Heading North to Mock

Stack of books in front of the Christmas tree!

As the year draws to a close, many youth librarians' minds turn to the upcoming ALA Youth Media Awards. This year these awards will be announced on Monday, January 28 and the committee members have been hard at work reading and rereading and taking notes to get ready for their meetings. 

Throughout the country people are wondering what titles will be chosen and some folks are even participating in their own "mock" discussions. There are many of these discussions happening all over, both in person and online. Take a look at your local libraries or bookstores to see if one is happening in your area. Or check out School Library Journal's Heavy Medal Blog, which is running a Mock Newbery discussion online. 

This year, I plan to join in a Mock Newbery discussion at the Allen County Public Library in Northern Indiana. It's a bit of a trek for me, but I know it'll be a great discussion and I'm nerdily excited to take part. So while I'm gearing up for Christmas with my family and wrapping up my work year, I'm also reading and rereading the books we'll be discussing. 

Participating in a Mock Newbery discussion is definitely less intense than the actual committee members preparing for their meetings, but I still want to make sure to take notes, read all the titles, and reread the ones I haven't picked up since I read them months ago. We have such a great year of books to choose from! 

This is the list of titles that we'll be discussing next month: 

• Baby Monkey, Private Eye by Brian Selznick & David Serlin (Scholastic)
• Betty Before X by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renee Watson (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux)
• Bob by Wendy Mass & Rebecca Stead (Feiwel & Friends)
• The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Greenwillow)
• Boots on the Ground: America's War on Vietnam by Elizabeth Partridge (Viking)
• Can I Touch Your Hair? by Irene Latham & Charles Waters (Carolrhoda)
• Checked by Cynthia Kadohata (Atheneum)
• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt)
• Front Desk by Kelly Yang (Scholastic)
• Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown)
• Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulsen)
• Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake (Little, Brown)
• The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic)
• Just Like Jackie by Lindsey Stoddard (HarperCollins)
• The Last by Katherine Applegate (HarperCollins)
• Louisiana's Way Home by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)
• The Night Diary by Veera Hirandanani (Dial)
• The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson (Arthur A. Levine)
• Rebound by Kwame Alexander (Houghton Mifflin)
• Rosetown by Cynthia Rylant (Beach Lane)

I find it so interesting that the different discussions can have such vastly different reading lists - it makes you appreciate how much work the actual committee members are putting in, since they are trying to read EVERYTHING that could possibly be considered. When I checked the ACPL's Mock Newbery list against the Heavy Medal list, only about half the titles overlapped. One reason is that mock Newbery discussions tend to limit the number of books on the list for practicality. The ones I have seen range from 10-25 titles, whereas the actual Newbery Committee could potentially be discussing 85+ titles (we'll never knoooooow). 

The ALSC Blog is collecting results of Mock Youth Media Awards discussions from all over the country and I am so excited to have our discussion and add our results to the list! I wonder what will happen! 

Now, I've got to go... I have reading to do! 

Have you read any of these books? What did you think? What are your front runners for the Youth Media Awards this year? 

One State One Story

This October, my library participated in Indiana's One State One Story program celebrating the 200th anniversary of the original publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. We've not done a program like this during my time at the library and I was so interested to see how it would go. I wasn't certain we could get people interested in reading a classic or engaging with us about it.

Abby holding up our Frankenstein event booklet.

It turns out we had a total blast and I can't wait for our next community read!

Not everything we tried was successful, but here are some things that made our community read a success for us:

• Staff buy-in. We ordered everyone Frankenstein t-shirts that they could wear on Fridays or days that we had Frankenstein programs. Our town harvest festival happened during this month and we themed our library booth around Frankenstein and STEM, showing off our new 3D printer from the Makerspace at our branch and providing science activities for kids to stop in and try. This gave our staff concrete ways they could engage patrons in the discussion, whether or not staff members were willing to read Frankenstein (some did, some didn't). 
• Marketing! Our marketing director created a really snazzy-looking booklet with all the Frankenstein related events so we could promote everything at once. 
• Giveaway copies. We won 50 copies of Frankenstein as part of our grant from Indiana Humanities, but we ended up purchasing 100 additional copies so that we could give out copies to all our book discussion participants and to other patrons throughout the month. This was possible in part because this particular book has many versions and is available at an affordable price. Being able to actually hand patrons a free copy got them excited about it and each copy had discussion questions inside (more on that later). 
• A variety of events. We hosted STEM and Frankenstein-themed children's and teen programs, as well as a variety of programs for adults. Some of these were grant-funded and some were paid for from our normal programming budget.
• Special book discussions. Instead of just holding our book discussions at the library, we held a Frankenstein Tea at a local state historic home and at our Carnegie building (which is now a museum branch of the library). These extra touches (and FOOD!) gave these events some additional appeal. 

One of the things that I tried and that flopped was posting discussion questions on our Facebook account throughout the month. My thinking was that people who might not come out for a program might prefer to engage that way and participate in the discussion. I used Indiana Humanities' "big idea" questions because they are more general questions that mostly do not require you to have read the book and linked to the downloadable ebook and audiobook available through Hoopla. I did not get any engagement on those posts, even when I commented and shared them myself. I still think there's something in creating an online book discussion, but next time I'd experiment with some different platforms, or maybe hold a discussion at a certain time, like a Twitter chat or even Facebook Live? 

Book discussion leaders posing with tea and a book at the Culbertson Mansion.

My big event of the month was our book discussion and tea, held at the Culbertson Mansion State Historic Site. It was really neat to be having a literary discussion in a similar kind of environment to where Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein. It was my first time hosting a book discussion for adults and I was not sure how it was going to go. I utilized some of the discussion tips from the Indiana Humanities event guide and the event went REALLY well. 

I opened up our talk by asking everyone to go around and say their name and one word that describes how they feel about the advances in science and technology in our world. This was a nice icebreaker with vary varied responses that helped get the conversation started. I had prepared a TON of discussion questions beforehand, but I wanted the conversation to flow from the participants, so I let that happen as much as possible and only chimed in with my questions if we seemed to have reached a stopping point. I wish I had made the event longer - we could have talked about Frankenstein for another hour, I think! 

Lots of libraries around the state participated in One State One Story and I'm pleased that it was so well-received by our patrons and staff. I can't wait to hold another one! 

Have you done a community read at your library? What tips would you share?