Wonder Woman: Eliza Dresang, Winner of the Scholastic Library Publishing Award
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal,08/01/2007
Long before MySpace, Second Life, and gaming were the rage, Eliza Dresang saw them coming. It all started in 1991, when she was a member of the Caldecott Award selection committee. Of all the books under consideration, she found herself being drawn to David Macaulay’s Black and White (Houghton, 1990) because she’d never seen anything quite like it.
The book went on to win the medal for best picture book of the year, but to Dresang’s surprise—although kids loved it, many parents and educators didn’t get it. “Adults looked askance at it,” remembers Dresang, now a tenured professor at Florida State University’s (FSU) College of Information. “They said it was confusing, that it was hard to read because it had four different stories, and it didn’t have an ending.” The unconventional book is a collection of four seemingly unrelated stories, each one taking up a quarter of the page. It could be interpreted as one story or four parts of a story. But, ultimately, it’s up to the reader to decide.
In her heart, Dresang knew that the groundbreaking book signaled something radical was taking place in children’s literature. Little did she know that she was onto something big—so big that she would end up writing Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (H. W. Wilson, 1999), a seminal volume that’s helped countless educators better understand and evaluate this new world of literature created for computer-savvy Millennials. No doubt the book played a significant role in her winning this year’s Scholastic Library Publishing Award for her extraordinary contributions to promoting access to books and encouraging a love of reading.
During the ’90s, while Dresang and fellow Caldecott committee member Kate McClelland were presenting at various library conferences trying to figure out why some people didn’t appreciate Black and White, Dresang soon realized that a growing number of kids’ books had similar interactive and nonlinear qualities. The print on Virginia Euwer Wolff’s Make Lemonade (Holt, 1993) looked like verse-free poetry flowing down the page. And in Peter Sís’s Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei (Farrar, 1996), words became pictures and there were handwritten passages from Galileo’s own works. Dresang also noticed that more realistic and varied voices—such as minority and marginalized populations—were being heard, and that formerly taboo subjects, like sexuality and death, were increasingly showing up. “This changing perspective paralleled what was going on in society,” she says. “So, I asked myself, 'Did it mean anything?’ I knew something was going on, but now it makes perfect sense. I saw a connection between books and the way our lives have changed since the computer chip became ubiquitous. The introduction of new technology changed the environment and what it allowed people to do, and books changed to adapt to the new way people were thinking.”
Since Radical Change came out, librarians, teachers, and parents have been lining up to thank Dresang for creating a framework they can use to defend these new books, which were often being snubbed because they were so unlike traditional titles. K. T. Horning, the director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center and former president of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), says Radical Change has helped shape the way people look at new literature because “they were able to categorize the changes they were seeing in a logical, systematic way.”
One librarian told Dresang that she finally understood the shift that had taken place in children’s and young adult literature and was relieved that she could now back up the need for both books and computers in a presentation to her school board.
Renee Schwartz, the district media specialist for Broward County Public Schools in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, agrees. After attending a summer workshop by Dresang on Radical Change in 1998, Schwartz held training sessions for more than 250 of her district media specialists and teachers, many of whom ended up adopting Radical Change principles in their book selection process and lessons. “[Dresang] certainly made us more aware of the value of different formats of books,” says Schwartz, who works for the nation’s sixth largest school district. “And as a result, the selection of materials for school collections became more in tune with students and their needs.”
To this day, the theory behind Radical Change—the fact that we’re all so connected and interactive, and have access to limitless information—explains why YouTube, gaming, and social networking sites are such hits with kids.
“Radical Change is the main reason she’s held in such high esteem in the library profession,” says McClelland, the head of children’s services at Perrot Memorial Library in Old Greenwich, CT, and a longtime friend and colleague. “It continues to completely change the way adults approach reading for youth and certainly foreshadowed the rise and acceptance of the graphic novel form.”
As a result of Dresang’s book, educators now realize that reading no longer involves only interacting with words on a page and that children are still capable of learning if information is presented in a complex and sophisticated manner.
In fact, fellow academic Virginia Walter, of UCLA’s information studies department, is convinced that this year’s Newbery and Caldecott winners—The Higher Power of Lucky (Atheneum) by Susan Patron and Flotsam (Clarion, both 2006) by David Wiesner—would not have been considered for these prestigious awards 20 years ago because of their Radical Change qualities. “But now we’ve come to expect books that break barriers,” she says.
If you ask friends and colleagues the first words that come to mind when they think of Dresang, they’ll say Radical Change. But beyond that, you’ll hear words like intelligent, passionate, hardworking, and devoted. Indeed, this mother of three and grandmother of five (with a sixth on the way), never ceases to slow down.
At the moment, Dresang is awaiting the green light to create I-CELTIC (which stands for Interdisciplinary Center for Leadership, Technology Integration, and Critical Literacies), an FSU research center that she’ll head to bring together the university’s Learning System’s Institute and its colleges of information studies and education. One of its main purposes will be to analyze how the leadership role of media specialists affects technology integration throughout schools.
Dresang and fellow FSU professor Nancy Everhart are also knee-deep in Project LEAD, a two-pronged program aimed at attracting more school librarians. Aided with $1.3 million in grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, LEAD (Leaders Educated to Make a Difference) has developed a completely online curriculum for media specialists that includes tenets of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) to help candidates qualify for National Board Certification in library media. Librarians can earn a leadership certificate that can be taken within the master’s degree, a post-master’s leadership certificate, or a 30-credit specialist degree focusing on leadership.
Why is it important? “Project LEAD is the only known ALA-accredited program in the nation that incorporates NBPTS principles into its school library media curriculum,” says Dresang, a cofounder of the program. National Board certification also happens to be the highest credential in the profession—and it comes with financial incentives that can be as much as $10,000 a year for 10 years.
