>> The Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> John Cole: Well, good morning. >> Audience: Good morning. >> John Cole: And welcome to the Library of Congress. I'm John Cole. I'm the Director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, and I'm glad to welcome you to a special ceremony where we are inaugurating or at a well-known inaugural ceremony, our Fifth National Ambassador four Young People's Literature. The Center for The Book is fortunate to have many important co-sponsors, of course, in this wonderful program. You're going to hear from them in a minute, but in the meantime, I'm going to tell you just a little bit about the Center for the Book, which was established in 1977 as a public/private partnership. We have a law authorizing what we do, but it also infers that we will raise private money to pay for our activities, which we are pleased to do, and that's where the partnerships come in. Our purpose is to, on behalf of the Library of Congress, promote books and reading and literacy and libraries. We accomplish this mission not only through events such as this one at the Library of Congress and many other events but also through a major role in the National Book Festival, which I know many of you know about, but also through the nationwide networks of state affiliates, and that's one of the reasons are so pleased to have people from around the country here, and that our ambassador will be visiting various places around the country to spread the good word about the importance of reading and books for young people. We also have an affiliate program of organizations, and the Children's Book Council, our major sponsor here, is one of the members of that network, but one of our key endeavors, in fact, brings us here today. This program was established by the Children's Book Council and the Center for the Book, in this Children's Book Council Foundation, Every Child a Reader, way back in 2008. It doesn't seem to us, to those of us who have been involved, that it's been that long, actually, but we have living proof here today with a couple of the former ambassadors, and you will meet them later. Our program's aim is to raise national awareness of the importance of young people's literature as it relates to literacy, to education, into something much bigger, the betterment of the lives of our young people. Appointed for a two-year term, the National Ambassador chooses a personal platform relating to books and reading, which you will also hear about. It's the Librarian of Congress takes the appointment based on recommendations of a committee of experts who has helped, and many members of the committee are here today. The Center for the Book, in addition to the programs I've mentioned, administers the Library's Poetry and Literature Center and its Young Readers Center, which was created in 2009, and at the Young Reader's Center, which I hope you will visit today. Is in this building, and you'll be guided there. We not only have books written by our new National Ambassador, whoever he or she may be. There's a big surprise announcement coming. Plus, for their parents and their caregivers. Technically, it's down on room G-29 of the ground floor of this beautiful Jefferson Building. There also is a special display, became available today, in the window leading to the Young Readers Center where you can learn the identity of our brand-new National Ambassador, and inside the Young Readers Center is a display of works, not only by the new ambassador, but by all the previous ambassadors. I want to extend a special welcome today to guests from the Savoie Elementary School. Where the world can they be? Can I hear from them? Are they someplace nearby? Let's hear another yay! Raise your hands. [ Applause ] Let's try that one more time. We've now rehearsed it. I want to extend a special welcome to our guests from the Savoie Elementary School. Can we hear from them? There we go. They will, I must say, logistically speaking, will be leaving the room the first because each of them is then, after we are done this part of the ceremony, because they will each be receiving a signed copy of a book by our new ambassador. Well, I will say just a quick word for how many of you, this is the first visit to the Library of Congress? Would you raise your hand? A lot of the kids. A number of the adults. This beautiful building was opened in 1897. Our first home was the US capital because we were created when the capital moved to Washington in 1800. So we have a long history. Our other big buildings on this campus are the John Adams Building, which opened in 1980 -- excuse me, in 1998; 1939, I'm sorry. I'm a historian. I haven't got my dates. I'm in the wrong century half of the time, but I do know when the Madison Building opened, which was 1980. So we have these three major buildings, and I hope you come back after you visit the Young Readers Center. You'll see some of the other glories of this building, and learn more about the Library of Congress. I would now like to introduce you to the acting Librarian of Congress, David Mao. David oversees this whole entire library that I've tried to describe and its various service units, and we serve the Congress first, but we serve all of the American people. We are also a public library, which lots of people don't seem to know, but we're working hard to let them know, and the Young Readers Center is the principal way we do it. David has big picture. He served as Deputy Librarian of Congress for a short period. During his time as Deputy, David oversaw kind of a strategic alignment. We're trying to figure out where we're headed, because right now, the post of Librarian of Congress, which the presidential appointment, is still open. We're still waiting to see what's going to happen, but in the meantime, we've been lucky to have David, and we've also had an appointment of a new Chief Operating Officer, and under David also, the hiring of a new Chief Information Officer, and as I mentioned, David has broad experience. Before being named Deputy Librarian, he was our 23rd Law Librarian of Congress. As Law Librarian, he managed the operation of one of our major units, which has the world's biggest -- there are lots of world's biggest