 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. The show is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show and then post it to our website later and I will, so you can watch it at your convenience. And I will be showing at the end of today's show where to see all of the archives. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products we think you might be interested in. Really, our only criteria is that it is something to do with libraries. Something libraries are doing, something we think they could or should be doing, new services and things which are offered to them. We are, the Encompass Library Commission is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska, so we serve all types of libraries in the state. Academic, public, K-12, correctional, museums, anything that has a library in it. So on our show, you will find a huge variety of things. So this is definitely something for anybody who's interested in libraries. We do have guest speakers that come in sometimes to do presentations, but we also have library commission staff. And today, that's what I have with me is some staff here from the Nebraska Library Commission. Sally Snyder, I'll be on the side there, is the coordinator of children's and young adult library services here. And Amy Owen is an information services librarian in a reference department. And so some of you may, I hope, I think you may be aware this was an on the fly session we're doing this morning, kind of. Originally, today's show is supposed to be all about the Nebraska Golden Sower Award. However, one of our presenters and outside presenters unable to join us this morning. We found out just on Sunday, so we did a quick change and have a different topic for this little show. But we do have the announcement of the winners of the Nebraska Golden Sower Award. And this is the Children's Choice Award. And the original show has been rescheduled for July 24th. So if you do want to hear all about more about this, join us on July 24th, sign up for that, it's available. But we're going to quickly do the announcement of the winners, because I know some people are interested in that, because it was announced just today. Just today. Makelers just traditionally when they announced the award. So that was one reason we wanted the show today. But since it didn't work out, we just wanted to announce to you, as you can see on the page there. The winner of the Picture Book Award is Madeline Finn and the Library Dog by Lisa Papp. And the Honored Books are I Am Dot A Chair by Russ Barat. And Anything But Ordinary Addie, The True Story of Adelaide Henlein, Queen of Magic by Mara Rockcliffe. The Chapter Book winner is Maxi Secrets or What You Can Learn from a Dog by Lynn Ford. And the Honored Books are The Wild Robot by Peter Brown and Wish by Barbara O'Connor. The Golden Sower Novel Award. The Winner is Psy by Neil Schusterlin. Yay. And the Honored Books Project 1065, The Novel of World War II by Alan Gratz. And another Honored Book is The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry. And she says further down that there were 69,062 students who voted this year for their favorite book. And she sends a thank you to all of the teachers, media specialists and librarians who promoted the books in their schools and libraries. Because that's what makes the program a success. And that's from Kathy Shelton, C-listed as the chair of the Golden Sower Award committee who was unable to join us this morning. So she'll be back with us in July to talk all more about the award itself. And how people can be involved if they want to. Yeah, next time. Awesome. So congratulations to all the winners. Yes. I don't know if they've already been contacted or not. I think they tried to do that before they actually announced it. It's almost like winning the New Mary with the Talbot Award. It's pretty close. Awesome. All right, great. Well, thank you very much, Sally. All right. And you can go there just by typing goldensower.org is the Golden Sower's web page location. And I believe she said they were also going to have it on their Facebook page as well. Facebook is going to be out there too. All right. Well, thank you. All right. So on to today's topic, what we actually came up with, I have something to fill in very quickly, but luckily we have things on hand that we can do. One book for Nebraska kids and one book for Nebraska teens is a project that here, that Sally and Amy work on the Nebraska Library Commission. So I'm just going to handle with you guys to go to it and tell us all about it. If you are looking for the page about this, there's a couple of different ways you can get there. But if you type in the search box up there in the corner and you just type the word one. And then you see, there's all our one book. There's the one for Nebraska for everything with the kids and teens, which actually bring you to the same page. And so you look down a little about fourth one. So this is just the main page. It's also on the Nebraska Center. Just in case you encounter it in another way, it could be that much. And we have just some basic information about the program at the top. And then you can see one book for Nebraska kids and teens, 2019. So our kids book is along pitch home by Natalie, who we're hoping will be able to log into the program for a few minutes today, maybe around 10, 15 she was thinking. We're hoping to hear a little bit from her and ask her a couple of questions before she has to go off again for us. And the book for teens is The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds, who was very busy as well. But now we just for today, we did reach out to Jason, but he is as I'm very busy with other events and writing as he said, but we did. He is going to be actually here in Nebraska in September at the the Palm Creek Literacy Festival. Yeah, the Palm Creek Literacy Festival is an annual event that we have. I'm not sure if you want to talk about that a little bit. They, yes. Concordia University puts it on every year for I don't know how long it's been quite a few years. And they have the Thursday and Friday are days for kids to come and work with offers. And I'm not even exactly sure what all happens depends on who the author or illustrator sometimes to work with them. And then on the Saturday, they call that the adult conference. You can see their children's day is just 1996. 