More STAB@ALA talk:

This appeared in the King County Library System weekly Memo on Febraury 13th, 2007:

The Shoreline Teen Advisory Board visits the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference (or STAB@ALA)

On January 21^st, twenty-one teens from the Shoreline Teen Advisory Board (also known as STAB), descended on the American Library Association’s Midwinter conference in downtown Seattle. Clad in identical black t-shirts, the group’s mission (other than to gather as much free stuff at the exhibits as they could carry), was to discuss some of the 232 books nominated to the 2007 Best Books for Young Adults selection list before a standing room only crowd of 300 people. The crowd consisted of librarians, publishers, agents, editors and other adults curious to know what teens think about young adult literature today.

The STABies did extremely well. Audience members commented on the group’s thoughtfulness, insights and passion. One publisher was heard to remark that this was the best teen participation forum he had seen. Best Books for Young Adults committee members praised the teens for their critical reading and examinations of the books nominated.

The teens enjoyed themselves immensely. Apart from their erudite discussion of the books at the teen forum, each of them returned with bags full of books, pens, note pads, water bottles and other assorted convention giveaways. More importantly, the teens returned with a sense of a job well done, a greater understanding of libraries and an even deeper love of reading. They also had sore backs from carrying around all of their free stuff.
The trip was sponsored by the Friends of Shoreline Library. The STABies were chaperoned by Yoshiko and Jeanne of the Friends of Shoreline Library, Alene and Aarene of the Richmond Beach-Shoreline cluster and Gail, a volunteer from the community.

For a complete listing of the titles that made the Best Books for Young Adults list visit
http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/bestbooksyoung.htm

For some photos from the event, visit:
http://s153.photobucket.com/albums/s216/librarylad/

More thoughts on STAB @ ALA.

From Jennifer
My favorite part of STAB@ALA was having lunch with the publisher and then speaking to the committee. I hadn’t realized that books had to be repackaged to make them more appealing every five or ten years, but when they showed us old covers, it made sense. It made me realize how much people actually spend time thinking about how to make books more popular and how there’s lots of people whose jobs are all about books.
Even though speaking to the room full of people was probably the most intimidating part of the day, I liked it because I got to say what I really thought about the books and I knew people were taking me seriously. I felt like the librarians were interested in what I had to say, which was a pretty cool feeling. Until I found out that the Printz Award went to American-Born Chinese instead of The Book Thief.

Here is a post from Victor:

Being there at the convention was easily one of the most crazy moments EVER
in STAB history, probably the most significant thing we've done. From
roaming the show floor to get endless amounts of free books, t-shirts, hats,
and publisher comments to the actual speaking engagement, ALA 2007 was
totally insanity on so many good levels.

The endless flow of freebies weren't only the best thing on the show floor.
Our STAB shirts got us the best reactions from other show attendees as some
were actually appalled from it while others were just happy to see some
teens flock in. That along with the DDR station, creepy and insidious robot
version 1.0 (patent pending), and Baker and Taylor models made the whole
darn show floor very lively, since our 6+ bags of SWAG were the buzzkill to
our energy.

The speaking session was a lot of fun just either extolling a book to the
high heavens or ranting a book down to the ground. Props to Max and Zeno for
really making this portion really hilarious; their witty and clever humor
was totally awesome. Most surprising was the amount of people that bothered
to come in and listen to us. I was not expecting the high amount of people
that showed up.

Overall, this probably was the defining moment in STAB's illustrious history
and a lot of fun to be a part of. Now to continue reading my free books I
acquired...

Philadelphia in 2008, here we come?

Blogs from our trip to ALA.

Some of the STABies have written up blogs about the experiences with STAB @ ALA. Here is one from Jesse:

Anyways, cool stuffs. My sister and I went to the American Library Association Convention in Seattle today from eight in the morning to five o'clock at night. Yes, we skipped church. It just so happens that God wrote the best book in history, so we figured that he's okay with reading. We wandered around for about three hours and got swag (a.k.a. cool stuff like unreleased books) while wearing our awesome shirts that say STAB in big messy red letters. That stands for Shoreline Teen Advisory Board, not Socialist Terrorism And Blackmail, just to let you know. I will be wearing my shirt tomorrow. After lugging about 40 pounds of swag around, we finally went up to the conference room, where we ate lunch, expounded upon the joys of reading, and disagreed with a nervous boy named Quentin. Sorry, Quenty old boy, that's just the way the nation crumbles. Or cookie. Or book's reputation. After this, we swaggered out and went swagging some more, then retired to the van for some de-swagging, feeling 50 pounds and 15 pens lighter. I shall endeavor to obtain some photographic memorabilia to enpost upon my blog, so you can all see our glorious swagdom. Until then, you'll have to be content with my disjointed narrative.
One last note: If any of the HaLo executives are reading this, it's somewhat difficult to swing dance to Justin Timberlake. And swing tag is fun. And my leg hurts.