{"id":12046,"date":"2015-12-07T00:32:14","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T05:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=12046"},"modified":"2015-12-07T00:52:49","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T05:52:49","slug":"on-the-road-again-reaching-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/on-the-road-again-reaching-out\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Road Again, Reaching Out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow . . . [and] no one could wait for the holidays to start.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

–J.K. Rowling,\u00a0Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The writing’s on the wall at the Central Children’s Library in Denver!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the days get shorter and colder in the northern hemisphere and the holidays arrive, it’s been a busy season!<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago I was in Denver (where it’s already snowed about as much as at Hogwarts) reaching out to those gathered for the LENA Research Foundation conference<\/a> (#lena2015), the theme of which was \u201cParents Have the Power: Solving the \u2018early catastrophe\u2019 through science and parental investment.\u201d It was an ideal opportunity to share the work ALSC is doing with Babies Need Words Every Day<\/a> and in our partnership with PLA on Every Child Ready to Read<\/a>, and I joined a panel with a pediatrician, health policy professor, and early learning innovator to discuss what each of us can bring to the work of making sure children are ready to read. Dr. Dana Suskind<\/a>, author of Thirty Million Words: Building a Child\u2019s Brain<\/em>, gave the conference keynote, and we also heard from the Campaign for Grade Level Reading<\/a>; Kara Dukakis, Director of Too Small to Fail<\/a>; and Carine Risley, Library Services Manager at San Mateo County Library<\/a>\u00a0in California. I was delighted to be joined by children\u2019s librarians from across Colorado, and of course it\u2019s always fun to visit the Denver Public Library<\/a>, where I saw many piles of cardboard (have you read Amy Seto Forrester’s recent<\/span> post<\/a> yet?) and many, many instances of kids talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing\u2014thanks Ann Schwab, Rachel Hartman, and Lauren Dennis! (You can see all of the conference presentations here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The greeting at the Bangor airport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m most grateful to ALSC member Louise Capizzo (@Lcapizzo<\/span><\/a>) for inviting me to be a part of this year\u2019s Maine Library Association Annual Conference<\/a> in Bangor where I was lucky enough to present a keynote about ALSC’s work, entitled “The Future: Moving Forward, Reaching Out, Giving Back.” I had an absolutely fantastic time and\u00a0was thrilled to be joined at the conference by my ALSC Board colleague Vicky Smith, as well as ALA president Sari Feldman, right off the plane from the Sharjah Library Conference<\/a>, who inspired us all with her Libraries Transform<\/a> message.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/a>
Paul Bunyan welcomes MLA conference attendees on a beautiful Maine morning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On this trip my #ALSCtour<\/a> took me\u00a0to the Brewer Public Library<\/a>\u00a0and I arrived just as storytime was wrapping up and the whole building, parking lot, and playground (the library has their own) was filled with happiness!\u00a0Many thanks to\u00a0director Katie Conner, children’s librarian\u00a0Shelley Arnold, and all of their wonderful colleagues for all they do for the kids of Brewer, Maine every day!<\/p>\n

\"Miss<\/a>
Miss Shelley hangs a Babies Need Words Every Day poster in the Brewer Public Library’s children’s room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And December may be icy at Hogwarts, but it\u2019s warm and sunny in Puerto Rico, which made this the perfect time for me to visit and–even better!–get to work with 2010 Belpr\u00e9 Honor winner Georgina L\u00e1zaro Le\u00f3n<\/a> to film a promo for next year’s 20th<\/sup> anniversary of the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Award<\/a>. Working together with our Belpr\u00e9 partner, REFORMA<\/a>, we shot it on the grounds of Escuela Central de Artes Visuales,\u00a0the building\u00a0where Pura Belpr\u00e9 attended high school in San Juan’s Santurce neighborhood, which is where she lived until moving to New York in the 1920s and going on to be the first Puerto Rican librarian at New York Public Library. Stay tuned for the final cut of our video and in the meantime save the date for the\u00a0Belpr\u00e9 celebraci\u00f3n<\/a> at ALA Annual in Orlando on\u00a0Sunday, June 26, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.<\/p>\n

\"Yours<\/a>
Yours truly & Georgina L\u00e1zaro Le\u00f3n, ready for our close-up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is one among many, many wonderful things coming in 2016 as we all continue to work together to build a better future for children though libraries!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow . . . [and] no one could wait for the holidays to start. –J.K. Rowling,\u00a0Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone As the days get shorter and colder in the northern hemisphere and the holidays arrive, it’s been a busy season! A couple of weeks ago I was in Denver (where it’s already snowed about as much as at Hogwarts) reaching out to those gathered for the LENA Research Foundation conference (#lena2015), the theme of which was \u201cParents Have the Power: Solving the \u2018early catastrophe\u2019 through science and parental investment.\u201d It was an ideal opportunity to share the work ALSC is doing with Babies Need Words Every Day and in our partnership with PLA on Every Child Ready to Read, and I joined a panel with a pediatrician, health policy professor, and early learning innovator to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[859,777,96,93,462],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ala-annual-2016","category-blogger-andrew-medlar","category-early-literacy","category-outreach","category-statelocal-conferences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}