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Minnesota Reading Association’s 2008 Fall Conference will be in the Twin Cities!
We will gather at the Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center on Friday evening and all day Saturday, November 7-8, 2008 to celebrate how reading brings us together!
The conference hotel is Crowne Plaza, Minneapolis North (1-800-481-3556). Ask for MN Reading Association conference rate ($89).
Friday night our opening reception will feature Readers’ Theater with several Minnesota authors reading each other’s work! Saturday morning, Gloria Ladson-Billings, our keynote speaker, will discuss issues surrounding the achievement gap. Gloria has authored numerous articles and books including Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Students and Crossing Over to Canaan: the Journey of New Teachers in a Diverse Classroom.
Nikki Grimes is our Saturday noon luncheon speaker. Nikki is a poet and author of numerous Coretta Scott King, ALA Notable, and Bank Street College award-winning books. Her writing is well-known for its universal themes of friendship and family and community relationships.
On Saturday, choose from a wide variety of sessions on current literacy topics, reading instruction, children’s literature, and featured authors!
Poetry will bring our conference to a close as Nikki Grimes and other area poets share their work with us in Six on the Spot: A Poetry Challenge. Audience members will share favorite poems during an "open mic" segment.
ALL THE DETAILS...
Friday Night is Readers’ Theater Night at the MRA Conference!
The evening begins at 6:30 pm with a variety of mouth-watering hors d’oeuvres served by the magnificent chefs at the Earle Brown Heritage Center. At 7:30 we will gather in the Carriage Hall for a delightful Readers’ Theater presented in collaboration with the Children’s Literature Network, featuring four prominent Minnesota authors. Mary Casanova, John Coy, Lynne Jonell, and David LaRochelle will read from each other’s work.
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Mary Casanova
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John Coy
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Lynne Jonell
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David LaRochelle
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Click on any of the photos above to visit the authors' websites.
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The evening begins at 6:30 pm with a variety of mouth-watering hors d’oeuvres served by the magnificent chefs at the Earle Brown Heritage Center. At 7:30 we will gather in the Carriage Hall for a delightful Readers’ Theater presented in collaboration with the Children’s Literature Network, featuring four prominent Minnesota authors. Mary Casanova, John Coy, Lynne Jonell, and David LaRochelle will read from each other’s work.
Mary Casanova is an award-winning author of picture books and novels for children. She recently released Dog Watch, Book 6, The Turtle-Hatching Mystery which tells the adventures of two Minnesota dogs as they travel “south of the border”and The Klipfish Code about children and teachers living in Nazi-occupied Norway. Mary lives on the Minnesota-Canadian border where she regularly sees eagles, otters, black bear, and wolves.
John Coy has written picture books as well as novels that appeal to middle grade and young adult readers. Perennial read-aloud favorites Night Driving and Strong to the Hoop are beloved for their strong appeal to sports-minded children. John’s novels Crackback and Boxout focus on football and basketball respectively, featuring boys who are faced with difficult choices. John lives in Minneapolis but he is
a frequent world traveler in search of his next story.
Lynne Jonell is well-known for her picture books such as Mom Pie and I Need a Snake. Most recently she published Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, a fantasy novel replete with humor, mystery, and adventure. Her second book about Emmy will be available this fall. As resident of Plymouth, Lynne has taught writing at The Loft in Minneapolis for many years.
David LaRochelle has published nearly thirty books. His latest picture book is The End. He notes that when he is not writing or illustrating at his home in White Bear Lake, he enjoys reading (surprise, surprise), traveling, orienteering, playing games, and of course, reading (surprise, surprise). He is also an acclaimed pumpkin carver, often appearing on “Good Morning, America.”
Handouts for developing Readers’ Theater in your classroom, readers group, or just for fun will be provided for attendees. See you at this exciting event celebrating reading and our talented Minnesota authors!
Meet Gloria Ladson-Billings!
 Gloria Ladson-Billings is a Professor of Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the 2005-2006 president of the American Educational Research Association. Ladson-Billings has devoted her career to examining teaching that is successful with African American students. In commenting on effective teachers, Ladson-Billings notes, “Part of being highly qualified as a teacher is that you actually understand kids, you understand community, you understand context — so that you go into a setting and you’re able to understand enough about the setting, enough about yourself, to be able to be effective.”
Ladson-Billings began her career as a classroom teacher with adolescents in South Philadelphia. She worked for Philadelphia Public Schools as a teacher and administrator for ten years.
Meet Nikki Grimes
 Born and raised in New York City, Nikki Grimes began composing verse at the age of six and has been writing ever since. A prolific artist, she is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults including the novels Bronx Masquerade about "open mic" Fridays in one innovative teacher’s high school classroom, Jazmin’s Notebook, a Coretta Scott King Award Honor Book, and The Road to Paris, in which a foster child learns to cope with being shifted from home to home. Nikki is well-known for her poetry collections Meet Danitra Brown and Talkin’ About Bessie, both honored with Coretta Scott King Awards, as well as Aneesa Lee & the Weaver’s Gift, My Man Blue, and Is It Far to Zanzibar?
As an accomplished and widely anthologized poet of both children’s and adult verse, Grimes has conducted poetry readings and lectures at international schools in Russia, China, Sweden, and Tanzania.
Crossing borders artistically as well as geographically, Nikki once sang on the stage of the Stockholm Philharmonic in Sweden where magazines referred to her as a singer who also writes! Nikki also sang and danced her way down the east coast of China and has published and exhibited her photography both here and abroad.
Poetry As You’ve
Never Heard It Before
Bringing our conference to a close on Saturday will be “Six on the Spot: A Poetry Challenge.” Nikki Grimes, who will be joined by five favorite area poets, will lead off this challenging event. Nikki will read one of her original poems and then another poet will, on the spot, read a poem that connects to her poem. The poets’ challenge is to continue connecting their original poems with each other through metaphor, phrases, images, feelings, or words.
This event features:
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Sharon Chmielarz
Rob Reid