connected with the Library of Congress -- collection of legal materials, and it serves as leading research center for foreign, comparative, and international law. David often described the position as part Lock Librarian to Congress, part steward for law collections, and part ambassador -- there's that word -- to the world's legal and library communities. Please welcome David Mao. David. [ Applause ] >> David Mao: Thank you so much, John, for that very kind introduction, and welcome everyone to the Library of Congress. Now, boys and girls, remember when I came in and you were standing down in the hall, what did I tell you about ignoring what your teachers and your parents always tell you about being inside the building, and inside voices. I was hoping that you would really be very generous with their spirit. So let's try again, I think John was trying to get you to show your spirit here. So welcome again to the Library of Congress from the kids and -- >> Audience Speaker: Savoie. >> David Mao: Savoie. Come on. No inside voices. All right, all right. Thank you. Again, it's my pleasure to welcome all of you to the Library of Congress for this very, very important event. So we celebrate the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and that is a very important role, because it is this National Ambassador that, since 2008, since John has mentioned, going out and traveling the nation and talking to boys and girls and talking to, well, adults, too, about the importance of literature, young people's literature, reading, literacy, all of these things that are very, very important, and, boys and girls, I hope you take that to heart, and you will soon see why it's so important when we introduce our new ambassador. But before we do that, we're very, very fortunate, as John mentioned, that we have a couple of our previous ambassadors here with us, Kate DiCamillo and Jon Scieszka, who started us off, and both of them did fabulous jobs during their tenures as ambassadors, spreading the word about what we do here at the Library of Congress and just generally the word about literature and books and reading. I want to now officially welcome our new, and announce our new ambassador for young people's literature. His name is Gene Luen Yang, and he's going to come up in just a second. I wanted to say one thing, though. I think many of you are ready knew that he was going to be our ambassador, and I had the fortunate privilege of being mistaken for him. So, if there's one benefit, you know, nobody knows who I am. Now people think I'm the new Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and John had mentioned as Law Librarian, I thought of myself as the ambassador to the world's legal community. Now I can really say that I'm ambassador to all of the world, and so, thank you, John -- I'm sorry, Gene, for giving me that privilege. So students, are you ready? >> Students: Yeah! >> David Mao: Okay, now that's better. We very much. We will now introduce Gene, can I invite John for coming up. Is that what is to do, Jon? Am I supposed to invite you up to introduce him? >> John Cole: Yes, you may. >> David Mao: Okay, all right, we'll do that, and again, thank you for being here everyone, and we will now hear from John. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: Well, we'll hear from David again, because in one of his pockets, I hope, he has a metal that is going to be presented to the Ambassador, Gene, in a few minutes, but I would like to just make the point that having Gene and the ambassador is a very special thing for us. Both it shows we have continuity in this program that is going to be stretching across our country and stretching to different audiences at different levels, and we view our Young Readers Center, which you'll see is kind of the hope for the activity kind of effort, but also as a model, and as our ambassadors have gone around the country and have developed and learned about new programs, they've shared those ideas with all of us, and I know Gene is going to the same, but for the record, and just to get this more of a momentous occasion, I would like everyone to stand and applaud our new ambassador, Gene Luen Yang. Gene. [ Applause ] You will hear from Gene in a few minutes, and Kate and Jon, please stand. Stay up. The work recognition, actually, of Jon Scieszka and Kate DiCamillo, our other ambassadors. [ Applause ] Jon was our first ambassador, and so we broke each other in in terms of what is expected of an ambassador, and one of the things Jon taught me that he took that metal, and he never took it off, and the other thing is that he still expects me to come up with a model helicopter that will sort of, he wanted one to kind of fly him around Washington DC as the ambassador and make appearances. So it's still on the agenda, Jon. We're a government agency. It takes a little while. As I mentioned earlier, our cosponsor is a Children's Book Council, which is an important partner for us, and especially important for this project, and its foundation, Every Child a Reader, is our major financial supporter in many ways for this activity, and it's my pleasure to introduce another John. Not a Jon, a Jon Coleman, who is the Executive Director of the Children's Book Council, for remarks. Jon. >> Thanks, John. [ Applause ] >> Jon Coleman: Hello everyone, I'm Jon Coleman. I'm the Executive Director of the Children's Book Council, the nonprofit trade organization for children's book publishers in North America that's dedicated to supporting the industry and promoting children's books and reading, and Every Child a Reader, a nonprofit, which works to instill a lifelong love of reading in children. Since the National Ambassador Program's inception eight years ago, we have been honored to have four exceptionally beloved and respected children's books creators take up the ambassador mental, serving as the country's preeminent advocates for lifelong literacy and the joy of reading. Jon Scieszka, our inaugural ambassador, paved the way in 2008, focusing on transforming reluctant readers into enthusiastic once. Said Jon, "There is no one book that is right for all kids, but there are all kinds of crazy, interesting, and amazing books out there. It's our