Back from New Orleans, Part 1

I'm a nerd, and I love to go to conferences--they leave me feeling energized and excited and full of good ideas. They also leave me tired, particularly when I get stuck in O'Hare Airport until the wee hours of the morning. So, my ALA report will come in several installments, so that I have time to catch up on my sleep. This first installment will focus on authors whose books I now want to read because they did such an excellent job of reading from them.


Notes From the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick
I've seen Sonnenblick read before, but he was a freshly-minted author and he just seemed really nervous. This time, however, he was fresh and funny and I almost didn't want him to stop. The idea for Notes From the Midnight Driver came from Sonnenblick's day job as a middle school English teacher. The book, about a teen who gets in trouble with the law and is assigned to do community service at an "old folks' home," features a feisty senior citizen who, apparently, sounds remarkably like Sonnenblick's own grandfather. Sprinkled with Yiddish and rife with angsty teen attitude, Midnight Driver seems like an awful lot of fun.




Tyrell by Coe Booth
This could very well have been just another book about a homeless inner-city kid, full of false language and overly dramatic situations and all those other things that keep such novels from ringing true. But Coe Booth, who is a teacher and a social worker in the Bronx, knows Tyrell's world and does a brilliant job of translating it to the page. The language is spot-on, and I guarantee that your teens will relate. Booth's reading was tough and gritty, and when she was done, she shyly ducked her head and let out a demure little "Thank you." It was charming, and now I'm very much looking forward to reading the book.



M.T. Anderson
Okay . . . I didn't really hear M.T. Anderson read, but Michelle and I did have dinner with him and a small group of publishers and librarians. He was charming and delightful and I think that everyone should run right out and read all his books. And I should run out and read Feed, because I think I'm the only person in this business who hasn't.