If we saw you at the Illinois Library Association Conference this year, thank you SO MUCH!  We had an amazing time, and we loved seeing all your drawings.  I know that Karen enjoyed seeing you all, and Jerry was immensely gratified to see familiar faces as well as new ones.

For my own part, I’m coming back from the ILA conference inspired to bring even more energy and creativity to our summer reading adventures in 2025.  It was especially interesting, listening to Youth Services and Teen Librarians talk about their concerns and struggles getting tweens and teens into the library, as well as how librarians of all stripes work to meet those challenges, and move the public library into a 21st century filled with challenges and changes.

How do we make a public space that works for, and enriches everyone, in a country filled to the brim with diverse individuals–people with unique needs and challenges of their own?  How do we provide the tools for human flourishing, when each day seems to bring new technologies, new anxieties, new possibilities that excite even as they upend our understanding of the world, and even human consciousness itself?  How do we do all that on a shoestring budget, determined by political and administrative figures with very real financial concerns of their own?

It has been said, and is worth saying, that libraries are about more than just books.  As people who utilize event spaces to teach art and inspire creativity, we are very glad that they are!  We got to hear more about event programming, libraries of things, the human library, adding outdoor spaces to libraries, and more!  One exhibitor across from us said he even rented an electric bass from the library, to augment his string instrument skills!  

But, as someone whose life changed forever, the moment he opened a book and found that the words echoed inside his head, I was also gratified to see that libraries, and librarians, still care deeply about books.  I managed to attend a presentation where the Illinois Association of School Librarians gave a list for prospective nominees for the 2026 Lincoln YA Teen Reader’s Choice Award.  Panels for the award will be starting in 2025, and I got to hear summaries for some truly fascinating examples of Young Adult fiction.  Whether fantasy, romance, sci-fi, dystopian fiction, or even novels in verse, you could see that the nominators had thought deeply about presenting engaging and diverse material.  I look forward to reading some of the books on offer–each one promised to do what books do best: to open a gateway into a different world, and a different way of seeing the world around us.

So I got to leave the ILA Conference tired but elated.  I’d made new friends, seen some truly incredible artwork (some especially engaging artwork of me with my new banana print bucket hat!), and some new items on my reading list.  We left Peoria, IL, buzzing with new ideas for workshops and art.  We can’t wait to show them to you.