job to help kids find that book that will inspire them to want to become readers." As a children's book writer, former elementary school teacher, and founder of Guide's Read, A Literacy Initiative for Boys, Jon was exceptionally skilled at generating excitement around reading and motivating kids want to read. Our second national ambassador, Katherine Paterson's Read for Your Life platform, focused on encouraging reluctant young readers to find that truly engage them, in order to build a strong, lifelong love of reading. As Katherine said, "I think all of the joy of reading has given me -- it's not just because it is good for you, but it is because it is good." Walter Dean Myers, our third ambassador, selected Reading is Not Optional as his platform. His stance on literacy was that it should be positioned as a pleasant adjunct to life, but instead, is integral to lifelong growth and development. Walter said, "I think what we need to do is say reading is going to really affect your life. You take a man who doesn't have a job but you say to him, 'Look, you can make a difference in your child's life just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.' That's what I would like to do." Walter was particularly interested in reaching underserved communities and visiting incarcerated teens in juvenile detention centers throughout his tenure. He was also committed to getting parents to read to their very young children to help close the literacy gap. Kate DiCamilla, our most recent ambassador, championed the community-unifying power of storytelling. During her tenure, Kate participated in a variety of community reads programming from coast-to-coast, bringing communities together with the power of the written word. In Kate's words, "When we read together, we can act. Together we see the world. Together we see one another." Over the last eight years, the National Ambassador Program has reached millions of young readers and their caregivers in the United States through schools, libraries, bookstores, community centers, prisons, museums, and beyond. In August of this year, we convened our suction committee for the 2016-2017 ambassadorship. The committee is composed of the following individuals, Betsy Berg, Election Development Manager of Evanston Public Library, Shelley M. Diaz, Senior Editor, Reviews at School Library Journal, Kate DiCamillo, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, 2014-2015, Jonathan Hunt, Coordinator of the Library Media Services at the San Diego County office of Education, Kimberly L. Jones, store manager at Little Shop of Stories, Decatur, Georgia, Deborah Taylor, Coordinator of School and Student Services at Enoch-Pratt Free Library, and Lisa Von Draseck, Curator of the Children's Literature Research Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Each of these esteemed advocates for children's books and literacy was asked to bring a short list of their top five candidates consideration based on the following criteria. 1) Their contributions to young people's to literature. 2) Their ability to relate to kids and teens, and 3) Their dedication to fostering children's literacy as a whole. Gene Yang's name appeared on every, single list. As every committee member well knew, Gene has been an outstanding advocate for inclusion graphing novels and reading for years, and we knew it was about time to formalize the vital role he serves for our nation's young people. Gene's platform, Reading Without Walls, will focus on breaking down barriers to reading, championing diversity in all forms, and engaging young readers/nonreaders, and that could not be more timely and impactful. Gene, we are honored and delighted that you have accepted the position as our Fifth National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and could not be more excited to share your message with children and caregivers across the country for the next two years. I would also like to extend our gratitude to this year's National Ambassador Program sponsors, HarperCollins Children's Books, McMillan Children's Publishing Group, Penguin Young Readers Group, Random House Children's Books, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster Book for Young Readers, and the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation. Generosity makes all this profitable. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Silence ] >> John Cole: it's my pleasure to, once again, introduce the time for a few comments, Kate DiCamillo, who is the outgoing, so to speak, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Kate, as I think Jon mentioned in part, is an award-winning author who did a wonderful job for us the last two years. We have been lucky in all of our ambassadors, and it's been, in part, because as Jon mentioned, we've had a skilled, dedicated crew of people recommending, but in part, it's the individuals. Once they're in this position and realize that the opportunity is there to really impress young people and their parents about reading and its importance, which has developed a new way of doing it, and Kate is going to talk a little bit about herself, but also about another ambassador and the importance of what we've been doing together. The final point is that on the Library of Congress site, each ambassador does appear at our National Book Festival. It so happens that Gene already has been at our National Book Festival, but Kate, John, Katherine, and Walter Dean Myers all became veterans of the Book Festival, and in that sense, they contributed greatly to the national book culture that we're trying to create here at the Library of Congress. Please welcome Kate DiCamillo. Kate. [ Applause ] >> Kate DiCamillo: We're going to get to Gene, I promise. So how are you all doing? Good? Okay. Can I just say something when I put my glasses on? That one of the best things that happened to me in the two years that I was ambassador was when I was in South Dakota, and I was in an auditorium that had 900 kids in it, and they were fabulous, and one kid raised her hand and asked how old I was, and I said, "I'm 50." And she said, "But how did that happen?" And I think of that every time I put the reading glasses on, and it's like I don't know. You know, it will happen to you too. When Walter Dean Myers was a young man, he read a story by James Baldwin entitled Sonny's Blues. That story, Walter said, gave him a permission that he didn't know he needed. The permission to write about his own landscape, his own map. Walter Dean Myers felt that there was no greater calling than to do for others what Sonny's Blues had done for him, and Walter did exactly that. His words give permission. His books are maps. He held up the light that let us see ourselves and the others. Two years ago, Walter stood at this podium and passed some of his light to me. I tried my best to carry it high, to honor Walter, to honor Catherine and Jon, and to honor books and their power to connect us and to help us see each other, and today, I feel very, very lucky to pass this light, Walter's light, onto the incomparable Gene Yang. Thank you for these past two years. Thank you for letting me hold the light. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: Yes, our new ambassador is next. You are about to personally experience Gene's passion for reading, his passion for books, and he's going to talk a little bit about his theme of inclusiveness. Reading Without Walls. Gene is a Michael Prinz winner. He's won lots of awards, but his career is really moving up fast now with more awards and more recognition in many different ways. The American Library Association bestows the Prinz Award each year for the best book written for teens, written entirely on its literary merit. Gene will cover a little of this, but let me explain quickly, just in case he doesn't, and then he may not have to go into too much depth on this part. He's been drawing comics since the fifth grade. He first found success in 1997 when he received a grant for his Gordon Yamamoto in The King of Greeks, which was eventually published as a comic book by a comic book company. During this time, Gene received a master's degree in education at California State at Hayward and began teaching school in San Francisco. I've mentioned, in passing, the first graphic novel of Gene's American-Born Chinese was enormously successful, and the first graphic novel to be named a finalist for the National Book Award. The book is about a teenager struggling with his identity, a theme that is common in much of Gene's work, which emphasizes the importance of celebrating our diverse culture. It was American-Born Chinese that won the Prinz Award. Boxers and Saints, which comprises two companion graphic novels, was Gene's next solo work, and it also was a National Book Award Finalist. Gene is currently writing the graphic novel series Secret Coders, which teaches young people about computer programming, believe it or not, and it's said if I read that book, I could become a computer. So I'm going to give it a try, Gene, I promise. Please welcome Gene, our new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Gene Yang. [ Applause ] >> Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I seriously cannot tell you how excited, how honored, and how thrilled I am to be here. I'm going to start by thanking a whole bunch of people. There are lots of people to thank. So please bear with me. First, I want to thank God for both the blessings and trials. Second only to God I want to thank the Library of Congress, Every Child a Reader, and the Children's Book Council, not just for this opportunity, but also for caring so deeply about the young people of this nation, for wanting to share the wonders of books and wonders of reading with every child in America. I want to thank all of my predecessors at this post. I want to thank Kate and Walter and Katherine and Jon. You guys have truly created a legacy of light, and I feel honored to be a part of that legacy. I'd like to thank all the good people at McMillan Children's and First-Second Books, John Sargent, Jonathan Yagen, Simon Boutin, Angus Killick, Allison Verost, Costa Brill, Gina Gagliano, and especially Mark Siegel. First-Second Books, just over 10 years ago, First-Second Books was a glimmer in Mark's eye, and now it is a home for me and storytellers like me. That's a really amazing thing. I'd like to thank my agent, Judy Hansen, for your wisdom and guidance, my lovely wife, Teresa, who is my partner in everything, and also my family for their undying support, and last but not least, I want to thank all of you, especially if you skipped school to be here. You so much. [laughter] Now I'm going to start by telling you a little bit, something about myself that you may not know. I am a nerd. I know a lot of you are looking at me and going, "Wow, that guy kind of looks like a pro wrestler." But I am not a pro wrestler. I'm a nerd. I like the things that nerdy people like. I like superhero comics. I like computers, and my nerdiness really solidified when I was in fifth grade. That was when I really fell in love with both superhero comics and computers. Going to tell you exactly how that happened. I fell in love with superhero comics because of this book here right here. Oh, this is what I looked like in fifth grade, by the way. Now I fell in love with superhero, because of this book right here. This is Marvel Comics Two in One. The series that they don't really publish anymore, but this is where Marvel Comics would take two of their characters that didn't normally hang out together and them together to have some kind of adventure. For this issue, it was The Thing and Rom The Space Knight. I thought the two characters looked amazing. I saw this at my local bookstore. I brought it up to my mom. I said, "Mom, I need to own this. Can you please buy it for me?" She looked at cover, and she said, "No, absolutely not. Those two characters look way too scary, and they're going to give you nightmares." And she maybe put this back on the spinner rack. To this day, I really have no idea what this story is all about, but my mom, being a good mom, decided buy me a comic. She decided to buy me the latest Superman comic. I have to tell you, when I was a kid, I was not a huge fan of Superman. I thought he was kind of boring, but it's obvious why my mom chose to buy me a Superman comic, right? Because Superman is every parent's favorite superhero. He's not scary looking at all. He's