1996 is not great. And it's been an annual conference since then on there on the Concordia campus. And you can see many of the speakers. Kate DeCamello is the luncheon speaker. That's Saturday. I shouldn't tell them that because I haven't signed up yet. If you get my lunch ticket, it's okay. Some of them are on the Friday for the kids to me. And a few of them are just on Saturday. It's only on Saturday and Jason there. He is also on this. It is just on Saturday for the adult. But he will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday. He will be on Saturday at this event. But I just want to stand in line to get a book autographed and say thanks for coming to Nebraska. However many authors I can sign up for. We just want to make sure that he will be here though. And I don't know how you can check to see if Maverick Lorenzi. I am well good at things here. I will let you know. Thank you. I just don't want to leave her wondering why we're not talking to her. Yeah, because we do want to talk to her. So I just have some basic background information about the one book for Nebraska. I'm the one who named this and I'm the only one who always says it right. Oh. Because it was in my brain. Because we're so used to one book, one Lincoln, one book, one Nebraska, one book and other places and that all makes sense. But when I looked at this, I thought one book, one Nebraska kids just didn't flow to me and that's just probably my brain. So I just got one book for Nebraska kids or teens. Let's just do it that way. So don't worry if you pronounce it wrong. If you only have to type the word one into the search box and you'll find the page. So it doesn't matter what you call it. And we don't send a flag or anything. I never thought of that. We're just listening. People, how many flags do people need? I don't think about that. So initially this was suggested by Sharon Osanga who was then the administrator of the Meridian library system. Right after I became the children's services person, I went out and had a meeting with her and we talked about lots of ideas and this was her idea. She says, one book, one Nebraska is great but we need that for kids. So we talked and I said, you know, let's try that. So we started off with in 2007, 2008, the book that we selected because it was Sharon's idea and her suggestion for the book, rescue Josh McGuire by Ben Michelson. And we do have information. Yeah, we do have, even as we move along for the years, you guys have kept links to all the previous ones too. So you can always jump down to a previous one if you wanted to. So when we started, we were naming a kid's book one year and a teen book the second year. So you can see there's the kid's book and then the teen book was the book feed by Martha Suzak. And so that's why they had those two year spans there because it was the teen book for two years until we named another teen book. But that was confusing me as well as other people. And so in 2013 is the first year that we had both. We just went ahead and said, you know what, here's our kid's book, here's our teen book. And so there they are. Aliens on vacation, which I think is hilarious. And Leviathan by Scott Hostertelt, which is also, that's a steam pump story. It's the first book in a three-book series as it turns out. So that's how that got started. Now people have asked me before, how do the books get selected to be the one book for the rest of kids or teens? Well, for a number of years, when I first started, we had a use advisory board for the library commission, which was put together by people who volunteered, librarians, school and public librarians who work with children or with teens. And they met a couple of times a year and then sometimes over, we had a different system than if I can't remember what it was called, but we met via long-distance viewing or screening. Oh, video conference. Video conference, and that's it, thank you. And one of the things that they did for us was just read and discuss, first suggest titles and then read and discuss the ones that they've been suggested and make it have a vote. And it won by vote. I only got one vote, I guess that's only clear. So they did that for many years. And then that group kind of faded away because there wasn't really enough other things I had for them to do at that time. And of course, everybody's always busy. So then we formed a special committee just for this text. And that was made up of a few staff people at the commission, plus a few librarians out in the state who were interested to make suggestions and read the books that were nominated, so it's for lack of a better word. And that worked for a while. Now it's just a small group of librarians at the library commission making this decision. So if you want to join in, you certainly are welcome. I can send you a list of what's been suggested so far, which is mostly in my brain right now, but I can type it up, not a problem, for next year because we really want to get things looked at, discussed, and settled before all conference. That's kind of a good deadline so that we can let people know what's it going to be next year. They can start planning for what books they might want to have discussed. And also, that's another chance for people to give a suggestion for the year after that. I'm always happy to hear suggestions. If you know of a book, it doesn't have to be new. Rescue Josh Require was not new in 2007. It's been around a few years, and it was a good choice for starting at this point. Discussing that, the kids book is generally aimed at grades four and six, roughly, and the teen book is most often for high school level. When we were first discussing this, I had a lot of librarians tell me, we need a high school book, a high school level book, because the Golden Sower novels list, the novels is the oldest group of books, and it's really for grades like grade seven, eight, nine, or six, seven, eight, really more middle school, which is fine. They need books too. But we didn't really have anything that was, here's a book for high school students. So most of the time, we've really tried to make this teen book be for nine and up ages, maybe even up there, generally in that area. Of course, we all know kids read at different levels and different speeds and different interests all the time. So if they're not reading at that level, but they really want to read that book, they will. So that's kind of how we came up with those age groups. Okay, Lee. No, no, it's okay. I've just been kind of lecturing, it's time for discussion. No, that's fine. No, I just said Natalie has joined us. Oh, yeah. We wanted to... Yes, please. Natalie, are you there? Yes, I am. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Do you happen to have a webcam on your computer? I, let's see, I do. If you can be able to see this question now in your go-to webinar and your face where you can share your webcam. Okay, let me see. Oh, I see, share my webcam. Okay. We didn't warn you about that, did we? That's okay. That's okay, can you see me? Three, two, one. Yay, here I am in my office. Okay, well, if you don't mind answering a few questions, is there something you want to say right off the bat? Well, the first thing I wanted to say is really just my thanks to the whole commission, to everyone who was on the committee. I was really thrilled when actually a librarian friend told me that a Longkitch home was a pick for this year, along with Jason Reynolds, boy in the black suit. So I was completely thrilled. I'm an assistant principal now at an elementary school in Fairfax County, Virginia, but I used to be a school librarian for six years right before that. So I was just really thrilled and I really just am so appreciative of all of you who get books into the hands of kids. So thank you for choosing my book. I really appreciate it. Did you want to talk about how the hers got selected? What was hers? If you guys did have a discussion about it? We did have a discussion and there were only about five books being, I can't remember the other titles at this point, but this one had a lot going for it. It had immigration to the U.S. from another country. It had adapting not only to Bill Lowe, I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, Bill Lowe. He already knew English, but it wasn't his first language. So and also when you learn English or when you learn any language, you learn more of the more formal and so the vernacular is kind of lost on you a lot of the time. So he had a lot of adjusting to do. And also