At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Ms McDaniel’s Memorable Moments

Meeting Charlene Schiff was a real highlight for me. She is a survivor is the truest sense of the word. Charlene’s courage and strength are a source of inspiration. Thank you for the message of compassion that you spread in the world. I sincerely hope that our paths cross again.

I was GREAT to see Jane Irwin and Paul Sizer again. Paul, congratulations on Moped Army making the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list! We just have to bring you both back to Maine!

Irshad Manji was brilliant!

I had read about her and her book, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Woman Calls for Reform in Her Faith. I have never considered religion and faith as thoughtfully as I did in the days following her presentation. She made me think, really consider, carefully, my own thoughts and ideas about religion and faith and community. It was wonderful! I cannot give higher praise than, “You really made me think!” Thanks, Irshad!

I also really enjoyed my conversation with Jean the night of the Printz Award Reception. On the day that Irshad stretched my mind, you invited me to stretch it even further with your French philosophy.

I loved meeting Alison Bechdel (Fun Home, Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and hearing about how she created her graphic novel memoir.

It was really wonderful to see Betsy Franco (You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys & Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls, Candlewick Press) again; it’s been how many years?! This has been a stressful trip (in some respects) and I didn’t realize how much I really needed to see a friendly face and get an it’s-SO-GOOD-to-see-you hug. Thanks, Betsy!

Meeting Congressman John Lewis was a once in a lifetime experience, but I will try to step back and let it be Otrell’s experience.

But, I must admit, that the thing I loved the very most about this trip was being with my former students, Kayla and Tess.

You are wonderful and I love you both! I hope that our trip lived up to your expectations …

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 8

Today was our final day, well half-day, in Washington, D.C. Otrell, for some reason, got up at 6:30 am, but the rest of us slept until 8:00 am.

After breakfast, I decided to go back to the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial to get some pictures and I wanted to see the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and the Women’s Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. No one else wanted to go with me.

First I saw the Women’s Memorial, which is a very traditional war memorial: bronze and larger-than-life figures in military garb and poses.

The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall is unique. It is built into the earth, as though there had been a small hill there in the park and the hill was cut down through its middle in and The Wall erected against it to hold back the exposed earth. The Wall ascended gradually up to a high point that reached far above my head, and then gradually descended. The names engraved onto The Wall began just a few steps in. Standing in front of the polished black stone surface, my image was reflected back at me. My reflection, because of the dark gray of the stone, was cast against a shadowed background. I saw a name, Daniel M. Kelley, etched in the shimmering surface of the black stone against my own shadowed reflection. I reached out to touch the name and the reflection of my hand reached back toward me.

There was a narrow moat right underneath The Wall and periodically, personal items had been laid down. I saw a beaded necklace, a bracelet, tattered flags, a letter, a photograph, and a poem.

There were alphabetical guides located at either end of The Wall where you could look up a name and it would tell you on which panel the name could be found. The Wall listed the names in the order in which they were killed.

This is the spot where John Lewis spoke (sixth) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke (tenth) at the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality on August 28, 1963. It is on the top of the steps leading to the Lincoln Memorial.

This is also the place where Marian Anderson sang after the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) refused her Constitution Hall as a performance venue.

An Aside
Constitution Hall is only a few blocks up from the Memorial Park on 18th Street. Last night we had walked by it. There was some sort of to-do going on and we crossed the street to ask a woman standing outside what was going on. I had seen the name of the building and something in my memory tried to wake up. When I saw the DAR plaque on the building, I remembered about Marian Anderson and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The DAR refused to allow Marian Anderson, a famed African American soprano, from performing at Constitution Hall. Then First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, cancelled her membership in the DAR in quiet protest. Arrangements were made for Marian Anderson to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

I re-read the Gettysburg Address.

It is amazing that in that famous speech, possibly the greatest speech in U.S. History, Lincoln used only unifying, never divisive, language. There was no North and South, no Union and Confederacy, no Us and Them; it was all Us, the UNITED States.

Lincoln’s statue inside the Memorial is much larger than life.

Our trip back to Portland was uneventful. We are on the train as I write this. I expect we’ll arrive in Portland around midnight.

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 7

The conference is over; the last day was Tuesday, June 26th. Wednesday was a day that we had all to ourselves. We were finally well rested.