actually kind of good-looking. He always does the right thing. He never says any bad words. He doesn't punch anybody unless he really has to, and afterwards, feels kind of bad about it. He flies around in this blue uniform, like this giant flying Boy Scout fighting crime. I brought this book home. I was disappointed, but I still read it, and in this book the atomic bomb drops in 1986. His 1984 as I'm reading it. So the atomic bomb drops. It kills off to the people in the world. The few remnants of humanity that are left gather themselves in these little societies that are pretty lawless. So a group of men have to get together dressed up in Medieval-style armor and ride around the countryside on these giant mutated dogs to fight crime. Superman teams up with these guys. They call themselves the Atomic Knights, and they have this adventure together. In the last few pages of this story, it's revealed that the whole thing is just a dream, but that did not stop this book from completely freaking me out. I stayed up nights thinking about it. I also stayed up nights thinking about comics, how the combination of words and pictures did something inside my brain that neither words nor pictures had been able to do alone. Pretty soon, after buying this book, I went from being a comic book reader to comic book creator. Fifth grade, I have this friend by the name of Jeremy Kinyoshi [assumed spelling], half Jewish, half Japanese kid. He was a veteran comic book geek in fifth grade. He'd been collecting comics since he could read, and together, we made stories. We made comics. We would brainstorm plots together. Then I would do all the pencils. He would do all the inks. We give all of our original art to his mom who would take them to work, wait until all her coworkers went home, and sneak photocopies for us. Then we take these photocopies. We'd staple them by hand. We sold them to our classmates for 50 cents a piece. We made $8. It was amazing. Jeremy has since given up on comics. He is now a radiologist. He lives in a giant house in Hawaii, but I did not, oops, I did not give up on comics. I kept making comics all the way until now, until now. So that's how I fell in love with comics. How I fell in love with computers was through this machine right here. This is an Apple 2E. Any of you remember an Apple 2E? You all know what that is. Those of you who don't know what a Apple 2E, visit your local technology museum. There will be one there. Now the Apple 2E compared to computers today is just not very powerful, right? It could only display the color green. It was very slow. Didn't even have a hard drive, so you couldn't even store anything on it, but I loved this computer, because this is the computer I learned how to program on. My fifth grade year, the summer right after my grade year, started off spectacularly. I spent every day off in front of the television. I watched a lot of Reading Rainbow, but I didn't read any of the books. My mom watched me do this, and she was kind of disgusted. So she signed me up for these summer enrichment classes. Now, 30 years later, I don't remember any of those summer enrichment classes except for one of them. I took an introduction to computer programming class. In that class, we learned the language called LOGO. LOGO is a language which is kind of forgotten now, but if you had learned computer programming in the 70s or 80s, you most likely learned LOGO. There are all sorts of reasons why LOGO is awesome, but my favorite feature of this language is there's this little turtle. The turtle doesn't look like this. Normally it looks like this, because graphics in the 80s were just not very good, but what you do in LOGO is you could give us turtle instructions, and it would move around the screen and draw stuff. So you could do really simple designs like this. You can add the simple designs together to make more complex designs, or you could do these beautiful geometric designs like this. What I learned that summer was that computers are a way to make art, and I've always been interested in art. That's how I fell in love with computers. So in fifth grade, my nerdiness was solidified, and I've been a nerd ever sense, but today, I'm not just a nerd, I am also an ambassador. I first found out in October. My editor, Mark, called me up. I kind of freaked out a little bit, but after I freaked out, I also wondered what exactly does an ambassador do? What exactly is an ambassador? I had a few email exchanges with Kate, and she was amazingly helpful, but I also consulted that source of answers that all nerds go to. So I knew that ambassadors had to wear fancy suits. I also knew they wore fancy metals, but when I consulted that source of answers, that source of answers, by the way is, of course, superhero comics. Superhero comics don't have the answers to all of life's questions, but they definitely have most of them, and the superhero comic answer to the question what exactly is an ambassador is this lady right here. >> Audience Speaker: Wonder Woman! >> Gene Yang: You all know who this is? This is Wonder Woman. She is one of my favorite superheroes. Wonder woman and I have a lot in common, actually. First, we both have black hair. We both are a lot stronger than we look, and I have to tell you, it's a lot harder for her to pull this off, because she actively look strong, and we also both look great in red boots. Now I don't really have a photo to show you this to prove it to you, but you've just got to imagine. I look amazing in red boots. Today, we have even more common, because Wonder Woman is also an ambassador, which means she also, from time to time, puts on a fancy suit and wears a fancy metal, and Wonder Woman is from an island called Paradise Island. Paradise Island only has women. No men. Which might be why it's called Paradise Island. But the women of Paradise Island call themselves the Amazons, and one day, this man, this fighter pilot named Steve Trevor, crashes on Paradise Island. The Amazons rescue him. They're not sure what to do with him. They're not sure how to relate to Steve Trevor's world, our world, so in the end, they decide to send wonder woman out as their ambassador. Wonder Woman is supposed to promote understanding of Amazon