ALA Day 4

As you all know I am "Nuts about the Newbery", but yesterday was about another great award.  When I was reading Mock Newberys for 2010, I read and LOVED Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin .  I was thrilled when it won the Schneider Family Book Award and wanted to learn more about that award. The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. Three annual awards are given  in each of the following categories: birth through grade school (age 0–8), middle school (age 9–13) and teens (age 14–18).  This year the winners were: Anything but Typical  by Nora Raleigh Baskin; Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork; and Django by Bonnie Christensen.

I am in LOVE with this award because these books are great books AND they talk about disability appropriately; as a kid growing up with a disability I like to see books where the characters look like me and I get really annoyed when characters with disability are talked about using outdated and wrong language.  The Schneider Family Books are great and I hope having this award improves how all authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers include disability. 
Now that you know all of that you will understand how excited I was to go to the luncheon honoring the winners!  I got to meet them and sat right next to Nora Raleigh Baskin, she was amazing and super nice (also her partner was super nice; he is also an art teacher).  Listening to all the award winners talk about their books was wonderful.  I am SO lucky.

I also went to the closing of the stacks (no IPad for me but I have so MANY books).  I checked out the ALA notable discussion one last time.  I think listening to them will make me a better reviewer and a better writer! 

And I got to meet....Rita Williams-Garcia, she was SO KIND to come meet me, I LOVE her book, One Crazy Summer (like almost everyone I meet), and she is really nice and a great teacher, I think I will be a better writer just from standing next to her.