A library colleague we had met at the Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast had offered to drive our bags back to Maine for us! (Thank you, Leslie!) Otrell and I each packed one suitcase of stuff for Leslie to drive home, but Tess and Kayla had 4 and 3 bags, respectively! That was in addition to our clothes, purses and essentials for the train and bus. Evidently, Leslie was shocked when she saw the 9 bags total that she would be driving back to Maine for us. (Thanks, again, Leslie!)

Otrell and I had an appointment to visit Congressman John Lewis at 10:30 am. Fortunately, after Library Day on the Hill, we were a somewhat familiar with how Capitol Hill worked. (I had made arrangements ahead of time for us to meet John Lewis, because he is one of my son’s heroes.)

Otrell was very nervous about meeting his hero, so in the morning I helped him prepare what he wanted to say. After talking about organization, content, and how to begin and end, he dictated what he wanted to say and I wrote it all down.

Hello. My name is Otrell McDaniel. I am 11 years old and I live in Portland, Maine. I am very honored to meet you. You’re one of my heroes, not only because of how you fought alongside Martin Luther King for Black rights, but because of how much you endured and how you continued to stay brave during Bloody Sunday and the Freedom Rides. How did you endure so much?

Several months ago, my family learned of a mentally handicapped Black man named Billy Ray Johnson and that he had been beaten by a group of young white people several years ago. We also learned that, following his beating, which left him more severely handicapped, mentally, he will have to live in a nursing home for the rest of his life, assisted by staff and unable to read. My sister and I, after reading the article, gathered material to send him a care package and, soon after, learned that it had arrived at the nursing home.

“In that same article, someone said that it was okay to treat a Black man like that, based on the color of his skin. It’s not.” That’s what I wrote in my letter to Billy Ray.

Do you think racism is still present in this country, and, if so, what can we do about it?

Would you mind signing this Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis, Harcourt, 1998] to me?

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.

We met Congressman Lewis is his Senior Chief Deputy Democratic Whip office (H-330) in the Capitol building. We had special “Official Capitol Business” nametags which turned from white to indigo when we walked out of the Capitol and back into the sun.

Congressman Lewis spent almost an hour (about 45 minutes) with Otrell, listening to him, answering his questions, showing him his personal photographs (framed and sitting on the mantle in his office) and telling him stories. He was patient, extremely kind and very generous with his very valuable time.

Here, Congressman John Lewis showed Otrell a picture of himself and his friend, Jim Zwerg who had just been beaten. “See the spots of blood that had dripped onto my jacket?”

Here, Congressman Lewis showed Otrell his picture of the “Big Six.” He named them right to left: Roy Wilkins; James Farmer; “You know this man.” [Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.]; A. Philip Rudolph; Whitney Young “A famous labor leader for the train porters;” and “a young John Lewis who still had his hair.”

Here, Congressman Lewis showed Otrell one of his photos of the March from Selma to Montgomery.

And here, standing in the window of his office, facing the Mall and the Lincoln Memorial, he recalled the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality, August 28, 1963. “I was the youngest speaker that day,” he reminisced. “I was sixth and Dr. King was tenth. … Of the ten people who spoke that day, I am the only one still alive.”

He described the mass of people gathered on the mall as a giant “sea of humanity.” “The police said that there were 250,000 people but I know it was more. … Children took off their shoes and climbed the trees in order to see. … And on the top step of the Lincoln Memorial, there is an inscription, ‘I Have a Dream:’ it is on the spot where we stood. … If someone had told me, then, that I would have an office here, across the mall, that I would be a Congressman here, I would have said that they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Here, he showed Otrell another book about the Civil Rights Movement. He was looking for a picture of the “Sea of Humanity” he had described.

And there it was on the back of the book.

Congressman Lewis said that he was most proud of the first time that he was arrested [for civil disobedience] on February 20, 1960. “I was inspired.” Congressman Lewis told Otrell. “Dr. King inspired me to make trouble. It was the right kind of trouble. It was necessary trouble.”

What an inspiring experience!

Tess and Kayla took a well-deserved break. They read. They walked around our neighborhood, Georgetown. And they went out for coffee and tea.

Otrell and I spent the afternoon at the National Gallery, which Otrell didn’t want to leave after our hour and half visit.

We all went out to an Indian restaurant for dinner, the Taj Mahal. Then we took an evening walk to the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. We saw the World War II Monument, an awesome stone structure and then, we walked through clouds of mosquitoes and black flies along the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial.

