THE BUSINESS OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS: It's YALSA (ALA's Young Adult Library Services Association) Teen Tech Week 2010

The Teen Tech Week program was started by YALSA in 2007. It is a national initiative aimed at helping teens access and responsibly use their library's non-print resources. Curious? Click here for more YALSA Teen Tech Week details.

Got a bit behind on the blog recently because I was working behind-the-scenes on my third-grader's school  production of "Willy Wonka Junior" (he was an Oompa-Loompa). I love to see kids sharing their talents on stage and, though this was a giant group (over 100 performers, grades 1-6), the production was fabulous and full of life. There's actually a segue here to Tech Week: I took an informal survey of the cast and discovered that far more kids had seen a movie version of this story than had read Roald Dahl's CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Hmmm. Here's a case where I'm not sure I'm glad the kids had the tech resources to skip over the book though, admittedly, it was over the reading level of much of the cast. Still, this has me thinking hard about what I'll call Tech Platforms for School and Library visits.  So, having spent some time discussing reading guides (one type of content you can put on your website), I'm going to write a few posts on "Technology and Author Promotion."  I'll begin on Friday with some thoughts on school and library visits via SKYPE and the experiences a few of my authors have had with this medium.