the difference between cricket and baseball was last meeting. So he is a hang in there kind of kid. I don't think it's his father who can't come with them right away. There's some kind of issue happening that you don't know at first in the book what that really is. So they have a lot of, that's one of the criteria for selection is it provides discussion. There are a lot of different things that kids can latch on to things that they hadn't thought about or that I don't know how cricket works. So I didn't know what the difference was between the games and how it all makes sense. All of these things that kids can talk about. Well, that's something, it's funny that you said you don't know much about cricket because when I set out to write this story, I didn't know much about cricket either. In fact, I had heard of the game and that was about it. So, but I wanted to bring something that's really popular in many countries around the world, including the UK and Australia, New Zealand, but also, of course, India, Pakistan, those many countries, that's the sport for them. So I had to do a lot of research. I also had to do a lot of research because I was writing outside of my culture. And that's something, well, before I was a school librarian, I was an ESL teacher for nine years. So I've worn different hats in the school system and I just had so much respect for the children who would come to my classroom. And some of them did come in thinking they knew English and they did know a lot of English, but the slang really throws them for a loop. It's really tough. So I wanted to create a character that my ESL kids could identify with, but also that would give sort of a window into the life of someone for a child who doesn't have a second language and hasn't had to change cultures. But that said, I got a lot of help. And I think whenever anyone writes outside of their own culture, you have to have leaders who will vet your manuscript for you. And I was really thankful to have two in particular. One of them was, she was working on her PhD at the time. She was raised in Karachi, Pakistan and came here and raising a young son. So she really took time out of her life to help me out with the manuscript. And also there's another author, Hena Khan, who wrote Amina's Voice. She has that middle grade out. She lives not too far from me and she's a good friend. So she also helped me with that manuscript. So I wanted it to feel authentic, not only culturally, but also in terms of cricket. So if there are kids reading it who do know how to play cricket, I didn't want to be outed as someone who didn't know. So I had to make that believable. So that was something that I had to also vet through someone who knows how to play cricket, which is not me. So, yeah. Well, you kind of answered my first question I had for you, which was how did this book come about? Because I'm always interested in, you know, this was a wonderful final product, but how did you get there? And you kind of told us between your ESL kids and your experiences traveling when you were young? Oh, right. And to latch on to that too, Bilal is a very, very minor character in my first book, Flying the Dragon. He's in the classroom. He's one of the kids who helps. There's a scene where one of those main characters, Hiroshi, is trying to lead his kite to safety sort of thing, and there's a group of kids around him. So he's a very, very minor character. And then my characters in my first book show up very in quick, quick scenes in a long pitch home. But I knew there were some kids' stories from the first book that I still wanted to tell. And so that's sort of where Bilal came from himself, yeah. Oh, thank you. That's great. Do you have plans to expand on any other characters into another book? You know, right now, I'm working on a book that's completely different, that's actually set in Italy. And it's an American girl, my husband's from Italy, and my family. We have three kids, and we used to live there. And so culturally for me, that's an easier fit in terms of writing about this culture. But if I were to ever write a story, I mean, I am interested in writing a book from Jordan's point of view, The Girl Who's on His Baseball Team. So that's something that's in the back of my mind. I haven't started anything with that yet. But if I were to, then I would like to explore her story some more and see where that leads. So we'll see. That sounds wonderful. I agree that one, too. I thought it was in the first book, so I didn't have to go back and pick that one up. Oh, could you repeat that? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Oh, I just said I have not read your first book that you were talking about. Gotcha. So I have to grab it from the library. OK. Another question I had for you was, what was your favorite thing about this book, A Long Pitch Home, about either in the process of writing it or what came out on the page? What's one of your favorite things that happened? That's a good question. I think a lot of kids will ask me which character I identify with the most. And because I'm female, they think that I would identify with Jordan. But my dad was in the Air Force when I was growing up. So we moved a lot. And I went to five different elementary schools. And the longest elementary school stay I had was second through fourth grade and really the first two weeks of fifth grade in Bitburg, Germany. We're on an Air Force base there. And the next station was in San Antonio, Texas. And Texas has a really strong culture, I have to say. I don't know if you can say a state is patriotic for their state, but they really are. So I looked like I fit in and I sounded like I fit in, but I really did not fit in. So and this is before the internet, so I wasn't really caught up on American culture, really never mind the Texan culture. So I really identified the most with Bilal. So some of the, and with my dad being stationed in different places, I know the feeling, Bilal didn't know if his dad would come back or when he would come and there was more worry there when my dad was deployed. We had those same kinds of worries. So I think for me, the part that really sort of choked me up every time I went back to edit and revise is when Bilal comes home from the airport and his dad has not shown up. And so his uncle has taken the signs off the door, the welcome home signs. And so he gets really, he wants to put him back up and he kind of loses it for a moment there. And so that part really, I think that kind of thing has never happened to me before, but I think, yeah, I think that that scene is the one that's probably the sort of touches my heart the most, I think, from the books. And then the one where Jordan ends up when her dad comes home, she and Bilal shows up with his cousin Jalal and sees the yellow ribbon now around his tree. So those are the kind of things that for me touched me the most personally, but also some funny moments, my ESL students, their interpretation of American culture and slang and their ability to laugh at themselves. Sometimes they'll say things that are funny. And then when I was first learning Italian when we lived in Italy, oh my gosh, I said a million things wrong. I had to learn to laugh at myself. And I also lived in Japan for two years. When I was younger, I was teaching first grade there. So I said, I probably don't even realize all the things I said wrong in Japanese because the culture is very different. The Italians