Now Accepting Nominations for ABA’s Children's Group Advisory Council

We are now accepting nominations for six open spots on ABA’s Children’s Group Advisory Council, which serves as a sounding board and advisory council on issues facing the children’s bookselling community and ABA.

Booksellers are invited to nominate themselves or others.

Nominations are due by 11:59 pm ET on August 14, 2024. They will be reviewed that week by current Children’s Group Advisory Council (Children’s Council) members and ABA staff who will select six new members (with four of the spots going to GLIBA, NAIBA, NEIBA, and MIBA) to fill the empty seats and ensure overall regional representation of the council. 

The Children’s Council serves an important role in ABA’s work. The Children’s Council has also proven to be a pipeline to the ABA Board. Three current ABA Board members have served on the Children’s Council: Tegan Tigani from Queen Anne Book Company, Kathy Burnette from Brain Lair Books, and Diane Capriola from Little Shop of Stories (who currently serves on the Children’s Council).  

The Children’s Council members provide feedback about ABA programs and services as they are being developed; offer suggestions to help ABA improve programs and services to better serve the children’s bookselling communities; bring concerns of booksellers and bookstore owners to the ABA staff and Board; and generally assist ABA.

The Children’s Council is looking for individuals who represent different diverse identities to create a committee, as a whole that is representative of different types of individual diversity, as well as diversity of region, store size, and format.

A candidate for the Children’s Council committee:

• Is a bookstore owner or full-time bookseller at an ABA member bookstore (any format or model)
• Does not currently serve on the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee (DEIC) or the Booksellers Advisory Council (BAC)
• Hasn’t previously served on the Children’s Group Council (formerly ABC)
• Is able to meet the time obligation (see below) and serve for two years

Nominees will be informed of final decisions by Friday, August 23, 2024. The first Children’s Council meeting with new members will take place in the fall to review the 2025 Children’s Institute schedule.

The Children’s Council's time commitment varies as outlined below:

• Input and/or participation in ABA’s Children’s Institute (offering feedback on programming, and/or participating in a panel)
  • ABA covers Children’s Council members’ registration, airfare, and hotel for Children’s Institute during their tenure.
• The possibility of similarly comped in-person participation at Winter Institute is determined annually based on the budget.
• Occasional attendance at prep or preview sessions for ABA programming with external speakers
• Occasional emails asking for feedback
• Three annual meetings, with one in-person meeting at Children’s Institute and two virtual meetings hosted on Zoom.

For more information about the committee, please reach out to bookseller committee members collectively or individually, or contact ABA staff committee members: Senior Manager of Children’s Bookselling Education and Programs Gen de Botton or COO Joy Dallanegra-Sanger.