Youth Services Librarian
Help Your Shelf
Kit Ballenger, JD/MLIS, is a youth services librarian and consultant with the company Help Your Shelf in the Washington, D.C. area. A former child advocacy attorney, she reads KidLit voraciously and has a special knack for helping young readers find their next ‘good-fit’ book. Clients include nonprofits like National PTA, First Book, and FreshFarms, with whom she supports school-based programming; media outlets; and individual families, for whom she stacks to-be-read piles and curates a perfect baby gift. Kit creates book lists for children’s podcasts including the STEM-based award-winning show Wow in the World, and she appears regularly on SiriusXM Kids Place Live as “Kit on Lit,” their librarian in residence.
Kit has served on multiple committees for the American Library Association including the 2022 Morris Award (for debut writing for teens) and as co-chair of Quicklists, which creates book lists for libraries nationwide. You can find her professional reviews online at Shelf Awareness and in print in Booklist. She served for many years on the board of Capitol Choices, a nationally respected children's book advisory nonprofit, and works with Pride and Less Prejudice to bring LGBTQ+ books to Prek-3rd grade classrooms across North America. A long-term volunteer at the Library of Congress Young Readers Center, Kit helps there with collection development and readers advisory. She is a graduate of Amherst College and U.Va. Law School. You can find her reading recommendations on Instagram @KitonLit.
Sunday, January 29, 2023
3:00 PM – 4:15 PM