We returned to our hotel at a reasonable hour and went to bed, again, at a reasonable hour.

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 6

Hi, me again. I’m writing this as of 10:33 PM, Wednesday, 6/27/07. In the morning we went to the Coretta Scott King Awards. Among the winners were such books as Copper Sun, Jazz, and Moses: How Harriet Tubman Led her People to Freedom. Afterwards we visited the exhibit hall one last time, managing a final few souvenirs and left for Library Day On The Hill, the final event for ALA in 100+ degree temperature. We took a bus to Capitol Hill to visit our state representatives about libraries. Our group visited Tom Allen and Mike Michaud and then got ice cream and set off to the others.

Kayla had the idea to make posters to protest the Supreme Court’s decision to suspend students’ rights to free speech, and march along the outside of the Court Building.

We then set off to visit Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe. And then in the heat decided to take a taxi back to our hotel. Most of us (except me!) were so tired they slept from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM. After they woke up, we ordered pizza, and I conked out on my and Kelley’s shared bed.

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 5

Today we started out fairly early in my own opinion. We went down stairs to have some very good breakfast that thuroughly filled us up. After that we had to lug what seemed like thousands of pounds of books to the post office just to have to wait in line for 15 min. and have to pay a ton to get them sent home. then we started our day at the confrence.

While me and kayla went off to the exhibit hall to look around for some more good books and some authors to sign our books Kelly and Otrell went to here some people make speeches and then stood in line to get there books signed by the amazing Judy Blume!

Tess and Kayla were very excited to meet one their favorite authors of all time!
Holly Black!!! She was very nice and sign all of our books of which there were many. Tess and Kayla got a picture of them being with Holly but were unable to post it do to technical problems.

While they were doing that Otrel and Kelly tried to see Julie Andrews speak but even after waitting they were to late and the show was completely full so they were not able to see her preform. They then went off to see other shows for most of the rest of the day.

Tess and Kayla went to a near by café for lunch, but they had some difficulties: Tess’s frozen sandwhich that she had given to them to warm up had taken around 15 min. because they had forgotten about it. But that was nothing compared to what happened to Kayla. She had to wait for up to 45 min. until they finaly gave her her sandwhich. They then found a spot on the stairs leading to the confrence to read all of their new books

The group met up again at around 3pm to get some books signed and then started of their long trek home. Soon after they got back Kelly dressed up very nicely and went off to meet one of her favorite authors.

In the future Otrel, Tess, and Kayla are planing to go to the printz award (were Tess was very sad to find ou that the singer Prince would not be preforming) at the confrence and meet kelly there and then head home for and simple night of book reading.

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 4

In the spirit of student creativity, I, former King student Kayla Cogle, will be doing the blogging tonight. It’s 12:17 AM. Whoo hoo! Well, it’s actually more like a ‘nughhhhhh….’. But there’s definitely some supressed enthusiasm going on there.

We kicked off the morning with a Young Adult Author Breakfast. ‘Breakfast’ being the questionable word in the title. Expecting eggs, toast, and the like, we struck out from the hotel without eating the breakfast the hotel provides. What was actually served at the event was a martini glass filled with small pieces of fruit. This was added to by a basket of dainty croissants, which was passed around our round table, one of about 45 in the room.
Also passed around the room were several well known young adult authors. They got about five minutes at each table as the circled through the room. We met: M.T. Anderson, Chris Crutcher, Walter Dean Meyers, Allan Stratton, Garrett Freyman-Weir, Gary Schmidtt, and Marilyn Nelson, who wrote ‘A Wreath for Emmett Till’. We were also joined by some publishing reps from Candlewick Press.

After that it was off to the exhibit halls, where we filled our wheelie suitcases with books. Some of you will be pleased to know that we managed to get a copy of the next book in the ‘Bloody Jack’ series. You can also be expecting new works from Nancy Farmer, Meg Cabot, Herbie Brennen, Charles de Lint, and the amusingly named Pseudonymous Bosch. You can politely pester Mrs. McDaniels about reading them, but please kindly do not mention that it was I who told you to do so.

At 4:00, Otrell went to hear Judy Bloom speak. He also tried to get one of her books signed, but alas, the line was far too long. By this time we were starving due to our lack of proper breakfast, so made our way to a cafe and then home. We spent the rest of the afternoon in book filled bliss.

