What goes into choosing titles for the Best Fiction for Young Adults, Amazing Audiobooks, Quick Picks, and Great Graphic Novels Selection Lists? Learn more about these lists, and just what it takes to serve on a Selection List Committee. Past committee members and chairs will share advice on how to volunteer for and successfully serve on one of these committees, and offer a Q&A session for participants.

Rebecca Baldwin
Rebecca Baldwin has worked in teen services at public libraries for over ten years. In 2020 she chaired the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Currently, she is the Teen Services Librarian at the North Royalton Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library.

 
 

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Erin Durrett
Erin Durrett is a Teen Services Librarian at the Clinton-Macomb Public Library. She has been working in libraries since 2002, and advocating for teen patrons is one of her passions. She has served on various YALSA committees and Co-Chairs the National Teen Lock-in. She was the first person to represent ALA in the I Am ALA campaign. She loves audiobooks, graphic novels, 3D printing and tech gadgets.

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Tina Lerno
Tina Lernø is a Librarian II for the City of Los Angeles and part of the Library’s Digital Content team where she is responsible for web content and design, with a focus on teen user needs and comics advocacy. Before becoming a librarian, Tina worked in the world of television animation doing color design on shows such as Harold and the Purple Crayon, Jackie Chan Adventures, and The Boondocks.

Tina is the past chair of the GGNFTs committee for YALSA and is currently an active member of GNCRT and REFORMA. She is a native of Los Angeles, CA. where she currently resides with her two children and her three cats. Her vast vinyl record collection makes an excellent backdrop for sewing, puzzling, and reading comics, and she reads about 500 books a year!

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Jessica Hilbum Schwartz
Jessica Hilbun Schwartz is the Teen Services Librarian at the Louisville Public Library in Louisville, CO. She has worked in teen library services for 10 years, and has served on several committees for YALSA and ALSC including Best Fiction for Young Adults, Amazing Audiobooks, the Legacy Award Committee, and currently the Notable Children’s Recordings Committee. She earned both her MLS and a Master’s degree in Children’s Literature from Simmons.

This session will help library staff identify the core needs of applying to college and outline best practices for programming, collection development, and more. Based on the presenter’s own background of using public library resources to get into Yale, the program will help inspire teen librarians to step up their role in helping make college admissions a more accessible space in small and large libraries.

Aryssa Damron,
Library Associate, D.C. Public Library

Sandra Farag, Head of Youth Services at Kalamazoo Public Library in Michigan, will join two representatives of Baker & Taylor’s Children’s & Teen Services (CATS) department to discuss how to more confidently build and maintain a diverse YA collection that will contribute to the self esteem, empathy, and kindness in their communities. The presenters will share various tools, including software and selection lists, that will help audit and address diversity gaps in collections, and they will also book talk teen titles publishing in the winter/spring of 2022 that highlight different cultures, races, and life experiences (LGBTQIAP, Black, Indigenous peoples, and more).

Bobbie Bensur
As the Children’s & Teen Services Director at Baker & Taylor, Bobbie works to support children’s and teen librarians across the country. Before joining Baker & Taylor, she spent nearly ten years on the publishing side of the children’s trade book industry. She has a Masters in Creative Writing with a concentration in children’s fiction, and is currently working on a YA novel of her own! Bobbie is based in southern Maine.

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Sandra Farag
Sandra Farag is the Head of Youth Services for Kalamazoo Public Library, where she supervises a team to ensure high standards in collections, programming, and community partnerships—with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Prior to working at KPL, Sandra was the Manager of Youth Collection Development for Ingram Library Services, providing libraries with curated collections, and developing new and ongoing diversity resources. Sandra also worked for the New York Public Library for 17 years, and also spent 3 years working simultaneously with NYPL and Brooklyn Public Library as a Supervising Librarian with the Youth Collection Development team. She is active in ALA (ALSC, YALSA, LLAMA, EMIERT, RRT, SRRT) and currently collaborating on multiple projects with BCALA and GNCRT– in which she recently moderated 2 panels: one on Afrofuturism, and another regarding the Black Lives Matters booklists they are creating. Sandra is also a Facilitator for Library Journal and School Library Journal Professional Development programs: Remote Reboot—Tools for Librarians Supporting Remote and Hybrid Learning, and Equity In Action—Fostering an Antiracist Library Culture. Sandra has also served on several award committees such as: #WNDB Walter Award, ALSC’s Batchelder Award, and YALSA’s Excellence in Nonfiction Award.

