Conference and Library of an Early Mind

This week my grad school is hosting a conference, and I got free admission by being an on-call tech help person today.  I really only had to solve 2-3 problems: not knowing the password to log in (though it was posted), switching between diplays, and switching from PC to Mac (the girl even brought her own dongle).  Pretty easy tech day considering it saved me a couple hundred bucks!

Here's a list of some topics of speeches that I got to listen to:

"Kick-Ass Slayers and Teen Terminators: Recent Trends in Lethal Little Girls"
"Girls on Fire: Gender, Authority and the Female Child-Warrior"
"Dystopic Epiphanies and Kierkegaardian Disallusion: An Exploration of the Average vs. Exceptional Hero in Feed and The Giver"
"Demystifying the Illusion of an Adultless World--Forty Years of Fearing the Children in Science Fiction"
"Like, Vampires? A Study of American Teen Slang in Young Adult Fantasy Literature"
"M.T. Anderson's Feed and the Linguistic Situation of Tomorrow"
"Young Adult Fantasy in a Visual Age: The Book Trailer as a Gateway to the Written Word"
"Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley and the Journey to Womanhood in the Harry Potter Series"
"Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Lois Lowry's and Suzanne Collins's Dystopian Trilogies"
"Media Drives Revolt: Ways Rebels Use Media Throughout Literature from Historical Fiction Through Futuristic Fantasy"
"Youth Rebellion, Dystopic Fiction, Identity Crisis"

Some summary points:

• Hunger Games was by far the most popular topic.  I am sick of listening to people talk about Hunger Games.
• Violent girl heroines is an emerging theme in popular culture.
• I really enjoyed the session on book trailers.  Super interesting and different.  And the girl highlighted Maggie Steifvater's book trailers, which I completely agree are innovative and exceptional.
• The one session on Harry Potter was packed and fun despite the fact that two of the three speakers were no shows.  The session turned into a discussion of female characters in Harry Potter.  And I subconsciously gave this one girl a really dirty look... I brought up Pottermore and JKR's announcement, and the girl said, "She didn't even really announce anything.  Basically it's just a Potter version of World of Warcraft."  RAWR!  JKR said NOTHING about an online GAMING experience.  She said online READING experience.  And she said safe for people of all ages.  And she mentioned eBooks.  And addittional Potter World content from her.  NOTHING that would even make you think WoW.  Hence my dirty look that made her wither in her seat.  Dumb chick.  RAWR!

I also got to go to a free screening of this awesome documentary film called Library of the Early Mind.  Sooooooo amazing.  I want to buy it.

Summary taken from the film's Facebook page:

"An exploration of the art and impact of children’s literature on our kids, our culture, and ourselves. From the first stories we hear told to us, to those childhood heroes who stay with us for a lifetime, the impact on our culture runs deeper than what we might expect. Featuring nearly 40 prominent authors, artists, and critics."

http://www.libraryoftheearlymind.com/

LOVE  LOVE  LOVE!!!  You can watch a trailer on the website.

And in final news, I finished the first draft of my short story due on Wednesday.
Word Count: 3,850
Page Count: 16 pages

I might sound like an over-achiever because I accomplished this so far ahead of time, but I still have three novels and two picture books to read.  And a journal entry to do.  I just did the fun stuff first  :)