different ways that people read, from magazines to digital books and the different ways they find books such as bookstores and (obviously) libraries.
That isn’t all the museum holds but I’ll leave the rest for you to discover. It was an excellent experience to kick off my first ALA conference and I’m excited to head out and see what adventures await me today.