Ellen Oh is an award-winning author of numerous middle grade and young adult books including The Spirit Hunters series and Prophecy trilogy, and is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. Melissa Thom is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in Connecticut with 22 years of educational experience and former president of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians.
Originally published on June 10, 2025
Melissa Thom, MA, (she/her) is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in West Hartford, CT. She has been an educator for 22 years and is the immediate past President of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians (CASL). She was a 2019 AASL Social Media Superstar Reader Leader finalist and a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2022. In her free time, she sews #LiteracyInspiredCrafts for her Joyful Making Etsy Shop.
This episode features Rob Cameron, a teacher, linguist, and writer who organizes the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founded the Constellations Mentorship program for the Octavia Project. Rob is interviewed by Max Limric, a pre-service elementary teacher who became interested in the power of children's and young adult literature, having grown up with speculative stories like Harry Potter and The NeverEnding Story.
Ellen Oh is an award-winning author of numerous middle grade and young adult books including The Spirit Hunters series and Prophecy trilogy, and is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. Melissa Thom is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in Connecticut with 22 years of educational experience and former president of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians.