Darla Lager - SELCO-PLA Scholarship Recipient
Owatonna Public Library

5:30 A.M. on a Saturday is no time to be getting up.  But I did it and was on the road by 7:00 A.M.  I got into the parking ramp right across the street from the convention center.  I though it would be easy.  Parking ramps are not libraries.  The signage was terrible.  Another librarian and I muddled our way out and wished each other luck in finding our cars back. I found mine, I hope she found hers.

I went to Creating Environments from Tots to Teens, first thing Saturday morning.  It was kind of pie-in-the-sky.  Most libraries can not afford to put a reading dragon or a pirate ship in the middle of an existing children’s space.  One interesting thing they talked about was how one city changed a car parts store into a small, branch library.  They showed before and after pictures.  They only had $10,000 to spend, but you wouldn’t believe the changes.   

My last program of the day and of the conference was Not Just for Young Adults-Graphic Novels for Kids.  One of the speakers was Jeff Kinney.  Jeff Kinney is the author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  I can’t wait to tell some of the kids on Monday, that I saw Jeff Kinney.  He wrote the books for adults originally, kind of a Wonder Years thing, but his publishers decided they would make great kids books and the rest as they say is history.  Another member of the panel was an actor turned psychotherapist, Matt Casper, who is working on a series of comic books, called e-motes, which deal with children and emotions, and dealing with those emotions.  A third member of the panel was Michelle Gorman who wrote a book call Getting Graphic.  It is about good graphic novels for kids of all ages. Good meaning kids will love them, not that they are literary masterpieces. The final member of the panel was Francoise Mouly, she spoke about the importance of comics for the non-readers or reluctant readers.  She spoke of the value of comics in a library and the difference between comics and graphic novels.  Comics and graphic novels are the same; they are both sequential narratives, just different terminology.  

End Day 3

Darla Lager – Owatonna Public Library

I didn’t get lost on my way home, much to my surprise.