SLIS Professor Carolyn S. Brodie, Ph.D., was invited to address the Ohio House's State Government and Elections Committee this week about naming native Ohioan Virginia Hamilton as the state's official children's and youth literature author. Read the article in the Dec. 9 Record Courier.

Brodie co-directs the Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth with Alexa Sandmann, Ph.D., director of the Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies program in the College of Education, Health and Human Services. The conference is the longest-running event in the United States to focus exclusively on multicultural literature for children and young adults.

The 2012 conference is scheduled for April 12 and 13. For more information, visit http://virginia-hamilton.slis.kent.edu/.