ALAN Online

The ALAN News of Note is a monthly email newsletter compiled by Joan Kaywell, Professor of English Education at the University of South Florida.  ALAN Online posts sections of the newsletter each month.  Would you like to receive the News of Note each month in your email inbox?  Consider joining ALAN.  For only $20.00 per year, you will also receive three issues of The ALAN Review, ALAN’s journal that features discussions on YA literature and its teaching, interviews with authors, reports on publishing trends, current research on YA literature, a section of reviews of new books, and ALAN membership news.

Read this month’s news after the break.

THE 2009 ALAN WORKSHOP IN PHILADELPHIA IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER

You won’t want to miss the annual ALAN Workshop, occurring on November 23-24 in Philly.  There is still room available but now you’ll have to register on site.  The cost of the two-day workshop is practically nothing when one considers that you receive a year’s membership and a free box of books!  Seeing and hearing the authors’ presentations is worth it even if there were no freebies.  Visithttp://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/PD/Annual/RegAnnual_2009.indd.pdf for more information on registering.

President-elect Pamela “Sissi”Carrol has done an outstanding job putting together an extraordinary workshop!  The Keynote Speaker on Monday morning will be Gregory Macguire best known as the author of WICKED (and a great speaker, word has it), and our KEYNOTE speaker (that’s right, we’re having two this year!) on Tuesday morning is Louanne Johnson, best known as the author of the made-into-a feature film, DANGEROUS MINDS, who has a new YA book out in the fall 09!  The complete list of authors who’ll be speaking to us for those two days are as follows:  Jay Asher, Pam Bachoz, T.A. Barron, Edward Bloor, Chris Carlton Brown, Jen Bryant, Deb Caletti, Janet Lee Carey, Michael Cart, Chris Crowe, Chris Crutcher, Steven Chbosky, Debbie Dadey, Matt de la Pena, Sarah Dessen, Sharon Draper, Adrian Fogelin, David Mcinnis Gill, Julie Halpern, Gereth Hinds, Maureen Johnson, Paula Jolin, Marcia Thronton Jones, Sheba Karim, Joan F. Kaywell, David Klass, Jo Knowles, E. Lockhart, Patty McCormick, Terry McVoy, Lauren Myracle, Shenaaz Nanji, Greg Neri, Danica Novgordoff, Sarah Ockler, Mary Pearson, Julie Ann Peters, Matt Phelan, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Elizabeth Scott, Alan Sitomer, Rebecca Stead, Maggie Stiefvater, Francisco Stork, Todd Strasser, Eve Tal, Jessica Verday, Jeanette Walls, Carol Lynch Williams, Tim Wynne-Jones, Laurence Yep, Alan Zadoff, and Sara Zarr.

2009 ALAN AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCED / ALAN BREAKFAST

This year’s ALAN award winner is Naomi Shihab Nye. To see a great clip of her reading “For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15,” go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9xnbyBY7VY

She will be recognized at the ALAN Breakfast on Saturday, November 21, 2009, 7:00 – 9:15 a.m., where Laurie Halse Anderson is the breakfast speaker.  Tickets needed to have been purchased for this event in advance.  BTW, congratulations to Laurie for Wintergirlsmaking it on the 2009 Publisher’s Weekly List.  If you’ve not read this chilling book about anorexia, dysfunction, and death, you’ve got a powerful read in store.  Also, thanks go to the people who wrote to Laurie’s live journal last month about Twisted being banned in Kentucky <http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/265719.html> as it was evidently then challenged later in Indiana as well.  Seehttp://halseanderson.livejournal.com/266325.html for more information.

AN NCTE SESSION OF INTEREST ON CENSORSHIP

An NCTE session is scheduled for Friday from 11-12:15 of a panel of authors on censorship, including Lauren Myracle who has just gone through yet another censorship attack from Scholastic Book Fairs.

IMPORTANT–IF YOU ATTENDED THE ALAN WORKSHOP LAST YEAR IN SAN ANTONIO, PLEASE READ THIS:

To keep costs down, I e-mail everyone a reminder when their memberships become due.  I try my best to send an e-mail reminder the month before, the month of, and the month after your membership expires for your convenience.  Snail mail reminders are sent twice a year.  Because there are more than 500 people whose memberships will become due at the end of this month’s ALAN Workshop, please take it upon yourself to e-mail me at kaywell@tempest.coedu.usf.edu for a membership form if you are NOT attending this year’s workshop.  Again, if you are a paid attendee for this year’s workshop in Philadelphia, your membership will automatically be renewed.

