Present: Sandy Birch, Kathleen Clotfelter, Heidi Estrin, Inez Feingold, Jackie Fine, Etta Gold, Adele Katz, Fran Levine, Annette Rindner, Walter Spielman, Lee Wixman, Helene Yentis.
I) Heidi welcomed everyone at 12:30pm and thanks Inez Feingold for hosting our meeting.
II) We discussed the AJL national convention, which will take place June 18-21 in Cambridge, MA. We discussed the fact that there are airline discounts available through the work of Lee Wixman, and that AJL offers travel stipends. High school librarians can get Avi Chai grants for attending convention. There was also a suggestion that grants might be available through the Humanities Council or other outside organizations.
III) Heidi passed out the new 2006 Sydney Taylor Book Award bookmarks, which list the gold and silver medalists for this year.
IV) Guest speaker Helene Yentis spoke and showed slides on medieval Hebrew illuminated manuscripts. She also provided an extensive bibliography on manuscripts and Jewish art. For information, contact her at Hyarts@aol.com.
V) We talked about next year's plans for SFAJL. At the last meeting it was suggested that next year we focus on outreach to educate the wider community about Jewish books. The attendees at the April meeting agreed that this was a worthy goal. We also discussed trying some alternate meeting times next year: perhaps some evenings or weekends. Next year we will try to have a joint meeting with the Florida West Coast chapter in Naples, perhaps scheduled around an interesting weekend event there. It was suggested that we should make book-sharing a more regular part of our meetings.
VI) Heidi spoke about her podcast, The Book of Life, available at www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com. She showed the books and CD's whose creators were interviewed on the April episode: Miriam and Her Brother Moses by Jean Marzollo, Shlemiel Crooks by Anna Olswanger, the Shirlala Pesach CD by Shira Kline, and the Pharoah Pharoah CD single by Steve Brodsky and Mah Tovu. She also recommended a new Jewish children's novel she had just finished: Julia's Kitchen by Brenda Ferber.
VII) Lee Wixman reported that we have new AJL members in Puerto Rico and St. Thomas, recruited while he was on a Carribean cruise.
VIII) We toured the exhibit at the JCC: Magda Watts' amazing Israeli dolls.
IX) The meeting adjourned at 2:15pm.
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