will, when you say something wrong, they look at you like, you know what? But the Japanese are much more, I don't want to say more polite, but it's just different. You know, they won't call you out or they'll just nod and they'll smile and just very gracious. So I don't even, I didn't get that verbal and expressive feedback on my mistake. So I do know what that's like, you know, that sort of confusion that he has in the regular classroom and that feeling of knowing that, yes, I am funny in my own language or I'm smart in my own language in certain ways or whatever, but I can't express that. So that's something that I myself have identified a lot with in other countries. Yeah. Thank you, that's great. I was also wondering since you're still a bit, I know you have to go pretty soon and I don't want to keep you down. That's okay, thank you. So if anyone on the line with us and I'm in the audience wants to ask a question, go ahead and type it into your question section so you can ask Natalie before she has to go or if you have a microphone, let me know. You can ask your question that way. Okay. My question was now, I'm making an assumption which is a bad thing that your first book is also for this age group as well as for the tone. So have you thought about other age groups that you might be interested in writing for like a picture book or a book for older teens? Yes. That's a great question actually. I have, so I have written some picture book manuscripts. I would love to have one published one day. I've had sort of, I've written some manuscripts that were just a no-go and then I've written others. I wrote one that went to acquisitions at three different houses and I even did revisions for one editor but ultimately it was not accepted. So that's the thing that's interesting about being an author is you get one book published and then another and you think, but it's still hard work. You still have to put in the work and you still have to, some of it's a bit of luck in terms of the market, that kind of thing but my process was very different with both of my books. The first one, Flying the Dragon, I wrote the entire thing but nobody was waiting for that at the time. I didn't have an agent representing my work. I didn't have an editor. I had a critique group that I'm still together with. After 13 years, we all weekly will take turns submitting pages, but the first one when I got stuck, I just put it to the side and picked it up when I wanted to but for a long pitch home, that one I sold to the same publisher but on proposal. So I had three chapters written and a synopsis and I thought when they accepted it, I thought, oh great, I won't have to write the whole thing and risk them saying no, thank you. But being creative on a deadline was really tough. So I had these deadlines and I'd be writing and I would say insert poignant moment when Bilal realizes this and then I would just keep going to the next scene because I didn't have time to let it simmer as much as... So I don't think that I would do a book on proposal again, I don't think but that is appealing about a picture book is that you can work on the entire manuscript and put it aside and then come back to it and it doesn't take you hours and hours and hours to reread what you wrote the last time. So that and I think as a former school librarian, picture books are just, they really are just little works of art, just like a package of the words and the images, the illustrations are just, they really are gifts, I think to readers. So I do hope one day that I'll be able to write or to publish a picture book. Young adults, maybe one day but I think because I work at an elementary school, that's sort of my day-to-day feedback and my observations of kids. So that's sort of my lane for right now, I would say. For that, I was just curious about that you talk about the picture books. Would you, are you an illustrator as well or just the author? No, no, I would just be the author. A lot of kids will ask if I've done the covers and there's no way. You would not want to read a book that I've illustrated. Let's stick to the writing for sure. Do you have any illustrators in mind that you'd work with or you would be one person? You know, yeah, I feel, I mean, I just heard one of my critique group partners, Kip Wilson, her book, White Rose, just came out, it's a novel in verse, it's, Kwame Alexander has an imprint and it's one of the first books in that, from that house to come out or that his imprint to come out. So they were in town, the group of them in Washington, DC and I went to hear her speak, but all of them spoke and Kadir Nelson was there and I just, oh my gosh, he is amazing. I mean, I mean, there are people who, I mean, I would just be, of course, honored to work with but then, you know, obviously it depends on the type of story you write. If it's a fun bouncy story, then Kadir Nelson wouldn't be the person to illustrate it, you know, so, but I'm just in awe at the talent that illustrators have, you know, to create their work. So it's a nice, from what I've heard in the picture book world, it's a nice partnership. You know, typically the author and the illustrator don't collaborate. Sometimes they do, so that must be an interesting process but my friends who are picture book writers say it's really fun to see those illustrations come back and how they've, the illustrator has interpreted their words and it often adds different layers that they didn't expect. So I think it becomes something that neither illustrator nor author could achieve on their own, but it's something even greater. So that seems like a fun process, for sure. Definitely. One of the things I've observed in my, I review books for our state and I couldn't write a book if my life depended on it, but I am amazed at the skill that people have to write anything wonderful like your book, but also picture books are hard to write. Yeah. Because you have to, anyone at the level of kids but not talk down to them, make it clear and understandable and of course the artwork adds to it, but I'm really impressed with people who have that skill. That's, with picture books, I think, you know, they say that if you start out to teach a lesson then it's not gonna work. You know, so you, you know, you write the words but you have to, it has to be read aloudable, I guess if that makes sense. You know, it has to roll off the tongue and write as librarians, you know. So yeah, so and the page churns have to work in building suspense in that way, so there's a lot to it. They seem simple and straightforward, but I really admire people who can pull that off because it's a creative process that requires a lot of thinking and planning and redoing and redoing and redoing again and again. It's different from doing a novel, yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, writing novels for young readers, there is an economy of words that you have to sort of keep in mind. You can't go on and on and on about, you know, a blade of grass or whatever that may be. You know, you need to get to the point and you need to hook them in the beginning and you need to, you know, sort of be succinct as opposed to let's say an adult novelist, but with picture books even more so. I mean, you just have so few words that you can spend, so to speak, and you need to pick exactly the right words. And I think as a former librarian and as a parent, you know, you also have to write something that will be read