Year: 2013
-
A Children’s Choice Book Awards Photo Essay
Publishers Weekly has crafted a photo essay to memorialize all the excitement and celebration. See pictures of the children’s authors, illustrators, and publishing executives who attended this gala including R.J. …
-
Diversity in the News
May 9th—May 16th, 2013
ON OUR RADAR- White kids will no longer be a majority in just a few years at CNN
- Where Are All the Black Boys? by Varian Johnson
- See The Fascinating Evolution of Cover Art From 12 Legendary Queer Books at Autostraddle – including Annie on My Mind
- In Our Own Words – YA author E.M. Kokie on how girls in YA novels rarely describe their own bodies using anatomically specific words
- Celebrate YA Books That Feature Haitian Culture at YALSA’s The Hub
- Pictures, Patterns, Words by Lyn Miller-Lachmann at Diversity in YA
- Author’s Notebook | Leslea Newman at The Whole Megillah
- Is UK Publishing Too “White, Middle-Class” to Be Truly Global? at Publishing Perspectives
- No censorship: Northville Schools refuse to remove Anne Frank from reading list via Hometownlife.com
- Trash Can Days by Teddy Steinkellner – review at Pink Me – addresses depictions of race in YA
- DiYA Author Spotlight: Laurence Yep at Diversity in YA
- Black In America: A Story Rendered In Gray Scale – NPR books on the need for coming-of-age novels that address race
- 2013 Middle Grade Black Boys: Seriously, People? at Fuse #8
- DiversifYA: Kristina Pérez – interview with the author of The Myth of Morgan La Fey (Palgrave Macmillan) and A Hedonist's Guide to Beijing; also see this week’s interview with Tamara Mataya
- YA books need to reflect our diverse society at The Telegraph
- A Few Hints About the Japanese Literature Challenge 7 Coming This June at Dolce Belleza
- Two-in-One Notebook Special | Author Leanne Lieberman and Editor Sarah Harvey, Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust at The Whole Megillah
- 10 YA Books About Southeast Asian Americans at Diversity in YA
-
Diversity in the News: May 9th — May 16, 2013
ON OUR RADAR White kids will no longer be a majority in just a few years at CNN Where Are All the Black Boys? by Varian Johnson See The Fascinating …
-
Tom Angleberger & Cece Bell Collaborate on a Picture Book Project
The story follows a not-so-friendly Yankee Doodle and his relationship with an “overeager pony.” This project marks Angleberger’s debut as a picture book author. Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton …
-
It’s Never to Late to Become a Children’s Book Week Champion
Show your support for the transformative power of literacy by becoming a Children’s Book Week Champion. Check out all the digital toolkit resources to use online and in stores, libraries, and …
-
Book Spotlight: Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel
© 2014
Hachette Book Group, Inc.Happiness, anger, love, jealousy, peace, and worry. Everyone has experienced these feelings, especially as a thirteen-year-old, and these are all the emotions Erica “Chia” Montenegro is feeling the summer before eighth grade.Read more »
In Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel (coming out this June) Diana Lopez, author of Confetti Girl and Choke, introduces us to Chia, whose life is turned upside down when she learns her mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer and must undergo a mastectomy and radiation treatments. She finds herself juggling the responsibilities of family, school, and friendship, all while keeping up the façade that she can handle it all without help. This story captivated me in its honesty, heart, and humor; the protagonist is funny without forcing it, and the emotions, which as indicated by the title, swing from excitement and anticipation to dread and sadness, are authentic. Chia is a character any reader can connect with. And it doesn’t matter that she also happens to be Latina. -
DOGObooks.com Announces its First Annual Summer Reading Program
With the help of its Children’s Book Publisher partners, DOGObooks has assembled a catalog of 84 popular titles of books for grades 3-8. By reading and posting 3 reviews of …
-
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Named Master Publishing Licensee for Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood by Licensing Agency Out of the Blue Enterprises
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New York, NY – May 2013 – Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, one of the world’s leading children’s book publishers, has been named master publishing licensee for PBS KIDS …
-
Watch the Children’s Choice Book Awards Ceremony Now!
