Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival

8:30 a.m. CST 
Welcome Session

9-10 a.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
A1. Everything You Wanted to Know About Back Matter
Sophia Gholz, Lisa Katzenberger, Charlotte Offsay, Meera Sriram, and Helen Wu 
How to Get Published
(0.1 CEUs)

A2. Barefoot Dreams: Unearthing Details of an Old Family Story
Alda P. Dobbs
School Libraries, Storytelling
(0.1 CEUs)

A3. Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) 2022 Translated YA Book Prize Winners
Kim Becnel, Catharine Bomhold, Brooke Cruthirds, and Jewel Davis
Programming, Best New Books
(0.1 CEUs)

10:15-11:15 a.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
B1. Let's Go for a Walk! Taking Stories Outdoors
Dee Hare and Leigh Hood
Public Libraries, Programming
(0.1 CEUs)

B2. How to Use Social Media To Gain Funding and Diverse Programming for Your School Library
Lydia Green
Technology/Social Media, School Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

B3. Ordinary Terrible Things: Children's Literature, Reality, and the Power of Witnessing
Anastasia Higginbotham
Best New Books, School Libraries, Public Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

B4. Summer Library Programs
Kayla Martin-Gant
Public Libraries, Programming
(0.1 CEUs)

Noon-1:30 p.m. CST Keynote Session
Coleen Salley Storytelling Session
Donna Washington

2-3:30 p.m. CST Keynote Session
de Grummond Children's Literature Lecture
Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome

4-5:30 p.m. CST Keynote Session
Southern Miss School of Library and Information Science Lecture
Dr. Eric L. Tribunella

9-10:30 a.m. CST Keynote Session
Jen Bryant

11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. CST Keynote Session
Southern Miss Medallion Session
Brian Selznick

1-2:30 p.m. CST Keynote Session
Ezra Jack Keats Award Ceremony

3-4 p.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
C1. EJK Bookmaking Seminar & Live Q&A
Ezra Jack Keats Foundation 
Programming, Public Libraries, School Libraries
(0.1 CEUs) 

C2. Fostering Empathy Through a Diverse Library
Cynthia Harmony, Mariana Llanos, and Ana Siqueira
School Libraries, Booktalks/Best New Books
(0.1 CEUs)

C3. South Asian Stories: Elements of Culture and Faith
Tina Athaide, Rashimi S. Bismark, MD, MPH, Sana Rafi, and Kaitlyn Wells
Storytelling, Booktalks/Best New Books
(0.1 CEUs)

4:15-5:15 p.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
D1. Diversify Your Collection: The Importance of Diversity in Every Genre
Tegan Beese
Booktalks/Best New Books, Public Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

D2. Engaging Storytimes
Kirsti Call and Carol Gordon Ekster
School Libraries, Programming
(0.1 CEUs)

D3. From Primary Sources to Published: How to Get Published in Children’s Nonfiction
Elisa Boxer, Kirsten W. Larson, Colleen Paeff, Anna Crowley Redding, and Mindy Yuksel
How to Get Published
(0.1 CEUs)

7-8 p.m. CST Keynote Session
Tell Me Another Story Documentary
Ezra Jack Keats Foundation

9-10:30 a.m. CST Keynote Session
In Conversation with Nic Stone and Angie Thomas

10:45-11:45 a.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
E1. The “Natural” Library: Taking Public and School Libraries OUTSIDE! 
Soline Holmes and Alicia Schwarzenbach
Programming, Booktalks/Best New Books
(0.1 CEUs)

E2. If You Have Emotions and Know It Shout Hooray: Presenting Social Emotional Learning in Storytime
Melanie Borski-Howard
Storytelling, Booktalks/Best New Books
(0.1 CEUs)

E3. Poverty and Privilege: Intersectionality of Race and Class in Young People's Literature
Christina Dorr
Public Libraries, School Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

Noon-1:30 p.m. CST Keynote Session
Raúl The Third

1:45-2:45 p.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
F1. Poetry to Promote Inclusion and Improve Writing
Jo Watson Hackl
Common Core, School Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