culture to the outside world. As an author, I am from the world of books, and that's kind of like my job too. I'm supposed to promote understanding of the world of books among children and their caretakers. Here's the thing though, books are also ambassadors. Books have been ambassadors in my life. Let me explain to you how this happened. So as we get older, one of the things that we do is we figure out who we are. We figure out the different pieces of our identity. So I'll give you myself as an example. I am a Chinese-American. I love computers. I love superhero comics. I also love drawing. I've been drawing since I was two years old. That's what my mom tells me anyway. I don't really remember, and I love books. So as we get older, we collect all these pieces to who we are, and then eventually, we put a wall around these pieces. Walls are not necessarily a bad thing. After all, walls define what a home is, and this graphic, in a sense, represents what my home is. This is where I am most comfortable, but walls can be bad if you never go outside of them. If you never go outside your walls, then your home is essentially a prison. I am not a sports guy. I have never been really good at sports. I've never been a fan of sports, and I've especially not been a fan of basketball. For some reason, whenever I play basketball, the ball always hits me in the head. It's like my head is magnet for basketballs. So growing up, even after I became an adult, I made sure to keep basketball outside of my walls and away from my head. As adults, we keep our walls with us. Sometimes they even solidify for us as we become adults, and we even have these walls when we're teachers. I was a high school teacher for 17 years at Bishop O'Dowd High School. This is what our campus looks like, Bishop O'Dowd High School, has anyone heard of us? Nobody? We're kind of famous. You should have heard of us. We are like the best school in all of Oakland, California. In any case, even teachers have these walls. Let me give you an example. This is a drawing of what our faculty lunch room looked. The PE teachers and at one table. The drama teachers sat at another table, and the nerdy teachers that at yet another table. There were a couple teacher that would go from one table to the next, but for the most part, we teachers stayed where we were most comfortable. We also had our walls. Every now and then, however, something happens to make us go outside of our walls, and for me, books played a key role in that. I told you already that one of the pieces, one of those icons inside of my walls is my Chinese-American heritage. That's something I'm really interested in, something that really care a lot about. One day I came across this book called Outside the Paint by Kathleen Yep. Kathleen Yep has these older relatives who all grew up in San Francisco Chinatown. This is a book about Chinese-American culture. These older relatives of the author's, they came from very poor, immigrant families. They didn't really have a lot of money, and what they did for fun was they played basketball. They played a lot of basketball. Both the girls and the boys were obsessed with the game. In fact, for a couple of decades, the San Francisco Youth Basketball Leagues were all dominated by these Chinese teams. I read this book. It was a ton of fun. It was very fast-paced. It was about a corner of Chinese-American history that I knew nothing about, but it was also about this topic that was clearly outside of my walls. It was about basketball. I enjoyed this book so much that I decided to find other books about basketball and read them, and here are just a few of them. The first one, Slam Dunk, is one of the most popular Manga series in the world. It's about a Japanese high school basketball team, and their pursuit of their championship. Ball Don't Lie is by a superstar young author by the name of Matt de la Pena. Matt and I are friends. I'm just kind of name dropping right there, but Matt isn't just a great writer. He is also a great basketball player, and his book really draws on his experiences as both a Mexican American and a basketball there to tell a wonderful story, and the final one, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander recently won The Newberry, one of the biggest book prizes in all of America. This is an extraordinary book because the author is able to capture the rhythm of a basketball game through the rhythm of his words. I read these books, and these books acted like ambassador to me. They were in ambassador to the world of basketball. They allowed me to understand a world that I was never really part of. I read these books. I got kind of excited about basketball. I want to talk to somebody about it. So I started talking to this guy named Lou Ritchie. Lou Ritchie was another teacher at Bishop O'Dowd High School. He was a PE teacher. He's also the coach of the varsity men's basketball team. Now this is what he looks like in the yearbook. This is what he looks like as a cartoon. Lou's a great guy, but he is not the kind of guy I would normally be friends with. After all, he sat at a different table. He's also an athlete, and I am a nerd, but as we started talking about basketball, we slowly became friends. Lou invited me to go watch the games of his team. So I even got to travel with this team. There's this big tournament in Missouri. This is a photo from that tournament, and as I traveled with this team, I learned how to watch basketball. I'm definitely no expert. I don't think I have like 70% of the rules memorized. But now I get it. I understand why basketball is important. I understand why people like it, and as I followed this team, I got to know Lou a little better. What I discovered is that he and I actually have a lot more in common than I originally thought. For instance, Lou loves books just like I do. He especially loves reading history books. Lou also loves numbers. Now I love number too, even though I didn't include that icon in my previous picture with the walls and it. Lou loves numbers so much that he memorizes basketball and baseball statistics for fun. He had so many of these statistics memorized that when he was a kid, the kids in his neighborhood used to call him The Professor. So