Suzanne's Anaheim events

One of the fun things about ALA is going to some of the events in additions to programs and workshops. So I thought I'd use a blog posting to talk a bit about some of the fun stuff.

WebJunction Member Reception - Lauren's and my flight from Salt Lake City to Anaheim was cancelled so we spent 7 1/2 hours in the Salt Lake City airport and missed the reception. Am I bitter? I'm just upset that I missed out on the feather boas. There are photos of the event on Flickr.

One of the interesting events at ALA this year was a Big Game - California Dreaming. You signed up, joined a team and then answered trivia questions posted around the conference center and/or at the Marriott or Hilton and/or picked up items like in a scavenger hunt and earned points for your team. I knew none of the California trivia questions but I can scavenge so I got the only 75 points scored by the Special Librarians team. Here's a photo of the winners. The Library Society of the World.The photo is by ALA on Flickr. The Big Game concept is kind of interesting and might be an activity to consider for a future MLA conference, perhaps as a Sheila Cates fundraiser. There's more information about it on the ALA conference wiki.

I did make it to Disneyland for the Spectrum Scholarship Bash.
I didn't take any photos. This one is by Squid from Flickr. The Disneyland adventure was a bit disappointing. I was expecting some kind of special treatment like the bash a few years earlier at Universal Studios in Orlando. Instead it was us librarians and several hundred thousand other Disneyland enthusiasts. So, I only saw one person I knew the whole night. I did go on a few rides - Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. I refused to wait in line for 45 minutes for some of the other rides. And I did manage to find some better food than I had anticipated - gumbo. And there is certainly no shortage of shopping opportunities. We got to "enjoy" the Disneyland fireworks every night while we were there. I thought this would get really old really fast if I lived nearby.

Book Cart Drill Team Championship - I finally made it to one. Of course, I got there late and it was standing room only.Costumes, music, choreography. This I believe was the winning team. They did a zombie dance number to "Thriller."



Another photo is from ALA on Flickr. And they have lots more book cart drill team photos as well.

And, last but certainly not least was the AILA American Indian Youth Literature Awards reception.

This photo was taken by Karen Gonzales of the winners:

Picture Book:
Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom
by Tim Tingle.

Middle School Award Winner:
Counting Coup: Becoming A Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond
by Montana’s own Joseph Medicine Crow.

Young Adult Award Winner:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie.

There was food, story telling, music and dancing. I got to hang out with Mary Anne Hansen and Karen Gonzales. And, as Karen pointed out, with 3 calendar girls, how could it not be fun? Carlene Engstrom was a member of the awards committee. Nice job, Carlene! And I got another book signed and took this photo for Karen of her with Sherman Alexie.

Finally, on the last day, one of the last events was an interview with Kite Runner author, Khaled Hosseini. He talked a bit about his life and the writing of and reactions to The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. One of the bits I particularly enjoyed was the difficulty some readers had in accepting the book as fiction. He recounted one woman asking what has happened to the boy (I can't remember his name). He replied, you know the book is fiction? She said yes, and asked again. So, he gave in and said he's fine.