F2. Let’s Play Banned Books Week Jeopardy and Charades
Kathy Barco
Community Outreach, Public Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

F3. Discovering African Town: Lessons Learned from the Survivors of the Last Slave Ship
Irene Latham and Charles Waters
Booktalks/Best New Books, School Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

3-4 p.m. CST Concurrent Sessions
G1. Exploring the Magnolia Book Awards, Mississippi Children's Choice Award
Bethany Carlisle and Wendy Daughdrill
School Libraries, Public Libraries
(0.1 CEUs)

G2. Reaching Young Readers with Exemplary Diverse Literature
Lesley Colabucci and Mary Napoli
Booktalks/Best New Books
(0.1 CEUs)

G3. Family Ties: Real Families in Fiction
Alison Green Myers and Alex Villasante
Common Core, Storytelling
(0.1 CEUs)

South Asian Stories: Elements of Culture and Faith
Tina Athaide, Rashimi S. Bismark, MD, MPH, Sana Rafi, and Kaitlyn Wells
Storytelling, Booktalks/Best New Books 
Children of the South Asian diaspora come from a vast variety of social, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Join author and New York Times' Wirecutter journalist Kaitlyn Wells as she chats with three picture book authors of South Asian heritage about their experiences sharing aspects of culture and faith in the midst of storytelling. This session features members of KidLit in Color.

Let’s Play Banned Books Week Jeopardy and Charades
Kathy Barco
Community Outreach, Public Libraries
BBW Game Night (or Afternoon) is a presentation I have given to "civilians" (audiences of seniors and bookstore patrons) as well as librarians at conferences. Banned or challenged books provide the basis for games of Jeopardy and Charades based on banned or challenged books. Attendees can easily replicate this event in their own settings. An extensive list of Jeopardy answers and questions, as well as appropriate titles for Charades, and sources for lists of banned/challenged books will be provided. This activity could easily be planned by and presented to teens. Book banning is happening these days more than ever!

Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) 2022 Translated YA Book Prize Winners
Kim Becnel, Catharine Bomhold, Brooke Cruthirds, and Jewel Davis
Programming, Best New Books
Learn about an important new prize books from around the world for young adults that have been translated into English. Members of the 2022 committee will introduce you to the award, the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative, and this year’s award and honor books.

Diversify Your Collection: The Importance of Diversity in Every Genre
Tegan Beese
Booktalks/Best New Books, Public Libraries
This breakout session will explore the importance of having diverse books in every genre of your collection, ex. romance, horror, fantasy, etc. Resources to find diverse books will be shared, as well as how to do an audit of your collection. Lists of examples for each genre will be shared. This session will use young adult collections as an example, but the practices shared can be used across all age ranges and reading levels.

If You Have Emotions and Know It Shout Hooray: Presenting Social Emotional Learning in Storytime
Melanie Borski-Howard
Storytelling, Booktalks/Best New Books
Storytelling is all about human connection. In this webinar, we will discuss different children's books and other storytime situations that have sparked emotion. We will also dig into what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is for very young children and how many storytellers present SEL instinctually just by being their amazing selves.

Engaging Storytimes
Kirsti Call and Carol Gordon Ekster
School Libraries, Programming
Two picture book authors will present ways to make storytimes more engaging. We'll each give examples of activities and ideas to make a reading more interactive and encourage participation using a variety of picture books for examples.

Exploring the Magnolia Book Awards, Mississippi Children's Choice Award
Bethany Carlisle and Wendy Daughdrill
School Libraries, Public Libraries 
The Magnolia Book Awards provides the children and youth of Mississippi the opportunity to nominate, read, and vote for their favorite books. Please join us to learn more about the Magnolia Award and participate in discussion to explore integrating the Magnolia Award into school or public library settings. The Magnolia Award has four voting categories: PreK-2nd Grade, 3rd-5th Grade, 6th-8th Grade, and 9th-12th Grade. Learn about the process and help us advocate for the Magnolia Awards as we continue to offer children and youth in Mississippi opportunities to develop a lifelong love of reading.

