Pigs and Pugs at the Virginia statewide librarian conference (VAASL)

I kissed a pig. Okay, maybe that's nothing to brag about but this wasn't an ordinary pig. Farmer Minor travels to schools with his pet pig, Daisy and two adorable pug dogs for the Pig Out on Reading program. Daisy has bragging rights to the world's largest collection of pig books. They were visiting the VAASL statewide librarian conference in Hampton. I wanted to snap a photo of the animals and Farmer Minor asked me to lean over and kiss the porcine wonder so he could take MY photo. What a twist. I'm usually on the other side of the lens.

I attended the conference to give a workshop on turning nonfiction into poetry. My workshop was titled, From Timeline to Byline. It was fun to present and before long, I was coaxing poetry out of some great poet/librarians from all over the state. Here's a poem written by Alesia Talbot, employed at Elkton Elementary School in Elkton. It was inspired by a famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse.

Joy
Passion
Grabbing life
Celebrating
Seizing the moment
Touching humanity
Death not here.

Here's a poem by Laura Bell, librarian at Clara Byrd Baker Elementary in Williamsburg.

Stuck in the Mud

Road of mud,
tires stuck
all we have is awful luck.

Jack up the car
let's make haste
there is just no time to waste.

What's up ahead,
we haven't a clue,
we're just hoping for work to do.

An excerpt from Zlata's Diary inspired this poem from Mary Margaret Browning, librarian at Nandua Middle School in Accomack County.

Life in  Sarajevo

On this morning,
water didn't come
nor did birthday parties,
better than cellar life.
But on this morning,
shooting came
as did Mommy's
broken heart
because Neda
needs to leave.

I enjoyed hearing some of them share their poetry with the workshop participants. It was also a pleasure that day to meet vendors such as Bookworm Central, where I had a book signing following the workshop. The folks from the LUCY Bibliography group were also there. That is a listing of multicultural books, maintained by Old Dominion University. My book, Being Frank with Anne, is listed on that bibliography under Holocaust books.

Next time I hope to attend some of the other workshops. The librarian conferences have the most incredible offerings. In the spring I attended a number of great classes. I'd recommend these conferences to other writers. It would be well worth their time.