Revolution: An Update from the Trenches

So yesterday I did a presentation for a grant committee about the Best Fiction for Young Adults Revolution.
Note to self: check and see if BFYA is copyright or trademark, because I do not want to make the American Library Association mad.
Asking for money is easy when it's for the benefit of the Angel Potatoes.
This group of very nice people listened as I talked and talked and talked.
I talked about how kids respond when you know them well enough to recommend books for them and you've read the books and you can talk about them.
I told them that being able to be alone with words and worlds and imagination and quiet is becoming a life skill in the twenty-first century.
Brains on fiction!
Here, read this article.
It is gratifying to know that neuroscience validates Revolution. Thanks, Annie Murphy Paul. You are full of awesomesauce.
I talked about how absolutely over-the-moon my students get when an author writes them back and SEES them. Not all authors have time to do this, but it is really, really cool when it happens.
And for Visual Aids--because grant committee members have learning modalities too--I had two packages that I just received.
One was a box of donated books from a Remarkable Human who heard about the Revolution and sent books.
And a Remarkable Amazing Author Who Has My Undying Gratitude sent a packet of swag that is so wonderful that I sat down and cried.
I ran up and down the hall in the administration building with books and swag and interrupted EVERYONE because I shrieked, "Look! Look! Revolution stuff!"
It is good that my colleagues are patient and supportive people.
So then the committee asked some questions, because if you are going to give money to someone you are entitled to clarification.
One kind person asked why the library wasn't running this project.
This is a good question.
We have books in our media center, and the person in charge of the media center has like, five jobs to do.
And I see the kids every day and I've read something like three hundred good books (YA) in the last two years and I teach technology and I see that kids need stories and these are not mutually exclusive things and equally necessary.
So not only did this committee grant my request, they said that if another grant does not come through that they will help again.
And so this morning I ran up and down the hall of the administration building shrieking that I got the grant.
Everyone was happy and hid any irritation they might have felt at being interrupted again.
And THEN I showed the kids the contents of the packages and they were SO HAPPY.
We start storyboarding their book trailers soon and they are all lit up and excited.
It was a good day for the Revolution.
May there be many more.
Thanks, everyone.