Reaching Young Readers with Exemplary Diverse Literature
Lesley Colabucci and Mary Napoli
Booktalks/Best New Books
All children deserve the opportunity to see themselves reflected in books and learn about those who are different from them. In this session, participants will explore text sets and a vast array of recently published diverse literature focused on themes of identity affirmation, notions of family, developing and maintaining friendships, nurturing a sense of belonging, and understanding the world on a global level.

Barefoot Dreams: Unearthing Details of an Old Family Story
Alda P. Dobbs
School Libraries, Storytelling
My Abuelita was known for telling tall tales, but one intriguing family story was too fantastic to believe. It depicted the Mexican Revolution and my great-grandmother’s poor peasant family escaping its wrath. It told of a race across the desert, north towards the Rio Grande and a plea to cross to the safety of the United States. Had this really occurred, or had our family tale been stretched after each retelling? Over forty books of the greatest historical works on the Mexican Revolution couldn’t give me an answer, but one source invited me to witness the event.

Poverty and Privilege: Intersectionality of Race and Class in Young People's Literature
Christina Dorr
Public Libraries, School Libraries 
How do our shared or differing cultural backgrounds affect the relationships and influence we have with our patrons/students? Two white, award-winning authors and former librarians/educators discuss how unpacking the racial and class biases of our identities better enable us to foster more positive and authentic relationships with the young people in our lives.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Back Matter
Sophia Gholz, Lisa Katzenberger, Charlotte Offsay, Meera Sriram, and Helen H. Wu
How to Get Published
Back matter is a great way to add extra insights and layers to your picture book, and provide an exciting opportunity to further engage with young readers about a chosen topic. Join a diverse group of picture book creators of both fiction and non-fiction: Sophia Gholz, Lisa Katzenberger, Charlotte Offsay, Meera Sriram, and Helen H. Wu to discuss different approaches of creating compelling fiction and nonfiction back matter, as well as using it in meaningful ways in classrooms, libraries, and homes.

How to Use Social Media To Gain Funding and Diverse Programming for Your School Library
Lydia Green
Technology/Social Media, School Libraries
Attendees will learn how to start, grow, and maximize their school's social media profiles to gain additional funding for school library programs. Presenter will also share the benefits of having a healthy, active social media presence for school librarians, tips for networking, and professional portfolio uses.

Poetry to Promote Inclusion and Improve Writing
Jo Watson Hackl
Common Core, School Libraries
Poetry is a powerful tool for students to express their diverse perspectives, honor the perspectives of others, and improve writing skills. This session by best-selling and award-winning author Jo Watson Hackl, will provide data on the value of creating and studying poetry, especially for students from historically marginalized communities. She will then present practical techniques that participants can use with students to help them use poetic techniques to become more critical readers and to make their own poetry and prose writing stronger.

Let's Go for a Walk! Taking Stories Outdoors
Dee Hare and Leigh Hood
Public Libraries, Programming 
The presentation will discuss the new emergence of Story Walks® in library programming.  Story Walks® are outdoor reading activities whereby a children's book is presented via plastic signs at various points along a designated route, such as a walking trail.  Story Walks® present a fun option for passive programming, as well as a great opportunity to partner with your local city and their parks department to increase your library’s visibility in your community and to reach community members who may not otherwise be utilizing your library’s services.

Ordinary Terrible Things: Children's Literature, Reality, and the Power of Witnessing
Anastasia Higginbotham
Best New Books, School Libraries, Public Libraries
Anastasia Higginbotham is the award-winning author and illustrator of the Ordinary Terrible Things book series, which offers a compassionate, child-centered witnessing of the injuries that can come with divorce, childhood fears about death, conflicting messages about sex, the confusion and complex feelings of confronting racism when you’re white, the conditions in childhood that could liberate children into their full humanity (even as they reckon with weaponized Christianity and the violence of whiteness), and childhood sexual abuse by a beloved family member. In this session, Higginbotham will discuss her experience of making art as a way to heal and cope with harm (inner life and out in the world), how she uses art and writing to disrupt all forms of supremacy, why the distilled visual and narrative language of children’s books is so powerful, and why her books are for children and adults.

