July 2021 President's Message

Our successful first virtual conference, ChLA 2021—The Arcade, ended over six weeks ago, and my head is still spinning. Thinking about it actually sends me back to my first ChLA 20 years ago, in Buffalo, NY. At the time I was a recently-tenured faculty member and had spent my sabbatical shifting my focus from Victorian literature to children’s literature instead of working on the “tenure” book that I have, actually, never written. Then, as now, I came back from the conference filled with new ideas, with hope, with possibility—and with no small amount of trepidation as well.