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Rita King
Rita King is the Baker & Taylor BTCat Sales Manager, where she works as a library advocate assisting libraries with workflows, collection maintenance and digitization to improve staff efficiencies as well as library patron discovery. Rita has been with Baker & Taylor for 5 years. Before her new role this April, she was the Children’s and Teen Services Manager. Rita received her MLIS from Wayne State University in 2003 and began her career as a Youth Specialist at Kent District Library and then as a Branch Manager at Muskegon Area District Library. She is an active member in PLA, ALA (ALSC)

YA authors and mental health advocates, Rocky Callen and Nora Shalaway Carpenter, and youth librarians will draw from their own experiences and research surveying teens, educators, and librarians to show how to create safe spaces that destigmatize mental health issues for young people. By discussing language, barriers, programmings, and the importance of inclusivity, participants will get ideas to invigorate their own practices for mental health education and advocacy (for their teens and themselves). They will also walk away with a comprehensive resource guide with vetted recommended books for their collections, examples of activities for programming, and scripts to open up conversations.

Nora Shalaway Carpenter
A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Art’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program, Nora Shalaway Carpenter is the author of The Edge of Anything (a Best Book of 2020: Kirkus Reviews and A Mighty Girl, a Cybils Awards finalist, Discover Great Books Through Reading 2021 selection) and contributing editor of Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America (an NPR Best Book of 2020, a YALSA Best Fiction YA 2022 nominee, Country Living’s Front Porch Book Club selection, Nautilus winner, and a Junior Library Guild selection). Her forthcoming anthology, Ab(solutely) Normal, is co-edited with Rocky Callen and subverts mental health stereotypes. Her forthcoming novel, Fault Lines, offers an unflinching examination of socio-economics, gender expectations, and environmental ethics, set in a troubled but gorgeous Appalachian landscape. Originally from rural West Virginia, she currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Connect with her at noracarpenterwrites.com.

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Rocky Callen
Rocky Callen, the daughter of an Ecuadorian immigrant, is a former behavioral coach, and has a degree in Political Science and Communication from Trinity University. She also has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her debut novel, A Breath Too Late, grapples with issues of suicide, mental health and domestic violence, and is inspired by her own experiences. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Absolutely Normal, a collection that features protagonists with mental health conditions. She is passionate about raising awareness of these issues for young people. She is a part of Las Musas, a collective of Latinx writers for children literature. She is currently a LCLAA Trabajadoras Fellow. She lives outside of Washington, DC with her husband, daughter, and son. Rocky founded the HoldOn2Hope Project, which unites creatives in suicide prevention and mental health awareness.

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Cearra Harris
For the last decade, Cearra Harris has worked diligently to find the “spice” of her community, creating outreach programs that focus on teens’ immediate needs. She received her MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Cearra’s career began at Richland Library in Columbia, SC. While working at Richland Library, Cearra fell in love with programming and developed a strong passion for serving underserved communities. She previously worked for Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system as a Teen Librarian. Cearra was a 2018-2019 YALSA Spectrum Scholar and a 2020 Young Researchers Professional Development Fellow with the University of Illinois iSchool. Cearra is now a Presidential Fellow and Doctoral student in the School of Information Science at the University of South Carolina-Columbia.

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Deleon Awill
Dr. Deleon Awill is a school librarian in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She dedicates her time and studies to promoting young adult literature as a means of healing. Her research surrounds Black librarianship and the representation of Black young adults in literature with a focus on the representation of Black women.

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Tye Anderson
Tye has worked in both academic and public libraries over the last 15 years, and has been a youth services librarian for five years. He was born and raised in the mountains of Western North Carolina where he lives with his librarian wife, an elderly Corgi, and a semi-tame stray cat.

 

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Sabrina Robinson

The Power of Empathy session will focus on the development of the three-week empathy and de-escalation training that the youth services staff underwent at the Smith Public Library. Focus will be on meaningfully engaging with teen patrons to help avoid heated confrontations and calling law enforcement, as well as working to provide teens with a safe space to be themselves without forcing them to meet behavioral expectations. Special attention will be paid to active listening and empathy mapping.

Kelsey Sidwell,
Teen Services Librarian, Smith Public Library
Native Ohioan and Texan of 11 years , Kelsey Sidwell (she/her) earned her master’s degree in library science from the University of North Texas in 2018, and has a bachelor’s degree in English from Ohio University. She has been the teen services librarian at the Smith Public Library in Wylie, TX for three years, and has been working in libraries for over a decade. She currently lives in McKinney, TX with her partner and spends her free time doing pottery and reading almost exclusively fantasy books.