The “Natural” Library: Taking Public and School Libraries OUTSIDE! 
Soline Holmes and Alicia Schwarzenbach
Programming, Booktalks/Best New Books 
In 2021, the Journal of Happiness and Health reported that "Nature experiences have a positive effect on mental health." Since the pandemic, nature has also proven to have a positive effect on physical health. Many libraries and schools started outside story times and programming, so join us for ideas, activities, resources, and book pairings for public and school library outdoor programming. Whether it is bird watching, rock painting, or art made from natural objects or found materials, outside library programs are safe and refreshing and build a child's imagination and a lifelong love of and respect for nature.

Discovering African Town: Lessons Learned from the Survivors of the Last Slave Ship
Irene Latham and Charles Waters
Booktalks/Best New Books, School Libraries
Encounter the history of African Town, a community outside Mobile, Alabama, founded by African captives brought to the United States in 1860 aboard Clotilda, the last known slave ship. Prepare to be impacted by this heartrending yet triumphant story as the authors share their research and writing experience, revealing challenges, rewards, and unanswered questions.

Family Ties: Real Families in Fiction
Alison Green Myers and Alex Villasante
Common Core, Storytelling
How do we help students find confluence between the lives of children in books, and their own experiences? One word: FAMILY. Curated book lists will showcase authentic, diverse families. Guided activities will help students’ express joys, as well as the pains that sometimes come when writing about our complex families.

From Primary Sources to Published: How to Get Published in Children’s Nonfiction
Colleen Paeff, Kirsten W. Larson, Mindy Yuksel, Elisa Boxer, and Anna Crowley Redding
How to Get Published
From picture books to graphic novels, from middle grade to young adult, children’s nonfiction is one of the most innovative parts of today’s children’s market. How do aspiring authors get started? This panel will show you how to take your work from primary sources to published no matter the age group you’re writing for. Authors will discuss finding story ideas, research techniques, the craft of writing and revising nonfiction, matching story ideas with age groups, and the process of finding agents and publishers.

Fostering Empathy Through a Diverse Library
Ana Siqueira, Cynthia Harmony, and Mariana Llanos
School Libraries, Booktalks/Best New Books
Stories play a vital role in shaping young readers to be compassionate and caring individuals. When reading diverse books, children will learn to respect diversities with tolerance, and acceptance, while considering aspects of social intelligence and emotional relationships. So, let's check together how to create the most diverse library possible.

Growing Your Social-Emotional Bookshelf: New Books to Teach SEL Skills
Shannon Anderson and Carrie Finison
Booktalks/Best New Books, School Libraries
Children's books may be short on text but they are long on opportunities for lessons on social-emotional topics. Authors will discuss their recent books for young readers that provide the basis for social-emotional learning and discussion — from empathy, expressing emotions, being yourself, navigating friendships, overcoming fears, personal boundaries, and other “big” topics important to elementary-age students. Panelists will share ideas/activities/resources that can be used with these books.

Understanding Immigration with Graphic Novels and Border Pedagogy
Kim Becnel
School Libraries
Teachers and librarians looking to spark productive and nuanced discussions about immigration would do well to turn to graphic novels. Requiring a particular type of investment from the reader, these texts can evoke powerful emotions and help cultivate empathy. In this session, we will review the principles of Henry’s Giroux’s Border Pedagogy and practice applying them to several graphic novels featuring first-generation immigrant characters. Come join us as we explore what happens when we bring critical thinking and compassion to a good story.

