"God bless the [school] librarians who let me lay on my belly in the stacks and read and read and read," acclaimed YA author Laurie Halse Anderson told an electrified capacity crowd at the American Association for School Librarians' President's Program, "Literacy Leadership and Librarian Flair." Asserting that kids need school librarians more than ever, Anderson recounted the story of a 15-year-old boy who burst into tears in his school library one Friday after the media specialist said hello to him. As it turned out, the teen had been deliberately silent at school all week, waiting for someone to speak to him first and the librarian was the first person to do so. "You do the work of angels," she concluded. "You save lives, you cherish souls, and you are laying the foundation that we are going to build the iteration of our country on top of."
"Kids today are reading in spite of school, not because of it," said Alan Sitomer, award-winning high school English teacher in inner-city Los Angeles and author of Homeboyz. He described himself as "personally on the receiving end of buffoonery" because his school "got rid of our school librarian two years ago and thinks content teachers can manage everything," but that it's impossible to conduct English classes without the support of "an intelligent librarian."
Calling books a "sticky technology," Sitomer got a huge laugh when he said that he can't imagine reading Knuffle Bunny on a Kindle to his toddler. He said he started writing so young people like his students could find their lives in a book, and told attendees how he turned from remonstrating a student named Brijonea for being absent for two weeks to having her write down her story when she revealed had been shot in both legs and still had the bullet fragments. "She didn't need makeup work. She needed therapy."
"Why does Brijonea still come to school?" Sitomer asked. "She comes because of us, the people in this room." Declaring that "there isn't an adult in this room who hasn't been kicked in the stomach by life," he said children like Brijonea are the reason why librarians "can't give up." "African Americans have never been afraid of change," Newbery–award winner Jacqueline Woodson said. "We learn at a young age that the thing you have today you might not have tomorrow." For Woodson, one constant is the physical book. "Each time there's a one-on-one connection, it matters," she declared, imploring librarians to "know your work makes a difference."
Admitting that her first hardcover book was a volume of African-American poetry that she stole from the public library (and which her mother made her pay for), Woodson said that one of the poems in it affected her so deeply that it inspired her to write If I You Come Softly. "Literature has a way of resonating for young people," she explained. Acknowledging the devastation that the economic crisis has wrought on school libraries, Woodson urged librarians not to get overwhelmed because "if we keep on doing the best we can, the rest will come."