The other component of LEAD is a fellowship program aimed at attracting 30 Florida teachers to fill the state’s media specialist shortage. Participants in the two-and-a-half-year program, which began in January, complete FSU’s online master’s degree program and obtain Florida certification as school library media specialists and a leadership certificate.
Dresang, and FSU Associate Professor Melissa Gross, can also take credit for Project CATE (Children’s Access to and Use of Technology Evaluation), a model they developed to help plan and evaluate library programs by examining how nine- to 13-year-olds use technology. The program was tested at the St. Louis Public Library from 2001 to 2003, along with help from partner Leslie Holt, the library’s coordinator of youth services. The researchers ended up discovering something interesting: that kids like to work together—rather than alone—on computers. Based on their conclusions, the trio created a successful program called Club Tech, which has been modeled at libraries nationwide and was documented in the book Dynamic Youth Services through Outcome-Based Planning and Evaluation (ALA, 2006).
Let’s not forget that, in her spare time, Dresang chairs the research and development committee for the Association of Library Service to Children and the Florida Children’s Book Award, and is a member of ALSC’s Notable Children’s Books committee, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award committee, and the Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA) board. Plus, she’s on the advisory committee of the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries and helps select the neediest school libraries affected by the 2005 hurricanes, giving workshops to those librarians on how to rebuild their collections.
Are you surprised that this woman’s curriculum vitae is 30 pages long? “If she gets behind an issue or cause, watch out!,” says Ginny Moore Kruse, former director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You always want Eliza to be an advocate because she won’t give up or give in easily.”
Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, Dresang married soon after graduating from Emory University, and followed her husband to Wisconsin and then to Los Angeles, where she taught Spanish. She decided to get a master’s degree in French and suddenly changed her mind to library science. “So at the last minute, I ran out to UCLA and slipped my application under the door. And that changed my whole life.”
Dresang spent one year as a children’s librarian at the Encino-Tarzana branch of the Los Angeles Public Library and did a stint at the Ida Williams branch of the Atlanta Public Library. She eventually landed a job in the ’70s as a media specialist at Lapham Elementary School in the Madison Metropolitan School District. A state law passed in 1973 required that all children with disabilities be educated in the “least restrictive environment,” and Dresang did her best to make them feel included. “At a time many doubted the value of library time to children with multiple handicaps, Eliza worked to make sure that experience with literature was part of the lives of all Lapham’s students,” says Christine Jenkins, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was a student teacher in Dresang’s Lapham media center in the late ’70s.
In September 1977, Dresang ended up publishing an article about “special children in library media centers” in School Library Journal. It was called “There Are No Other Children,” and “that was the start of my leadership in the profession,” she says.
Indeed, from there, everything did start to snowball. Dresang took a leave from her school library job in the late ’70s to pursue a Ph.D. in library and information studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Afterward, based on the suggestion of Kruse, her friend and mentor, Dresang applied for—and got—the job of director of library and technology services in the Madison School District. While there, she spent 16 years improving the districts’ school library programs, adding badly needed technology and leading the effort to automate all the school libraries. The district was a runner-up for the American Association of School Librarians’ National School Library Media Program of the Year Award in the early ’90s. During that time, Dresang also taught library information studies as an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she developed her groundbreaking course in multicultural literature for youth.
Dresang left the Madison School District in 1996 to join FSU’s College of Information as an associate professor. By 2002, she was a full-fledged professor, and by 2004, she was awarded a named professorship—the Eliza Atkins Gleason Professorship, an honor that is bestowed to a select few for outstanding merit.
So how many hours a day does this dynamo work? “My personal interests and my professional life are all blended together,” Dresang says. “So it’s impossible to say how much I work.”
Take, for example, her busy schedule on the way to this year’s American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Washington, DC, to receive her Scholastic Library Publishing Award. Dresang managed to take a few detours, first meeting with folks from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and then the Pew Foundation to talk about collaborating on her impending research center, I-CELTIC.
Dresang made it back in time to accept her award on June 26 in front of a packed audience.
“I have never known anyone as devoted to her work as Eliza,” says McClelland. “No detail or improvement is too small for her to address. She is literally tireless.”
| Author Information |
| Debra Lau Whelan is SLJ’s senior news and features editor. |
Post a comment Return to article View other article discussions
| Submitted by: | Bobby Hopkins (blh06@fsu.edu) 7/14/2008 2:42:51 AM PT |
| Location: | Tallahassee, Fl |
| Occupation: | Teacher/FSU Project Lead Grad student |
WOW - I had no idea that Dr. Dresang has done this much. I was BLESSED to be in her Project Lead group and I must say she is ONE of kind. Meeting her has definitely created a desire in me to make that RADICAL CHANGE in the Gadsden County school district.
| Submitted by: | Dr. Thomas Irby Kindel 1/8/2008 11:57:17 AM PT |
| Location: | Charleston, SC |
| Occupation: | Professor of Business Administration |
Congratulations to Professor Eliza Timberlake Dresang on this most recent well-deserved honor and on your
many contributions over the decades to academia and to the world of children''s literature. I have followed
your career with a great deal of interest and know
that it has inspired countless others.
With best regards,
Dr. Thomas Irby Kindel
| Submitted by: | Jeffrey Smith (jsmith277@hotmail.com) 8/29/2007 5:25:40 PM PT |
| Location: | Miami |
| Occupation: | Librarian1 |
Congrat''s Dr. Dresang
You are a wonderful conveyer of information and a gatekeeper to the Librarian Profession. Please continue the good work you do for the Colloge of Information at FSU.
Jeffrey Smith
Librarian for Miami Dade Public Library System
former student 2003 FSU
Post a comment Return to article View other article discussions