TeachingBooks and Childrens/YA Collections: A Perfect Pairing for Promotion and Instruction
Sheila Brandt and Anna Mary Willford
Technology/Social Media, School Libraries
In this session, you will learn about a collaborative project involving the use of TeachingBooks, an online children's literature resource database, as an instructional and promotional tool when paired with an academic library's youth collection. The presenters will describe how they have used TeachingBooks to create interactive, shareable, and thematic lists to expand the reach of their children's and YA collections. And they will provide an overview of how to use the program. Finally, they will share their collaborative experiences of incorporating TeachingBooks within instruction in English and Education instructional sessions.

Developing Empathy Through Picture Books
Donna Cangelosi and Chana Stiefel
Common Core, Booktalks/Best New Books
Learn how picture books can help students develop empathy and process their emotions in a safe and healthy environment. Using various examples from children's literature, authors Chana Stiefel and Donna Cangelosi will demonstrate how reading books about empathy encourages self awareness and self acceptance (which leads to accepting others), promotes curiosity about strangers, helps children discover commonalities and tune into how other people feel, fosters kindness, and challenges prejudice to promote inclusion. The presenters will discuss the importance of using diverse picture books, some on difficult topics, to introduce and explore empathy with students.

The Littlest Learners: Exploring Our World through Preschool Storytime
Abi Cushman and Angela Kunkel
Programming, Storytelling
In this session, the authors and illustrators of recently published picture books will discuss how their stories were crafted to engage young readers.  Each presenter will share potential activities to use with their book, along with several other picture book titles that would work well for a themed storytime. Attendees will come away with several ready-to-go programming ideas to add to their preschool storytime repertoire.

Growing Young Environmentalists: Fostering Sustainability Literacy in Classrooms & Libraries
Cecilia DuPepe and Jamie Naidoo
Booktalks/Best New Books, Programming
From Greta Thunberg to Jane Goodal, environmentalists and environmental issues have taken the children’s literature world by storm! Join us as we survey the landscape of environmental issues such as climate change, sustainability, and global warming in recently published children’s and YA literature. This presentation also explores suggested read-alikes and resources for extension ideas and programming activities.

How To Turn an Idea Into a Chapter Book Series
Christine Evans and Vicky Fang
How to Get Published, Storytelling
Authors Christine Evans (The Wish Library, Albert Whitman) and Vicky Fang (Layla and the Bots, Scholastic) share their advice for creating great chapter books. They will provide example mentor texts, tips from various authors, and tactical advice so that participants will leave with tangible steps to turn their ideas into a chapter book series. There will be a live Q&A for participants to ask questions at the end of the session.

Getting Your Picture Book Published
Deb Gruelle
How to Get Published, Storytelling
Do you have a board book idea or written book you’d like to see published? In this session you’ll learn about what these youngest readers and their parents are looking for. And you’ll learn about your publishing options for new picture books.

A Mississippi Ghost Town, A Reclusive Artist, and a Poetry-Loving Dog:  Drawing Inspiration from Real Life
Jo Hackl
Storytelling, School Libraries
Sometimes the best ideas for fiction come from real life. This interactive session by award-winning and best-selling author Jo Watson Hackl presents techniques and tools that participants can use to help their students draw upon their own experiences to create characters who come alive, settings that feel lived-in, and plots that keep the reader engaged from the first page to the last word. Handouts include: worksheets for mining personal experiences for character, setting and plot ideas; and tools and techniques to translate those ideas into stories that connect with readers.

Using Fiction to Teach Writing and Revision Techniques
Jo Hackl
School Libraries, Programming
Would you like to take your writing and that of your students to the next level? This interactive session, led by award-winning and best-selling author Jo Watson Hackl, will equip you with tools and techniques to use with your students to help make their writing more powerful, more persuasive and more fun. Handouts include writing prompts, brainstorming tools, tips to keep inspiration close at hand, and an author-created bookmark revision tool that can be used for both creative writing and academic essays.

