This year, in association with the Child and the Book group based at Roehampton University in the United Kingdom, Buffalo State College is hosting a graduate student conference on Children's Literature and Social Justice. The conference will be held May 16th-18th, 2008 on campus, and graduate students from all institutions and all disciplines are welcome to attend. We are delighted to announce that Tim Tingle, winner of the 2007 Jane Addams Children's Book Award for books that promote peace and social justice, will be our guest author. We are also pleased to welcome Roni Natov as our academic guest speaker. Roni Natov is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, CUNY, where she has won many awards for her teaching. Her book, The Poetics of Childhood, won the IRSCL Award for Outstanding Research 2005. She has published widely in the field of children's literature and is co-founder with Geraldine DeLuca of The Lion and the Unicorn where she served as co-editor for 16 years. She is currently working on a book, Out of the Shadows, Children in Struggle. We also plan to journey to sites connected to the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses used by escaped slaves during the American Civil War, and to world-renowned natural wonder, Niagara Falls. For more information, please see the Conference Program section of the website. The conference call for papers is now closed, and information on registration is available by clicking the link on the right. For other questions about the conference, keep checking back here or contact the conference's Faculty Advisor, Dr. Karen Sands-O'Connor: sandsk@buffalostate.edu for more information.