Aryssa Damron receives 2025 Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship

CHICAGO - The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and the Professional Recognition and Scholarships Committee have awarded the 2025 Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship to Aryssa Damron.

The Bechtel Fellowship is designed to allow qualified children’s librarians to spend up to four weeks reading and studying at the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, a part of the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, Gainesville. The Baldwin Library contains a special collection of 120,000 volumes of children’s literature published mostly before 1950. The fellowship is endowed in memory of Louise Seaman Bechtel and Ruth M. Baldwin and provides a stipend of up to $7,500.

Damron is the librarian at Van Ness Elementary School in Washington, DC. She will pursue how author Margaret Sidney’s body of children’s literature aligned with and reflected her prolific volunteer work and her desire to prepare and train the citizens of the future.

“Damron’s own commitment to community organizations and teaching literature to children is a good match with her research topic and how she plans to share it with the broader children’s literature community and her students,” said Gwen Vanderhage, co-chair of the ALSC Professional Recognition and Scholarships Committee.

“I’m delighted to work with Ms. Damron on this fascinating project,” said Dr. Fiona Hartley-Kroeger, curator of the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature. “The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature has numerous copies of Margaret Sidney’s books as well as the Margaret Sidney Papers, and the project will illuminate the important role children’s books have played and continue to play in cultivating citizenship.”

The 2025 ALSC Professional Recognition and Scholarships Committee includes: Mary Schreiber, Co-Chair, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Brooklyn, OH; Gwen Vanderhage, Co-Chair, Brodart Company, Williamsport, PA; Heather Love Beverly, Cook Memorial Public Library District, Vernon Hills, IL; Grace Enriquez, Lesley University, Boston, MA; Bethni King, Georgetown Public Library, Georgetown, TX; Maria Xochitl Peterson, Chicago, IL; Rebecca Price-Donahue, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Parma, OH; Jenny Rosenoff, Montclair Kimberley Academy, Montclair, NJ.

About the Association for Library Service to Children

ALSC, a division of the ALA, is the world’s largest organization dedicated to the support and enhancement of library service to children. With a network of more than 4,000 children’s and youth librarians, literature experts, publishers and educational faculty, ALSC is committed to creating a better future for children through libraries. To learn more about ALSC, visit ALSC’s website at www.ala.org/alsc.