How to Host an Author Visit: Crafting an Unforgettable Experience for Your Students
Kim Howard
School Libraries, Community Outreach
Author visits have amazing benefits for students, helping to motivate and inspire them. If you’ve never hosted an author before, however, it can be hard to know where to start! This presentation will cover why author visits can be a life-changing experience for your students, how to find authors to visit your school, and how to plan for the visit. The presentation will also include some ideas on how to fund author visits.

Diversity Needs Jewish Books: A Missing Piece of the Diversity Conversation
Susan Kusel and Rebecca Levitan
Public Libraries, Booktalks/Best New Books
The FBI reports that 58% of all religious hate crimes target Jewish people despite the fact that only 2% of America’s population identifies as Jewish. This hate can be fought with education and the building of empathy through literature.  Jewish books are about far more than the Holocaust and the holidays. They provide windows and mirrors into many other cultures (not all Jews are white or European). Learn more about this often-misunderstood category of literature and how you can make it a part of your diverse collection.  The rising tide of antisemitism makes this an urgent topic.

Normalizing Diversity and Decentering the Dominant Culture, Using Picture Books for Anti-Racist Teaching
Andrea J. Loney and Zeena Pliska
Common Core, Public Libraries
Part of anti-racist teaching means we must consciously and intentionally make subtle changes that shift who and what we value as humans. We can use picture books to normalize diversity and bring marginalized people out of the margins by centering those marginalized people, communities, and cultures and decentering the white culture to create a balanced vision of value for all.

Publishing Behind-The-Scenes: An Author And Her Literary Agent Talk Publishing
Sara Megibow and Mayonn Passewe-Valchev
How to Get Published, Storytelling
Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev is the author of a charming fantasy novel for middle grade readers and her literary agent is Sara Megibow of KT Literary.   In a fiercely competitive industry, how did these two connect with HarperCollins for such a wildly successful book launch?  Go behind the scenes in publishing to learn about what a literary agent does, what the author had to do to sign with that agent and how the manuscript went from laptop to bookshelf.

Practice Makes Pitch Perfect
Jocelyn Rish
Storytelling, How to Get Published
Whether you’re pitching your own book to an agent or editor or you’re pitching someone else’s book to a customer, you need to immediately grab them. Condensing a complex story into a sentence or two is difficult, but a pitch is more marketing hook than summary - tell them just enough in an intriguing way to get them to ask for more. In this session, we’ll break down the core elements of a pitch, learn additional methods to expand a pitch into an effective sales tool, and gain confidence in writing pitches by practicing with several prompts.

CREATING ACCESSIBLE READ-ALOUDS!  The Role Picture Books Can Play in Creating Accessibility for All Readers
Nadia Salomon
Community Outreach, Technology/Social Media
We want to show how books, no matter the format or genre is a needed resource, not just in classrooms and libraries, but in foster care, homeless shelters, and refugee camps. We want to raise awareness around the ‘privilege’ to have a book to read or be read to, and having accessibility to a comforting bedtime routine. A routine that many may not realize children in underserved communities don't have the fortune to experience. We'd show how volunteerism and technology combined could offer access to all.

How to Add Choice Books to Your Curriculum: Covering the Standards & Building A Love for Reading
Bethany Seal
Common Core
This session will explain a step-by-step process of incorporating choice reading into an existing curriculum, from the "why" to the "how." I will start by explaining the need for, and the benefits of, student choice in selecting a text. Then I will give a step-by-step guide that can immediately be implemented into a classroom, including options for students to select books, how to run multiple small group discussions simultaneously, activities for students to complete during their discussions, and how to meet Common Core/MCCR standards through student choice books.

Mining the Heart: How to Emotionally Connect With Readers
Kaitlyn Wells
Storytelling, How to Get Published
Bestsellers emotionally resonates with readers. But how can you transform your manuscript into a book everyone talks about? Use Heart. During this session, you'll learn how to identify the emotional core of a story and how to ensure it beats alive on every page using the tried-and-true heart mapping method. Come prepared to use the entire emotional toolkit. And learn how to write so your work stays with readers long after that last page is turned. Tissues are encouraged.