Lou isn't just an athlete. He's also a nerd. He's like a nerdlete. I even have photographic evidence of this. This is what Lou looked like when he was a kid. His glasses are just as big as mine. So I followed this team for a season. I got to talk with Lou and the other coaches and the other players. I even got to sit in on their locker room chats. I could hear their pep talks. I got to look at their strategies, and during the season, what I discovered was an amazing, compelling story. It was their story. It was a story that was so compelling that I felt like I needed to do a book about it. So my next book is actually my first nonfiction book. It'll be a graphic novel about this basketball team. I'm kind of giving away the ending with this picture right here. So don't tell anybody. So books were really ambassadors for me. Books allowed me to understand basketball a little bit better, which led to my friendship with Lou, which in turn led to me following him and his team around for a season, which led to me now doing a book about basketball. Books can be ambassadors for you, too. They can be ambassadors in your lives too. I'm going to give you just a few examples of how it can happen. Number one, they can be ambassadors into the lives of people who are different from you. People from different cultural traditions. People from different religions. People different ways of life. Number two, books can be ambassadors into topics that you might find intimidating. For me, that was basketball. I talked to a lot of folks who find STEM topics intimidating, science, technology, engineering, and math, and there's some amazing, amazing books that can act as your ambassador into those topics. Books can even be ambassadors into other kinds of books. So, for instance, maybe, you pretty much only read prose books, books with just words in them, and you've never tried a graphic novel before, or maybe you're the exact opposite. Maybe you only read graphic novels and you never read books with just words in them. Well, there are plenty of books that are hybrid books that marry these two different ways of telling stories together. One of my favorites is actually Ambassador Kate's book, Flora and Ulysses, about a superhero squirrel. It's pretty amazing, but these books can help you transition from one kind of a book to the other. So I'd like to end my talk with a challenge to you, and my challenge is that you read without walls. Go find a book that you normally wouldn't read. This might be a book with someone on the cover that doesn't like you or doesn't live like you. This might be a book about a topic that you had previously thought intimidating, or this might be a book in a format that you have never really tried before. Read without walls and see what happens. I guarantee, it's going to be something amazing. Thank you very much. It was wonderful to have the chance to talk to you all. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: Gene, that was wonderful, and we've got it recorded, and we're going to make use of it. That's great. I'd like to invite David to come up to present Gene with his medal, and I'd like to ask Jon and Kate stand by for the photo opportunity that will follow right after this presentation here, and then, if we have time, if we move through this quickly, we'll have time for a question or two from the kids for Gene, but let's move ahead. Thank you. Right here, and then maybe we could bring our photographers who want to take a photo here. [ Multiple Speakers ] [ Applause ] [ Background Discussion ] [ Light Laughter ] [ Background Discussion ] >> John Cole: Now, Jon Coleman. Jon, come on up. You and I will join this grand. [ Background Discussion ] We are determined to use the last five minutes for a couple of questions for Gene from anybody who is over here who might have question. Is there a teacher or a child who'd like to get started? Here's one right here. [ Inaudible Speech ] >> Gene Yang: So the question is how did I come up with the idea of Secret Coders? Secret Coders is a six-volume graphic novel series all about computer coding. I said that I taught high school for 17 years. I talked computer science. I taught kids how to code, and I taught in this really visual way. So I do a lot of drawing on the board. I was actually just kind of copying my old computer science teacher from when I was in high school, and when I did that, I thought, "Man, a lot of this could really work as a graphic novel." So it's been a project that I've been thinking about for really long time. I'm really happy to finally get to work on that. >> Audience Speaker: Good morning, Mr. Yang. Have you ever done any animation for any movies? >> Gene Yang: Have I done any animation for any movies? You know, when I was a kid, I really, really wanted to be a Disney animator, and in the end, I decided to give up on that because what I was really interested in was story, you know? And if you look at the animation industry, an animatedly takes like hundreds of people to make, and out of those hundreds of people, maybe only a handful have any control over the story. So I like books because looks really give the author or the cartoonist control over the story. So I've never really done any sort animation. Are you interested in being an animator? >> Audience Speaker: Yes. >> Gene Yang: You've got to draw like crazy. Carry a note -- a little sketchbook with you all the time. >> Audience Speaker: Well, thank you. >> Gene Yang: Yeah, thank you. Keep drawing. >> Audience Speaker: Mr. Yang, what age were you when you started writing comic books? >> Gene Yang: Well, I was that great when I started writing comic books. So I think I was -- I want to say 10 or 11 when I did that. I you interested in writing books, as well? Not really? Think about it. Think about it. It will hit you. [ Inaudible Speech ] >> Audience Speaker: Who taught you how to write comic books? >> Gene Yang: Who told me how to write comic books? Stan Lee. Okay, so when I the kid, I read this book. It was called How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by a guy named Stan Lee. Do you know who he is? I bet you know what he made. He created The Fantastic Four, he created Spiderman, and he created The Avengers. So in