Connections: California Research and IBBY Regional

I'm back from a physically and emotionally exhausting and at the same time an oddly energizing trip to San Francisco, Yuba City, and Marysville, California, with the 9th IBBY Regional Conference in Fresno on the heels of all that travel.

Here is what I've learned about researching the historical background for my fiction related to a very particular period and the cultural fusion of a very particular community:

1. I pursued all possible sources of information and didn't know until very close to the trip that I'd find the ones I truly needed. For me, this research, much like writing itself, was an act of trust.
2. I needed to find many perspectives on a single event, story, period, so that triangulation could give me a fuller picture, with greater depth.
3. I'm very glad I read those many perspectives over a period of nearly three years before I talked to anyone who could be considered a primary source.
4. Generous, giving people showed up along the way to help me. Trusting the process paid off.
5. Resources (maps, books, phone books, photographs, and more) showed up to give me answers to questions I hadn't even thought to ask.
6. I realized I would not know who the right people were to speak to until I'd found them.
7. When I'd found them, I realized I needed to toss my notes and my prepared questions and just practice the fine art of listening.

Thank you to Sharon Levin for getting me to Fresno and helping me make the transition from research to conference mode!

The 9th IBBY Regional Conference (sponsored by USBBY: the theme was "Peace the World Together With Children's Books") was chock full of inspiration, connections, and marvelous conversations about the rich international world of children's books.

High points for me included:

• listening to Adwoa Badoe's deeply stirring storytelling
• hearing Beverley Naidoo's marvelous talk and learning from it (hurray!) that my friend Jamila Gavin's School for Princes will shortly be available in the US! 
• hearing Grace Lin and Alvina Ling give a wonderfully funny, thoughtful author-editor-friends talk about (among other things) the development of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon 
• discovering the mysterious and evocative art of Brazilian illustrator Roger Mello
• joining an energetic book discussion about Pam Muñoz Ryan's beautiful book, The Dreamer, illustrated by the brilliant Peter Sis
• hearing talks by Pam Munoz Ryan, Margarita Engle, David Diaz, Roger Mello
• meeting old and new child-lit friends. 
• seeing Rumana Husain and her work in the slides from the Nambook Festival.
• walking to the library with IBBY President Ahmad Redza Ahmad Khairuddin: finding familiar common ground in that conversation about children's publishing in Asia
• and of course seeing familiar VCFA faces: a special shout-out to Jessica Powers, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, and Nancy Bo Flood!

And now back to breathing for a while, and then to work. But for now, I'm filled with gratitude for the wealth of material this trip has yielded me. And gratitude as well that even in a world where life can be daunting and peace is still a faraway dream, I am able to do the work that I love.