‘Till later,
Kayla

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 3

Hello everyone, Otrell L. I. McDaniel here. In case you’re wondering why I’m doing the blog today and not Kelley, today she got a little exasperated with us and how much of the blogging she had been doing. She originally wanted Tess and Kayla to do the blog instead, but I volunteered in their place. Now onto today’s story….

Today we got up very early (5:30 AM) and met with Cynthia Lord, author of Rules (Scholastic, 2006), a book about Katherine, a teenage girl, living life with David, her autistic brother, and Jason, a disabled, mute friend of hers. A book we (Tess and Kayla and I) had recently read. We had breakfast at a Starbucks near our hotel.

After breakfast, we went straight to the exhibit hall, splitting up into pairs (Kelley and I and Tess and Kayla). Kelley and I managed a sweep of three-four rows of exhibits, getting signed books and photographs with Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Amulet Books, 2007)

and Walter Dean Myers, author of Autobiography of My Dead Brother (HarperCollins, 2005)

while Tess and Kayla zoomed through apparently the entire hall, managing to fill up each of their empty suitcases before we left the exhibit hall for a luncheon to celebrate author Lois Lowry’s new Margaret A. Edwards Award for The Giver (Houghton Mifflin, 1993), where we were served lunch and were given free copies of The Giver.

After the ceremony, we were given a free hour before we left to escort our prizes back to our hotel, which we used to interrogate the comics section of the hall. We captured many rare books, as well as learning very sadly, that the fifth Unshelved collection was not yet available for sale, only for preorder. We soon ran out of time for the exhibits, and left to cart our treasured haul home.

Barely after returning to the hotel, we left for Mitali Perkins’s book launch party for First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover (Penguin, 2007).

On the way back we chose to split up; Kayla, Tess and I returned home to rest, while Kelley chose to go back to the conference, also telling us for the first time today that we were on our own for dinner. We survived long enough for Kelley to return home though, and so endeth another exciting day for our group in Washington.

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 2

We had a fabulous day here in D.C.. We all slept long and well.

Our hotel serves an extended continental breakfast, and, although I modeled good balanced eating habits (e.g. hard-boiled egg, toast with peanut butter, oatmeal and fresh fruit), I’m afraid that my charges are unimpressed and insist on beginning the day with a lot of starches and carbohydrates (pastries and cereal). They will probably insist on my reporting that they did each have one segment of my orange. I told them that 5-9 fruits a day doesn’t mean 5-9 bites.

Our morning was taken up with a special presentation about resources available through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We saw a few of the new acquisitions from the photo archives and learned about how they catalog photos as well as new acquisitions from the video archives and how those are catalogued and many of them digitized and accessible via the USHMM website. We watched one video of anti-Semitic Nazi propoganda that, although it was all in German, its insidious message was clear and needed no translation. We learned about the museum’s registry of Holocaust survivors and also about the Shoah Foundation’s database of oral histories.

Then we heard from Charlene Schiff, a survivor from Poland, tell her extraordinary story about being orphaned and left to fend for herself in the forests of Poland when she was 11-14 years old. Mrs. Schiff told us that there were 5,000 Jews in her small Polish town, but at the end of the war, there were only two survivors: she and a childhood friend.

She said, “I do not know why I survived. … I feel imprisoned by my memories and my past. … But I must bear witness. … I stand here in witness. … I speak for each one of them. I cannot allow the world to forget.”

Mrs. Schiff said that she loves traveling and telling her story, especially to young people in schools. She said that she warns young people of the four I’s:
Indifference
Ignorance
Intolerance
Injustice
She said that young people are our hope for the future and that she will meet with them and talk with them as long as she is able to do so. We invited her to come to Maine.

An Inspiring Speaker and Our New Friend: Mrs. Charlene Schiff …

The USHMM is on the corner of 14th Street and Independence Ave, right around the corner from The Mall (not a mall, The Mall…). After lunch, Tess and Kayla wandered around The Mall and got lots of pictures of interesting buildings, and, of course, they checked out the local book shops and made some purchases.

Otrell and I hung out some more in the USHMM and checked out the museum shop, where we spent a chunk of money on books as well. One of the books we got was Ruth Minsky Sender’s Holocaust memoir, The Cage (Simon & Schuster, 1986).

