Monday, June 14, 2010

The Association of Jewish Libraries

The Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)'s annual convention is coming up: Seattle, July 4 to 7, 2010.

I know of AJL primarily from the Sydney Taylor Book Award, "presented annually to outstanding books for children and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience."

So, I asked Heidi Estrin of The Book of Life: a podcast about Jewish people and the books we read and AJL member what would be of interest to book bloggers and authors.

From Heidi Estrin:

Good questions about the AJL convention! The whole event is actually very book blogger friendly. There are always many book-centric sessions (here are some titles from the preliminary program on the website: "Bibliographic Treasures," "Fictional Jews at the End of Time," Historical Fiction," "Literature as a Reflection of Cultural Life," "How to Be a Book Critic.")

The highlight of each year's convention is a banquet where the Sydney Taylor Book Awards for Jewish children's/YA literature are presented to the winning authors and illustrators (these authors also get to speak during the convention at a session presented by the awards committee); prizes are also presented to the winner of the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award (for an unpublished children's book), and the Reference and Bibliography awards are presented for scholarly works.

All in all, AJL is a small, intimate convention (around 300 people) where authors, librarians, and other book lovers mingle and network, and everyone revels in their love for Jewish libraries and literature. You can get a good sense of what the conventions are like by looking at http://jewishlibraries.org/podcast/, where the last two years' of convention session audio is available."

Registration: form (PDF, with fee information) or online

More information can be found at the AJL blog, or on http://twitter.com/jewishlibraries

The Twitter hashtag is #AJL10

If any book bloggers go, please report back!

Disclosure: AJL is running a Mention Convention weekly drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card for mentioning the AJL Convention. I am not entering the drawing.




Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy


1 comment:

Doret said...

I just got an arc from Abrams called Hereville : How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch.

Its a graphic novel. The tag line is - Yet Another Troll Fighting 11 yr old Orthodox Jewish Girl