aloud again and again and again. You know, when those kids come and say, mommy, would you, you know, can you read this again? So my kids are all teenagers now, but we have picture books that I've read. I mean, it has to be hundreds of times. So it has to be something that appeals to the reader as well, but yet keeping firmly in mind that your audience is children. So that's a tough balance, I think, to achieve for sure. I have to say that one of the things that's happened to me with all the reading of picture books on upper elementary level, middle school and high school books is completely spoiled me for adult books. I don't think I've ever read a book. I know. Of course. And I read the better one. I said, that's about the better one, let's go. That's so true. My mom is always saying, my mom is saying, Natalie, would you read an adult book? I was like, well, I don't have time, you know? So, yeah, no, I agree with you. It's funny. So many new stories, only more new stories reading the teen or, yeah. Right. And I think lately in publishing, it's been exciting to see people, just the own voices movement, which may sound funny coming from me who did not write from my own culture, but for the first two books, but I really respect people who are getting their voices out there and I'm really excited about the publishing industry that is welcoming their agents and their editors that are actively looking for voices that are not heard as often. I think especially Native American voices that are authentic. A librarian, I had a ton of books about Native American Indians, but the authenticity, when you look through a lens of authenticity, not a lot of them were there. Definitely when I was growing up, there wasn't, I can't remember a single Native American author, so it is nice to see, already I think that this middle grade and picture books and YA are engaging, but it's really exciting to see more voices coming to the shelves as well, for sure. Thank you, I agree as well. I think you did a great job of writing, not again, I'm a Christian white woman, so what do I know, but to me, you're not representing that culture in your book and I'm thrilled to hear about the people who were helping you with that, to be sure you were on target with them, his reactions, things that were in the family were doing together for different events and things, so I really appreciate that effort then. Well, thank you and I, like I said, I could not have done it without them, so I really appreciated their help and I also appreciate again, I'd like to thank you all before we say goodbye, I'd like to thank you just really for the time that you put into reading books every day and getting the word out about books into the hands of your readers, so thank you for all that you do as well. Well, we really appreciate your time to come and talk with us about your book and about your writing process, especially at the last minute, like this, we all had to pull this together. No, that's fine, it was my pleasure. And this is all because Christa happened to notice well, what are the, when you found that, that your contact information on your webpage. I saw your tweet about the fact that you rediscovered that your contact information, that something was broken on your website and that's why I told Sally, reach out again, she probably didn't see the first one at all. I did not see it at all and I felt so terrible and I thought, oh my goodness, so because somebody who is again, a librarian friend of a friend of, you know, the library connection, said, you know, so and so mentioned that they've been trying to reach out to you and I went to the page, not only was it out of date, I needed to, you know, update it, but I realized it wasn't working and I felt terrible, so I'm glad that you reached out again. I'm glad that you persevered. Absolutely, we do have just one comment on that came in from one of our staff here who watches this. Thanks to Natalie for your answers information. I always, always enjoy hearing about an author's process, no matter who they are writing for. Thanks for your time and military kids are amazing individuals. Oh, and I would agree, thank you very much to her for, or him for writing in and I agree. I think that we definitely, you know, thank our military members for their service, which is exactly what we should be doing. And whenever I can, I always thank the families of the military person for their service in a sense, because it, you know, it does take a village and also the people who support them. So yeah, thank you for pointing that out. That's, I'm in agreement. Yeah. Is there any other, what anything else you want to tell us before you need to leave? We, I don't want to kick you off, but I also want to be sensitive to your timeframe here, so. All right, no, I think really, I just really have enjoyed this and enjoyed the process. And I'm really honored that, that you all chose along pitch home, along with the boy in the black suit. I'm just really honored. And I thank you all for your time. And you may not have heard us say that this program will be on our Nebraska Library Commission YouTube page. Oh, yes. Before I would go there every week. That was a bad time to tell you that. Oh, okay. No, that's good. I appreciate that. I'll have to subscribe to that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We'll let you know when it's available. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you again. And thank you to your listeners. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for being with us. Okay. Take care. Thanks again. Okay, bye bye. Now, we're gonna give Amy a little time to chat about some of her involvement in this whole process, which say, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Well, Fala gave me the chance to make some of the puzzles in game that I can find. Yes. I think it's a fun part. It is. It really is a fun part. So, it gives me a chance to read the books and really get in depth with some of the different vocabulary and quotes that are used. So, you can find all of those on the one book for Nebraska Kid and Teenage for each year. So, for each book we have several puzzles, crossword puzzles, a tile puzzle which will... Shoot it. Yeah. So, it's got a scrambled phrase and it's got a couple different versions. So, one's a little more tricky than the other and you just can cut those out and rearrange them. I think you'll be back. Yeah. I'll be back to you in a minute. Crossword puzzle, a letter, jot puzzle, word search. And then, sometimes we have some special questions for those. I don't quite got off there yet. I'm working on it. It will be done pretty soon. And we have those for each year that we have for each book. Also wanted to mention that this year we don't have a book club kit for at least two titles. I'm sorry about that, actually. Yeah. But we do have them for most of the other titles for other years. So, if you wanted to check these out, you can check out Last Year's, Charlie Joe Jackson, or Killer of Enemies. And we have the same puzzles and we have a special question and you can check out we like 10 and 20 copies, I think usually of each of these books. Go ahead and click on that so they can see what it looks like when you're taking it. And that'll take you to the entry for that and you can request that kit and we would mail it to you. Not even have seen your audio. Yeah, so I don't know if you have for audio budget for it this year. So, we would happily take your nation. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Yes, if you have copies you want to donate to create some book looks, it's for us for this year's books, yeah. And then the discussion question sent us for the ones for this year's as we saw, there isn't what we're still working on for the kids but the team actually but sometimes the good things that you guys come up with but sometimes as you can see in this case, the publisher themselves created a curriculum. Yeah, questions. So, yeah, a curriculum guide for it. Yeah, that just gives you something else to talk about with your kids. Yeah, coming up with a lot of fun. One more thing to do in my life. Great. Well, and we don't know how people would actually use them because our reporting process is kind of lacking. Yeah, that's probably my fault. But I know that people there are libraries in this stage and do book discussions with these books, both schools and public libraries. And they some have told me they use the puzzles as kind of a take home thing for the kids. They come and they discuss the book and then they get a title puzzle of the letter drop. You do click on the letter drop puzzle because I just think that's so fun because you just look at the line and you get the letters in there. Yeah, this is less of a letter drop than a letter raise. So either way. So each line will fit into one of those boxes above it and eventually form a phrase. Oh, I see. And the answers are available too. So you don't have to solve it yourself. Yeah. The kids dance with the band. Just don't let the kids know what it is. Or do it. Yeah, that's fun to make and the crosswords of what we want to make too. See, I'm really bad at making crosswords because that's why I did the clueless crossword puzzles because I can't come up with good clues across the puzzles. Yeah, yeah. Just they have to think about how it works. Oh, figure out where they fit. When you find one that only has one, then my very apartment will fit in that one. And then you build on that because I'm not good at writing clues. It's either my clues are either really obvious or terribly obscure in the middle of the road. Some of these books are easier than others. As far as I try to come up with a list of great, steep words that define the book, but then trying to have different words for the crossword puzzle versus the word search. I don't want to just use the same word as the word over and over again. So that makes it a little more challenging. So we talked a lot about the the kids book. Do you like to talk a bit about the boy of that suit? Because it's selection process and what it's about and everything. It probably should be. There are going to be description of what I call words. I sent them to Dan, I don't think she's here this morning, and they will go up there to give you just an idea. But in the boy in the black suit, the main character. Yeah, thank you. He's 17 and his mother has just passed away. And his father has been on the straight and narrow while his mother was around. But now he's drinking too much because that's how we, what he was doing before, but his mother kept him in. I don't think I'm doing that. And now she's gone and that's how he's grieving. And then he ends up in the hospital because of that drinking. So the 17-year-old Matt, he doesn't have any brothers or sisters. He has a good friend who runs the tumor part of her down the street. And that man offers him a job there. So that's why he's the boy in the black suit. He starts wearing his black suit to school because then he can just go right to the tumor home from school. And so, and all the kids, there's some school scenes, but not that many. Because it's more about him relating to, I think the man's name is Mr. Rae, who's kind of taking care of him right now because nobody else is. And also how he watches the fumes and other people grieve. So he can see, what should I be doing? How can I grieve? And he strikes up a friendship with a girl about his age who, I think her name is Renee, see? Where am I wrong? Love, but she was wearing the Renee name. That's why the name is her. He thought her name was Renee, and her name was Levin. And they kind of, she's just buried her grandmother. Yeah, they need to be her father. And so, they kind of help each other in dealing with the loss and the moving on. So Matt has both the loss of his mother and his father's loss of self. To deal with as well. Of course, it's by Jason Reynolds, so it's very well written. There's lots of discussion points on this moving to this. Well, one of the things I really enjoyed about this was obviously as a female, I'm not, I don't have a male perspective, but I really enjoyed giving inside the head of this teenage boy and how he, you know, he could have given into peer pressure and been goofing off with his friends. He was supposed to have a job lined up. I'm going to school half days for good grades, but when his mother passed away, the job he had lined up for the second half of the day kind of fell through. And he could have just hung out on the streets with his friends and got into trouble, but instead his mentor comes into his life and offers him his chance. And so he's making good choices. And it's really adult choices. And he can take care of himself. But it's really internal. It's all in his head. A lot of it, there's not as much action as there is thinking and giving his perspective and what he's going through. So it's really nice to kind of step into someone else's black, formal shoes. I guess. And definitely all the, is there a lot in there about the work he does doing in the room? That's another thing. I'm similar to the other title that I don't know much besides myself having attended any behind the scenes kind of. They do. We talk about setting up in flowers and just kind of preparing for these grieving families to come in and parts of the funeral and never pass afterwards. And, but I, for a little bit, he's just remotes and he talks about how boys don't want to read because they don't want to read boring books. And so he won't write boring books. So I don't feel like he goes so much into it that it's like you're talking about the adult books. I don't need to see you. You're more about your description of the meadow. Just get to the action, what's happening. Yeah, yeah. And this, this is in prose. It's a, some of his books are in free verse. More often now he's writing free verse, which they're both wonderful. But this is what is not one of those. This is a text. He knows his writing is, yeah. So this is an earlier book by him, but it has so much strength in it. I think this young man comes through a terrible situation because of some of the people that he meets and guide him, what he said, his mentor. And also because of his strength and son. I think that's one thing that I like about the one book for Nebraska kids and teens books that he's like that they, well, like some of the things like the Goldsore awards or other like Newbury and whatnot, they have to be something published this most recent year or whatever. These, it can be from any time. So I think it's great to bring out, bring to kids and teens attention. Here's a book you might not have heard of. It's not one most recently published, the one that's on top of, typically everybody's tongue right now this year, but something from five, 10 years ago or something that is still a good story and we think you should take a read. That