Last week, I headed out to Sacramento to attend the 8th annual Kid Lit Con. It was my fifth time going, which is hard for me to wrap my head around. I got out to Sacramento mid-day on Thursday after what felt like a never-ending flight (it was a completely fine flight, just long) and spent two full days attending sessions, catching up with long-time blogging friends, and meeting new people. 

This was the first year that Kid Lit Con had a theme, which was diversity. Most of the sessions focused on some aspect of diversity, from how to be conscious of portrayals of diversity in what you’re reading to why an author would want to have as diverse a cast of characters in her novel as possible. 

Friday, the first full day of sessions, the first program I attended was about finding and reviewing the best in diverse kid lit. The speakers were good, and they shared a couple of blogs I hadn’t been aware of before. For the most part, it was a session about why blogging about diversity and diverse books is important. 

Immediately following that session was my own presentation on using social media effectively. Here’s the Prezi for those who couldn’t attend or who did attend and wanted a copy of it. A couple of questions that aren’t addressed on the Prezi itself: to turn on Twitter Analytics, go to analytics.twitter.com, and you can see them there. I mentioned you’d have to go to ads.twitter.com to see them, which is true, but it looks like they’re not in the Analytics dashboard itself. The thing people were most interested in during the session was my plug for Diptic, an image collage app/program you can get for $1. I highly recommend spending that single dollar, since it’ll let you create collages, as well as put text overlays onto those collages. The image I pulled with the Facebook section on the Prezi was one I made with Diptic. I also spent a bit of time talking about how to use Tumblr to re-promote backlist posts you’ve made, in order to take what you already have and make it new again. I think the rest of the Prezi is self-explanatory, but if anyone reading this wants more information or has questions, let me know and I’m happy to answer. Photo on the left is courtesy of Melissa Fox. 

I had a great lunch with a pile of long-time blogging friends, and then attended a session with Hannah Gomez, Jewell Parker Rhodes, and Edith Campbell called “Getting Beyond Diversity and Getting to the Story.” I loved how energetic a speaker Jewell was, and it was maybe this session from which I took the most away. Hannah talked about how, when she went through the roster of Kid Lit Con attendee blogs, she noticed three types of bloggers: bloggers who talk about a wide variety of topics and books are just part of their blog; bloggers who are “greeters” of sorts and who post short reviews and participate in memes on a really regular basis and who tend to keep things short; and finally, bloggers who are more analytical and tend to write longer posts, with less frequent reviews. I thought about this breakdown all weekend and think it really impacted how I took in some of the other sessions. Not in a bad way, though.

When that session wrapped up, there was an author meet-and-greet. I don’t know how many authors were there, but it was a nice number. I spent part of the event talking with Stephanie Kuehn, and I convinced her to join everyone for dinner afterward. 

Everyone at Kid Lit Con went out to dinner that night, then because of some inconsistent dessert service, I went out with Leila Roy, Hannah Gomez, and Faythe Arrendondo for dessert and drinks at the hotel restaurant. 

Saturday began early, as I met with Hannah and Faythe to talk about our presentation later that afternoon. We had a solid breakfast, and we talked a bit about what we hoped to accomplish, and then we spent a good amount of time talking about how excited we were to meet and present with our fourth panelist, Summer Khaleq. 

The first session on Saturday was the keynote with Mitali Perkins. She was a great speaker, and she offered up a 10-point checklist for seeing and thinking about diversity, race, and culture in kid lit. I thought that was one of the best take aways from the event. 

Pam Margolis was the second speaker of the day, and she talked about how to reach readers in a very digital environment, beyond your blog. I loved Pam’s style and enthusiasm in presenting, but a lot of what she’d suggested is stuff I probably wouldn’t do, though I appreciate when other people do them. During her session, I kept thinking about Hannah’s blogger breakdown, and Pam really hit it hard for the first two types of bloggers, especially those who are eager to take pictures, to be bookstagramers, who want to hop on YouTube, and who are excited about using tools like Vine. While I enjoy bloggers who do that — and I do! — I’m not the type and I don’t think I would ever be. Part is discomfort, part of not having patience with technology, but the biggest part is that for me, blogging is about writing. It’s an outlet TO write, so playing with YouTube or Instagram for blogging/book related purposes doesn’t suit my needs. And what’s great is…it’s okay. This session made me further appreciate those bloggers who do do those things, since there is time, effort, and bravery in putting yourself out there like that. 

Shannon Hale was the second keynote of the day, and she Skyped in. She talked about why she writes diverse characters, and at one point, she got so choked up about seeing the type of girl she’d hoped she’d depicted in her book, that I almost got a little choked up myself. 

I skipped out on lunch Saturday since I’d been hit by jet lag bad and wanted to be fresh for the second half of the day. The session I’d been looking forward to the most was next, which was the #WeNeedDiverseBooks panel, featuring S. E. Sinkhorn, Mike Jung, Karen Sandler, and Martha White. They talked about how the campaign came together, the projects they’d worked on so far, and what was in the works. We got a sneak peek at the now-live diverse YA reading flowchart, which you can see, print, and share here. The session was great, and I was really excited to meet both Mike and Stephanie after their panel. I’ve been reading and following them both for a while now, and it’s always nice when you get to put a face in person to a name. 

The very final session of Kid Lit Con was the panel I was a part of, along with Faythe, Summer, and Hannah. Faythe and Hannah are both librarians, and Summer, second from the left, is a 16-year-old YA reader who is so thoughtful and articulate. It was an honor to be on a panel with all three of these ladies. We called ourselves the downer panel, since our session was far less about making people feel good and more about putting to action the things we’d talked about all day. We talked in depth about how diversity is more than race or culture — it includes body image, socioeconomic status, and more. We talked about how you have to call things out when they’re being done poorly and how you should point to examples where things are being done well. Since it’s hard to summarize what a panel discussion talked about in depth, it’s probably more useful to offer up the downloadable brochure than Hannah created for our panel about how to read and blog diversely. Looking for diverse blogs to add to your reading diet? You’re going to find them there. 

When our session wrapped up, it was on to a banquet dinner at the hotel. It was a nice time for decompressing and catching up with friends, old and new. I didn’t stay the entire four hours, since I had a very early flight to catch.

While I wish there had been more talk of actual blogging at Kid Lit Con this year, I appreciated how diverse the diversity discussion ran throughout the two days. More, as Hannah noted, it was nice to be at a small conference where diversity was well-represented among attendees, too. It was amazing to look out at a crowd while presenting and see people of all different colors, shapes, and backgrounds. That doesn’t happen as much as it should at bigger conventions like ALA or BEA. It was nice to meet new people, as well as reconnect with old ones. Spending three nights with Leila was a blast as always, and it was really nice to be on the same page with our jet lag and exhaustion by the end of the weekend. 

Next year, Kid Lit Con hits Baltimore, and I’m already looking forward to it. A huge thank you to the coordinators of this year’s program — it was well-run and really enjoyable.