2008 Dublin Literacy Conference

Saturday was one of the most enjoyable and thought provoking days I have had all school year. (Possibly longer) It was the 2008 Dublin Literacy Conference in Dublin, OH. Not only were there so many cool famous authors there, my blogging friends were too!
The neat thing about living so close to Columbus or CBUS as the cool kids call it, are all the AWESOME literacy giants who reside there. You would not believe all the literacy advocates who have come out of the Columbus area! So for the past I believe they said 17 years, the school district of Dublin has sponsored a Literacy Conference. This year the keynote speakers were Sharon Taberski and Pam Munoz Ryan. The other famous main attractions were: Jennifer Holm, Jennifer Roy, Melanie Watt, Jen Allen, Aimee Buckner (A fellow UD grad!), and Terry Thompson. (Thank you for the links, Mary Lee)
As if that was not enough, I went to three great sessions. I listened to Jennifer Holm talk about where she comes up with the ideas for many of her novels. So interesting. One of the most interesting things I learned was that it took 7 years for Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf to come to publication. 7 YEARS! I heard Max Brand talk about his book Word Savvy and his spelling program. I have the book, but I needed to hear about it in person. Seems doable. We'll see what we can do on that next year. Last but not least, I FINALLY met Mary Lee Hahn in person! So surreal! She spoke on the topic of Blogging the Kidlitosphere and specifically spoke of her blog she co-authors with Franki Sibberson A Year of Reading.
Many of you may know, Mary Lee was instrumental in helping me begin my blog. She took me under her wing, sight unseen. I emailed her with my questions and she willingly answered. She didn't even know me for gosh sake! May she live in Sainthood.
On that note, I will pay it forward and introduce another new blog which came about with help from Mary Lee. On Saturday I was introduced to Karen who co-authors the blog Literate Lives with her friend Bill. It is a super new blog and very quickly growing and becoming well known. Check it out!