Salutations Readers!

On July 15, 2021, I was thrilled to attend the 2021 nErDCampPA, the second that’s happened in my new home state of Pennsylvania. I attended the 2020 nErDCampCT in Connecticut and sort of (unfortunately) seemingly forgot having attended or anything I learned that day, since I never did blog about it and only recently rediscovered my notes in Google Keep.

I don’t want that to happen with all that I learned at this year’s nErDCampPA, so here’s some highlights.

• Pennsylvania’s Young Reader’s Choice Award
  (Psst…. click the above title for the website.)
  Students can vote if they’ve read at least 3 nominated titles. It sounds much more “real-world” for kiddos to vote on titles other PA kiddos are reading than the “Mock Caldecott” I tried last year, at the urging of my library team, since we’ve been team-planning from Spring 2020 through Spring 2021. The Caldecott award is kind of abstract. Voting in schools and public libraries happen in March. Depending on the building, a librarian might be able to use Title 1 & Title 3 money for purchasing PYRCA titles.
• Pairing STEM Books with Hands-On Activities
  I got to meet some fantastic authors/illustrators of picture books; they discussed their current and upcoming books and shared links to their social media accounts and resource websites. I’ve curated the links here on this Pinterest board.
• Where Did You Get Your Information? Research in Picture Books
  Author Annette  Whipple shared an acronym to help with choosing sources. We’ve probably all heard these aspects in another order that is commonly considered a “swear” word that I don’t like encouraging kiddos to use. Instead, she chooses to reorder the letters so the acronym is CARP (which is a type of fish) for Current, Authority, Relevant, Purpose in source evaluation.
• How to Keep Writing When Life Conspires Against You
  Use the “Pomodoro method” as a way to keep yourself on a timer track when working.
• Q&A for Educators Interested in Writing & Publishing Books
  Advice from  Kim Ventrella: [Even if your book seems like a common topic or concept,] the unique thing that you will bring to the process is your experience and voice, and that doesn’t need to be copyrighted 😉 Everything has been done in some form. The important thing is your unique twist and perspective, and how you execute it.
  Advice from  Saadia Faruqi: “Short story writing, magazine writing etc. can be a very good way to get practice not only in the writing process but also get used to rejection! If you keep getting rejections on one particular manuscript, it’s time to retire it (for the time being) and work on something else. Read what you want to write.”
  Advice from  Samantha M. Clark: “Don’t judge your manuscript by a published book. Just keep going.”

Overall, it was a wonderful day to help me build vision as a pre-published author of #kidlit! Hope you’ve enjoyed my highlights from the 2021 nErDCampPA.