Meet the Newest Niblings!

Time has no meaning on the internet. How long have I been blogging? How long have any of my friends been blogging? And how long have the Niblings been around?

Do you know “The Niblings”? If not, this is an easy thing to remedy. Years ago (2013 to be precise), four bloggers of children’s literature got together and created a group Facebook page that would allow them to post a regular feed of children’s literature news. They included Jules Danielson (Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast), Philip Nel (Nine Kinds of Pie), Travis Jonker (100 Scope Notes), and me. After a little while we invited Minh Le and Mitali Perkins, and they joined on. Of course, they’re successful authors, and that kind of thing takes up a lot of time. So, after a while, Jules got the idea that maybe it would be a good idea to invite two more people.

Which brings us to today.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sincere pleasure, to introduce to you, two women you may know, you may love, and that you will now find on your local Niblings Facebook page and Twitter feed . . .

Erika Long and Edith Campbell!!!

First up, let’s meet Erika Long! Jules recently featured her on her own blog and here is her biography in full:

Erika is an alumna of The University of Tennessee Knoxville and a school librarian in Metro Nashville Public Schools. She is a member of ALA, AASL, Tennessee Library Association (TLA), and the Tennessee Association of School Librarians (TASL). She serves on the board of AASL and TLA. She is a two-time AASL Social Media Superstar finalist; was part of the ALA Presidential Initiative: Fight for School Libraries; chaired the AASL Presidential Initiative Task Force on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; sits on ALA’s United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Task Force and the University of Tennessee Knoxville SIS Alumni Advisory Board; and has served on multiple committees of member associations. Erika has had the privilege of sharing knowledge and expertise at state and national library and literacy conferences. She has previously blogged for the Horn Book and TASL Talks and has a vignette in Promoting African American Writers: Library Partnerships for Outreach, Programming, and Literacy (Libraries Unlimited, 2021). Starting in July, she will be Secretary/Treasurer of AASL and President of TLA.

To connect with Erika on her own individual feeds, she’s on Twitter @erikaslong and Instagram @notyomamaslibrarian.

And Edi Campbell, you may already know. Remember when she guest posted here for a week? Well, in case you missed it, here’s her bio as well:

Edith Campbell is an associate education librarian in the Cunningham Memorial Library at Indiana State University. As part of the Reference and Instruction team, she serves as the liaison to the Bayh College of Education. Edith has served on the WNDB’s Walter Award, YALSA’s Printz and ALSC’s Sibert award committees. She currently reviews for the Journal of Children’s Literature and serves on the Advisory Board for the online peer-reviewed journal, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature. Her research interests include valuing Black children in youth literature and implementation of critical literacy practices in libraries. Edith was a founding member of See What We See and the We Are Kidlit Collective. She blogs to promote literacy, decolonization and social justice in young adult literature at CrazyQuiltEdi. Edith received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Cincinnati and M.L.S. from Indiana University.

To connect with Edi on her own individual feeds, she’s on Twitter @CrazyQuilts and, of course, her blog CrazyQuiltEdi.

And to follow Edi and Erika at The Niblings, visit our Facebook page, as well as our Twitter feed.

I would like to thank both of these women for agreeing to join The Niblings. We are grateful for them and their work and I hope to follow what they have to say very closely in the future.

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