Below is a picture of Otrell with Ruth Minsky Sender and her adult son …

The Washington Monument, located on The Mall, is encircled by 50 U.S. flags.

TRIVIA QUESTION: What do the 50 flags surrounding the Washington Monument represent?

Best wishes,
Ms McDaniel et al.

At ALA Annual in Washington D.C. - Day 1

After a long night of travel, we did, finally arrive in Washington, D.C.

When we went to the Conference registration, a funny thing happened. Kayla was given her registration materials, a fancy badge holder and a large conference bag (with the conference logo). Tess and Otrell were told that, because they were not ALA members, they would only receive a simple badge holder and no bag. I asked Kayla if she was an ALA member and she assured me that she was not. She kept the bag and fancy badge holder anyway.

Tess and Kayla spent the early part of the afternoon pouring over the list of author signings:
“Gregory Maguire!”
“Oh my God! Holly Black! You hafta let us stay up to see Holly Black!”
“Annette Curtis Klause! We can’t miss her!”

I’ll let them share their list of “Authors I want to meet…”

I gave a talk at the Intellectual Freedom Round Table Pre-Conference, Celebrating the Library Bill of Rights. It went very well. I met a bunch of new people and I was invited to serve on an ALA-IFRT committee.

Another funny thing happened to the young people. A woman who was attending the IRFT Pre-Conference came over to Kayla, patted her on the shoulder and enthusiastically inquired, “How are you!” while grinning ear to ear. She also patted Tess and Otrell and, again smiling broadly greeted them animatedly. Kayla, Tess and Otrell greeted the woman in return. Kayla obsessed for the rest of the afternoon, “Who was that woman? Do I know her?” I think that the woman was simply excited to see young people in attendance. I wonder what else is going to happen …

We finally checked into our hotel room, which was a bit of a disappointment, but we’ll make do.

I had to wake everyone up to eat dinner. We were an exhausted crew!

Alisa Libby, author of The Blood Confession, at the Portland Public Library

A couple of seventh grade students and I went to the Portland Public Library today to the First Friday Children’s & Young Adult Author Lunch to meet author Alisa Libby and hear her talk about her new book, The Blood Confession, a gothic young adult novel about a 16th century Hungarian noblewoman who begins a bloody quest looking for the secret to eternal youth and beauty. The novel is a fictionalized horror story inspired by the legend of Erzsebet Bathory, known as The Blood Countess.

Alisa has been writing since she was a very young child and one piece of advice to aspiring writers she offers is, “[R]ead as much as [you] can because reading is the best way to become a writer.” (Thank you for that sentiment, Alisa!)

Alisa said that the historical figure, Erzsebet Bathory, has been with her since she read a story about her in a collection of vampire stories she found in her own local public library when she was a teenager. Alisa has been using her as a character in her writing for years. (What a creepy companion to have for all those years!)

In addition to talking about herself, her writing process and getting published, Alisa read a very compelling scene from her book, where the Countess Erzebet Bizecka is bleeding one of her young servant girls.

The bleeding seemed to take longer than I had expected, and I implored Anastasia for patience as I paced the floor again agitated. Anastasia did not seem at all impatient, sitting drowsily hunched over the bowl. According to medical texts, humans were equipped with pound upon pound of blood–surely there was still enough inside of her that could be spared. I glanced again at the measly pool and sighed.

“We may have to try again,” I told her, inspecting the cut upon her arm. “Perhaps a cut upon your leg–that might yield more.” When I turned to look at the girl in the chair, I jumped back at the sight. Her head had fallen forward onto the table.

- The Blood Confession by Alisa Libby, p. 215

It was chilling. And yet, also, strangely compelling.

To add to the gruesomeness, the book itself looks like it’s been stained with blood … EEEEWW …

Check out Alisa Libby’s website http://www.alisalibby.com.

Considering our horror fans, who love

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
• In the Forests of the Night
• Demon In My View
• Shattered Mirror
• Midnight Predator
Melissa de la Cruz
• Blue Bloods
• Masquerade
Annette Curtis Klaus
• Blood and Chocolate
• The Silver Kiss
• Freaks
Scott Westerfeld
• Peeps
• The Last Days

I think that this book will be a great addition to our horror section.

So it’s fortunate, for you horror fans, that we bought three copies and had them autographed to the students at King Middle School.

Enjoy.

Ms McDaniel