reminds me because I never really actually read some of my list of criteria. Yeah, absolutely, we should do that. And so now you can laugh at this one, but one of our first criteria is it needs to be available in paperback because if you're buying a set for kids to read, that's much more affordable. Absolutely. So I've had ones nominated that we put on the list and then we had a wait a year before we could consider them to see it and they came out with it. And then also it needs to be of interest to the age group. So it needs to have something that will get the kids starting to read it. The third one, which I talked about before with kids provides discussion because if you have a book that everybody likes and wasn't that fun and okay now, we don't have anything else to say about it in here. We're not having a discussion. And the last one was the kids book in particular cannot be a recent Golden Sower nominee or particularly a winner because lots of kids have already read it. They've already discussed it if they had that option. There's nothing wrong with them discussing it again but let's introduce it in some sense. There's so many books published every year why would we latch on to one they've already read? And then at the time we made that rule and this was within talking to Kathy Schultz with the Golden Sower chair. She said, I think it's all right for the team's selection to have been a recent nominee, not never the winner, it's never the winner for that, for a due recent timeframe but it could be a recent nominee because there aren't as many kids participating in the Golden Sower novel such as reading. So that might be another way to get them to read those. And I also liked the fact that we just say recent. That is, I mean, because I have a book in mind for next year that's on my list that's been a Golden Sower nominee for kids. And I'm gonna just put it in my proposed pile because I think it's been long enough that the kids who would be reading it now haven't seen it. And so that's okay to introduce it to them. It's also a wonderful book. So that's just the four things that we came up with when we first started doing this. My youth advisory board came up with this with the help of Kathy Schultz when we asked her about it. And I'm always willing to revisit these. Maybe it doesn't have to always be in paperback but that just seems like, it makes life easier for people. For the school libraries to get them. The school libraries to get a bunch of copies, yeah. And then they can go eat them to us if they, just kidding, I mean, no, you sure can but we cannot tell them. Another thing I wanted to say, I know we're coming up on the 11th here, is anyone who is watching the show right now live or watching it as a recording, if there's a book that you have read or your kids at your library have read and just thought was great, send me an email because I can put it on my list. Like you said, it doesn't matter if it's this year's most popular book or if it was from three years ago, a popular book and nobody's talking about it but it's called a terrific book. Then we'll put it on our consideration list. I don't want to impact my fellow commission staff members too much with 10 hundred books to read it. There's some titles maybe we haven't got it yet. There are so many books published and there's ones I never even hear about. Yeah, you got a long read. So always looking for input and ideas. Absolutely. Suggestions and recommendations are always happy to get books. Now you said, now it's our commission staff, we have a team of people that pick through this. Is there any thought about trying to have another youth advisory committee you talked about that didn't kind of fade away or inviting to see if any staff out there would be interested, library staffs and state makers didn't help them or... I'd like to ask some library people out in the state who are willing to read. You could just say, I only want to read for the team actually, so I only want to read for the kids' choice. And then you'll only read half as many books. I have one school librarian who's still wearing contact and I send her what I have under consideration and she reads what she can get her hands on. That's another problem I know. You can't get your hands on all of the books and it's necessary to wrap it up. I do not expect you to buy them. No, that won't happen. Just because I think it's a good book doesn't mean you need to buy it for your library. It's your library. But so yes, if you're interested in reading for either the kids' list or the teens' list, I'd be happy to hear about that too. You can do another small group of librarians. Good to have other, more perspectives and ideas about what we'll be reading for the children. Not too many. You want too many people are going over it, but... And what it's been before, and that's another thing, is that I send a list to the people who are willing to read and they read what they can and then they send in a vote. And I think a discussion is another good thing. Now that there's Zoom and other things. Yeah, a lot of you consider it for us to get together and what's before it. So maybe that's what it would be. That may be part of the feel-good travel to have a meeting, but now we've gotten like this. We could do that. Go live an hour and read. Yeah. To have a discussion. While I look at these books from my perspective and my viewpoint and look for qualities, I may not have ever considered something that someone else has, oh my gosh, Sally, just better not choose that book because of this, which I just read right over and kept going. We didn't, and yeah. So it's good to have more than one people. That's why I have a small group here at the commission. We try not to overwhelm their voting. You will vote for my choice. No, we don't. Besides. You can't make anyone vote for another person. All right, so if anybody has any questions, take them into your questions section. Let us know. They're about the books or the process or anything. Take them in there. So vote for a few more minutes. Anything else you guys want to say about the books or the process or the program? Well, I'd just like to say thank you, Amy, for enjoying doing the puzzles. That's all happened because I was a couple, was it two years ago that you started? I had like eight, I can't remember why. I had several things coming up and I wanted to get the puzzles out there and the discussion questions, et cetera. And I just couldn't get to it. So a couple other people here said, well, you know what? There's, I have time that I can just help out with this. I'll do some puzzles. And yes, they are fun, but they take time. Yeah, they do work. So I really appreciate you. Oh yeah. It's a lot of fun. I think the first one that I did was 2017. And we've used a couple of these for book faces. We used the audio book of Alcatraz versus the Evo Library. And we used the back cover of Killer Enemy that's got her face on it. I would've done that one. So I can lend themselves to it in some like long control. Those are great. Doesn't really have a part of it. No. You need ones like heart bodies like the boy in the black suit. Yeah, maybe it's in that one, yeah. Sometimes you, yeah, sometimes you do that one. You can see here that the blurbs that Sally was talking about in the previous years there. So there's the ones from 2018. So soon we'll be adding the ones for this year's books as well. They are compiled. They just need to get