NEW ALAN OFFICERS ANNOUNCED

Congratulations are extended to Wendy Glenn who was elected president-elect, and Jennifer Buehler, Pam Cole and Lori Goodson who were elected to the ALAN board.  Our thanks go to David Gill past president, Holly Atkins, Jean Boreen, and Bonnie Kunzel who will be leaving the ALAN board in November.

SOME SAD NEWS

Another outstanding YA novelist and ALAN Award winner has left us.  Norma Fox Mazer passed away on October 17, 2009, of brain cancer.  She is survived by her beloved husband, Harry, and both will always be remembered for their outstanding contributions to young adult literature.  Norma was a trail blazer in writing about sexual harassment, divorce, abandonment, betrayal and many other contemporary issues affecting adolescents in such well-known novels as Babyface, Silver, Taking Terri Mueller, Out of Control, When She Was Good, The Missing Girl, and many, many more.  She and Harry collaborated on The Solid Gold Kid, Heartbeat; and Bright Days, Stupid Nights.

Sarah Herz, chair of the ALAN committee when they received The ALAN Award, wrote  “I heard and met Norma and Harry at my firstALAN breakfast in Atlanta in the l980s.  And they were so warm and hospitable to me; I immediately became a Mazer “groupie.”  No subterfuge, no pretentiousness–just a married couple who pursued their craft of bringing validation to adolescent problems with peers, adults, parents.  They  knew teenagers had to deal with learning to understand how to navigate the darkness in their lives and to celebrate the joy and pleasures.  Thanks Norma–we’ll remember your stories; they will endure.  Keep writing Harry, teenagers love your stories. ”

SOME INTERESTING NEWS ABOUT YA AUTHORS

Adrian Fogelin

YA author and ALAN member Adrian Fogelin has created a “Front Porch Library” to give kids access to books who otherwise would not have a chance to borrow any.  This neighborhood library is amazing and can be replicated.  Just visit  http://thefrontporchlibrary.wordpress.com/ for information how you can get one started in your community.  Adrian comments, “I have gotten to know our neighborhood kids and even their parents on an intimate basis.  Surprisingly, the library has been as much about conversation, singing, making puzzles, dancing, and general silliness as it has been about books.  Although it has taken up some time, it’s been well worth it.  Yesterday, during our regular library hours, I had just one child.  Toni is a good reader, but a struggling pronouncer.  Together we are working on consonants.  But yesterday, we decided to sing the books rather than read them.  We turned “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” into a two-part round.  When I open the library door, I never know who will come or what will happen when they get there.  I just know that something will happen and that what it will surprise me and make me smile.”

Will Hobbs

A few months ago, I told you about Will Hobbs’s book, Go Big or Go Home about a kid name Brady who names a meteor “Fred” (Far Roaming Earth Diver) after it crashes into his room.  This book, reminiscent of Superman in some ways, just won the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association prize for the young readers/chapter books category. Go to

http://www.mountainsplains.org/regionalbookawards.aspx for more information.

Bill Harley

Bill Harley, author of Night of the Spadefoot Toads (2009 National Green Earth Book Award Winner), has a video contest he wanted you to know about.  He is looking for classes, afterschool groups, organizations and families to get together and make a video based on one of Bill’s songs. It can be live action, animation, slide show, some combination of these.  To find out more about “the rules” and “the prizes” visit his video contest webpage at http://www.billharley.com/videocontest.asp.

Shelley Stoehr

Remember Shelley Stoehr, author of Crosses, Weird on the Outside, Wannabe, etc.?  She has a weekly blog she posts every Thursday she calls “Outsider Girls.”  Outsider Girls write outside the mainstream.  They are not the popular girls, or even theaverage girls, but they have a lot to say.  Some of the girls also appear in novels or short stories, but this is where they express what may not make it into a complete work.  Some are new characters, some are from older books, such as Nancy from Crosses, some are from stories and novels in the works.  Meet a new girl every week!  Today’s post at http://outsidergirlswrite.blogspot.comfeatures Shelley’s first outsider girl — Nancy, originally from Crosses. Nancy is grown-up now, with an outsider girl of her own, daughter, Casey, fifteen.  Fifteen… the age when Nancy met Katie, the age when Nancy began cutting herself in earnest, when she started drugs, dating.  Will Casey follow the same path her mother did, or will she find her own?   Read Shelley’s weekly blog, posted every Thursday.   *If you write a blog for or about YA girls, please email her a link at shelley@shelleystoehr.com.