How to Draw Comic the Marvel Way, he taught me how to write and draw comic books, but the thing is, when I realized after I became an adult is that not every comic book is made the Marvel way, and that might not even be the best way of making comics. So if you're interested in writing comics or making comics, I would encourage you to do some exploration and figure out what the best way is for you. >> Audience Speaker: Good morning, Mr. Yang. Mr. Yang, Mr. Yang, what inspired you to make Secret Coders? >> Gene Yang: What inspired me to make Secret Coders? Have you read it yet? >> Audience Speaker: Yes. >> Gene Yang: You did? Thanks for reading it. Thanks for reading it. Okay, so the main character of Secret Coders is a little girl named Hopper who learns how to become a computer programmer, and Hopper is actually inspired by one of the most famous computer scientists in the world. Her name is Grace Hopper. She's no longer with us, but a lot of people don't realize that computer programming started off as what was considered a woman's profession. A lot of the early computer programmers were women. The very first computer program in the world was a woman a woman by the name of Ada Loveless, an English mathematician. So Hopper, Grace Hopper, was really the inspiration of my character, Hopper. >> Audience Speaker: Mr. Yang, what was your first book? >> Gene Yang: Which was my first book? The very first book that I did when I was a kid was a superhero book. That's what I did with Jeremy, who I showed you earlier. The first book that I did as an adult was called Gordon Yamamoto and The King of The Geeks. It was about a young man who gets a spaceship stuck in his nose becomes friends with the alien that's driving a ship. Thankfully, that is hard to find now. That book. [ Laughter ] [ Background Discussion ] >> Audience Speaker: Oh, Mr. Yang, again, do you do other comic books like besides Superman, Batman, Justice League comic books. >> Gene Yang: Well, I only work on Superman. Are you a fan of Superman? Who do you like better, Superman or Batman? >> Audience Speaker: Well, it's a -- >> Gene Yang: There's a right answer here. [ Laughter ] >> Audience Speaker: Well, there's going to be a movie called -- coming out against a Superman and Batman. >> Gene Yang: Yeah, so who are you rooting for? >> Audience Speaker: Well, and four of Superman because he's got the [inaudible] power, and heat vision. >> Gene Yang: That's right. That's right. Good answer. Good answer. Well, so I only work on Superman for DC Comics, but I do do a bunch of other comic, as well. I write Avatar, The Last Airbender Nickelodeon and for Dark Horse. You know that comic? Okay, it's based on a really popular TV show, and that I do American-Born Chinese and Boxers and Saints, and a bunch of other books with First-Second Books. Oh, thank you. >> Audience Speaker: Do you speak Chinese? >> Gene Yang: I do. Do you? Do you speak any other languages? >> Audience Speaker: No. >> Gene Yang: Okay, so I have some advice for you. When I was a kid, my parents put me in Chinese school. So every weekend on Saturday, when other kids were watch cartoons, I would have to go to Chinese school, they told me, "You need to pay attention. Otherwise, as an adult, you're going to regret it." I did not pay attention, and as an adult, I regret it. So I would encourage you to go and take a foreign language class and pay attention so you don't regret it as an adult. >> John Cole: Two more questions, just two. >> Audience Speaker: Mr. Yang, did you ever get the book that you wanted? >> Gene Yang: Which book? >> Audience Speaker: The book that you wanted when you was a kid. >> Gene Yang: Oh, oh, the book that -- the one with green cover with Thor and The Thing. You know, I have to tell you, one of my former students saw me do that presentation, and he bought it for me for Christmas, but I haven't read it yet, because I feel if I read it, I'm going to ruin that joke, right? So it's just sitting in my room. [ Background Discussion ] >> Audience Speaker: Mr. Yang, have you ever wanted to do a comic, but you didn't have the inspiration? >> Gene Yang: Okay, so your question is have I ever wanted to do a comic but I haven't had the inspiration? Is that a problem that you have had yourself? >> Audience Speaker: No. >> Gene Yang: Do you any sort of stories or anything? Okay, awesome. So are you able to go from beginning to end without stopping, or do you sometimes run out of steam in the middle. >> Audience Speaker: Sometimes, but not all the time. >> Gene Yang: You sometimes run out of steam in the middle? Yeah, so for me, normally, at the beginning of the book, I have all sorts of inspiration. Then when I get to the middle, things sometimes get kind of dicey. Like, it starts getting hard, and what I found is you just have to keep a regular time in your day or in your week to work on that book. You've got to work on it, even when you don't feel inspirational. I mean, I've got to say, it's kind of like a marriage. You've just got to stick to it. I mean, not my marriage. Not a marriage. But a theoretical marriage. But you've got to stick with it until one of you is dead or one of you is finished. Either you or that book is finished. That's what you've got to do. >> John Cole: I think I have to bail Jean out here. Give him a hand. >> Gene Yang: Thank you. >> John Cole: It's really been wonderful. Don't leave quite yet. Remember the students are going to be leaving first. Gene, you may sit. You've done enough, I tell you. It's been wonderful. But I wish to thank the staff, not only of the Children's Book Council, but of the Center for the Book, and especially The Young Readers Center. For putting this together, for the planning and for the hard work that's gone in. I'd like to thank the judges in the sponsors who put this program together for the past, this is our fifth ambassador, as you know. We didn't know how it would go when it started. It's really gone beautifully. It's been a program of substance and of style, and it's because of the participation of the people I just mentioned and the kids, who were great today. A final round of applause for Gene, and then let the kids go first. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.