put on the page, which technically I can do and keep it below it. But it's so much more fun to say check it, please. And like five minutes later, bing, then she's better at it. All right, it doesn't look like we've got any questions that anybody typed in while we were chatting. That's fine. You guys know where to find Sally if you do have any questions. Sally and Amy here at the Library Commission. So if you do have anything you want to ask them. Some suggestions? Yeah, suggestions for books? Let us know for 2020. He is using a few on your pile of possibilities. So, yeah. And Amy said the idea is by this fall, an online investment water association conference, we would know what the titles will be for next year. It's just a great place to hand out these papers and say, oh, here's what we're going to have for those who are interested in it. I can have it at the commission booth. That's the beginning of October. So if you did want to get involved in helping, that would be the thing between now and September, I would say, is when you would have to read and put in your votes or what you want. So that at conference, which I think is the first week of October, by then we have the information that he'll give out to everybody. And I know that means summer reading program time. But we said they're quick books, they're quick reads. Those are the kids ones, they're not as long. Is that like transit? Yeah. All right. So I think that'll wrap it up then. Anything else you'd like to say last word? Just a big thank you to Natalie Lorenzo. Yes, that was a great question. Thank you Amy as well. Yes, thank you guys for helping me out with having a show this week. As I said, on Sunday we found out that Kathy's going to be unable to join us today and there was a brief bit of panic on Monday morning. But sadly, that definitely said, do you know what? We can do this one. We'll get it, we'll do it. Getting me on board and we're all set. And we even have to film her join us, all right. So that will wrap it up for today's show about our one book, Portagrasca Kids in Teens 2019. I'm not using the battery, I'm getting quick ones. So for the end of the slide website, I'm going to show you that right now. You can search as we did for the one book on the commission page. But if you just go to your search engine of choice, so far, someday this is gonna, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna be wrong, but so far, end of this slide is the only thing called that on the internet if you just Google it. So you can get to our page by just typing in end of this slide. Here's our upcoming shows we have scheduled. But for the archives, that's just like you're right beneath the upcoming shows. And we've got our most recent ones, the top of the list here. And then they just go backwards in date. So hopefully by the end of the day today, I'll have today's recording up. And on the right here at the top of the list, everyone who attended today and registered for today's show will receive an email from me letting you know that it's a bit ready. And then we'll push it out to our social media to our mailing list, Twitter or Facebook. So we have here some more. And I love the fact that you can now search that, or kind of a word or whatever you want to. Yes, this has gotten very unwieldy. This year, 2019 is the 11th year of the show. Yeah, we started in January 2009. So there's a lot of shows here. But we are librarians, so we save everything. And for archival and historical purposes. So our entire history of shows is on here. If you wanted to scroll this whole list, you could get all the way to the end and get to 2009. But that's a lot to get through. So we did have our, Vern, our head of rock and tear team here at grade, I searched for me here. You can search the entire history of the show or you can just do the most recent 12 months if you want to find something just with recent info. And that's important to know because when you are looking through these archives, pay attention to the dates of when something was originally broadcast. Everything has a date in the year on there because you will find things here because it's 10 years worth of things that are old outdated information services and resources that maybe don't exist anymore or links that are broken that we do not have the time to go back and fix broken links. But just be aware of that when you're looking at a date on something, if you're looking at something from 2010, it might not be the most updated info. But depending on the topic, it can be a really interesting thing to read up on. So keep that in mind when you're looking through our archives here. I still got to do it next. Last week's, we've got the April 17th one here. I'm on vacation in the last two weeks. I still got to do last week's recording but I'll get up there as well. So that will be for the archive. Encompass Live is also on Facebook. I mentioned that we do have, there we go. We have a link here and on each of our individual show pages that pops out to our Facebook page. So everything will be announced there. There's a reminder to log into today's show. So if you are big on Facebook now, I don't know if you're on Facebook. If you are a big Facebook user, give us a like over there for the show and you will get notifications of when new show's coming up. We'll let people know we had a change for this week's show and when our archives are ready and recordings are available. So give us a like over on Facebook if you want to. So that will all on the button. I'm sorry, I was just gonna say. And there I see July 24th, the Golden Solar one. Yes, the Golden Solar one. This was originally supposed to be today's show. We did announce the Golden Solar award winning this morning, but that has been rescheduled to July 24th. So if you were interested in that topic, we can go here now and register for it and join us then. And I got changes, we're announced on May 1st. So definitely give us a sign up for that one. And everyone who did, who had already registered for that show when I moved it to the July 24th stage, those registrations automatically moved over to that date for them. They've all been notified but in case anybody didn't hear you get that message or hear that watching this and wanna let you know. Automatically moved your registration to that date so you don't need to re-register if you're already registered for it today. Quick, I'm in. It's good to me. All right. So, yeah, Golden Solar coming up in July. So next week's show I hope you join us for. Small libraries can run code clubs for kids. We will have Luke Miller who is from Prenda who does these code club code clubs, it's hard to say, it's hard to say 10 plus years. We'll be joining us to talk about how to do that. And also joining us will be the director at our O'Neill Nebraska Public Library. They have one there that they've been doing and I borrowed one of their promotional posters here. So, Gene will be joining us as well to talk about what they've done for their code club for kids. So please do sign up for that show. If you're interested in any of our other ones coming up, we've got a mail book that you can see we're starting to get June filled in. So keep an eye on the schedule to see what new unhappens we have coming up for June and July over the summer. And that wraps up for today. Thank you very much, Amy and Sally and Natalie, who's our newest, thank you. And I hope we'll see you next time on the next slide. Bye-bye.