During the awards presentations, attendees were treated to sage advice from Henry Winkler, rapping from Meg Cabot, and a passing of the tiara from Brian Selznick to Robin Preiss Glasser. …
-
The National Book Development Council of Singapore Announce the SingTel Asian Picture Book Award
The writers who have earned a place on the authors’ shortlist include Swapna Haddow (United Kingdom), Sophie Dewayani (Indonesia), Debra Chong (Singapore), Ganbaatar Ichinnorov (Mongolia), Lak-Khee TAY-AUDOUARD (Singapore), and Maria …
-
Children’s Book Week Reading Lists Round Up
Some of the titles featured include Divya Srinivasan’s Octopus Alone, Anne Nesbet’s A Box of Gargoyles, and Kelly Bingham’s Formerly Shark Girl. Visit this web page daily to see updates …
-
An Ongoing Question, An Ongoing Discussion
Guest post by associate editor at Charlesbridge, Julie Ham.When Charlesbridge decided to host a diversity panel during this week’s Children’s Book Week, the onset of planning felt a lot like editing: asking the right questions was key. Who will speak well and honestly to this sensitive subject? Will the CBC partner with us? (Yes!) How will the panel contribute to this valuable, ongoing dialogue? Who will be in charge of buying the cheese? The crackers?!I soon became preoccupied with one question that we think will come up during the panel discussion.Can authors or illustrators write about or illustrate cultures and races different from their own?This question brought me back to a children’s literature graduate course I took about five years ago. We were examining Sold, a contemporary middle-grade novel about child prostitution in Nepal. We contemplated whether the author, Patricia McCormick (a white American woman), had the right to tell this story—one that falls outside her own experience and culture. As far as I could tell, no one else had written such a narrative for the middle-grade readership; I felt it needed to be told. Patricia had visited India and interviewed women and girls who had been sold to brothels, preparing herself to authentically tell this story as best she could. I felt confident that she had done her due diligence. I valued her choice to write about this subject matter and hoped her book would affect a diverse readership—a testament to the idea that the human condition—both good and bad—similarly touches all cultures, in all parts of the world. Maybe some of those diverse readers would be even closer to the book’s reality than Patricia was able to get through her research. Maybe they’d be inspired to tell their own stories.Read more » -
Sixth Annual Children’s Choice Book Awards Winners Announced
New York, NY — May 13, 2013 – The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) at …
-
2013 Pannell Award Winners Announced
“A jury of five book industry professionals selected the winners based on creativity, responsiveness to community needs and an understanding of young readers. Nicola’s Books was cited for its ‘over …
-
Happy Children’s Book Week!
Visit the official Children’s Book Week website to find out more information on how to take part in all the celebrations. Also, check out the digital toolkit, kidlit freebies, and …
-
Diversity 101: Who’s That Fat Kid?
Fat Politics and Children's Literature
Contributed to CBC Diversity by Rebecca RabinowitzMy Personal ConnectionI’m a fat person living in a virulently fatphobic culture. We’re soaking in it. The ubiquitous fear and hate of fatness is both glaring and invisible. It’s job discrimination; it’s insults from strangers on the street; it’s doctors who refuse to treat fat patients until we lose weight. I’m dedicated to fat politics, which is a social justice movement, and Fat Studies, which is a critical/academic lens.Stereotypes/Cliches/Tropes/ErrorsIn children’s books, fatness often symbolizes negativity. One common trope is the fat bully. Think of Dudley Dursley. Think of Dana, the fat bully in Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot. Think of Nazir Mohammad, the fat bully in Suzanne Fisher Staples’ Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind. Also common are fat victims. Think of Miranda in Cynthia Voigt’s When She Hollers – a fat girl who was terribly abused for years and has just committed suicide as the book opens. Miranda exists specifically to show Tish, the similarly-abused protagonist, what path not to take. Think of Dell in K.M. Walton’s Empty – a fat protagonist who’s raped, bullied, abandoned, and (like Voigt’s Miranda) driven to suicide. And think of Jake in Rebecca Fjelland Davis’s Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged – Jake’s a fat bully and a fat victim. The tropes of fat bully and fat victim occur far too often to be random. Lest we think that any particular example might be random, textual evidence often specifically links the actual fatness with the negative trait, cementing the conflation. About Hoot’s fat bully: “This time Dana hit him with the other hand, equally fat and damp” [96]. About When She Hollers’ fat victim: "Tish had watched the fat girl lumbering out the doors and down the sidewalk to where the car waited. Waddle, waddle – her buns rolling up against one another – like a girl going down the hallway to the electric chair every day" [42]. Fatness is mapped onto negative characteristics as if it were some sort of profound literary symbol, and as if such mapping were harmless to people in the real world.Read more » -
Children’s Choice Book Awards Gala Venue Changed
Please share this information with your friends and colleagues who will be attending. The Gala is a charity event to benefit Every Child A Reader, a 501(c)3 literacy organization committed …
-
Diversity in the News: May 2nd — May 9th, 2013
ON OUR RADAR Lionsgate Acquires Film Rights for R.J. Palacio’s Wonder via the CBC This, That, Both, Neither: The Badging of Biracial Identity in Young Adult Realism at YALSA YA …
-
The Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators Announce the Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award
The SCBWI is proud to announce the immediate launch of the Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award for authors over the age of fifty who have not been traditionally …
-
Melissa de la Cruz to Create a New Blue Bloods Series Spin-Off
The series will follow the adventures of newly-annointed vampire Oliver Hazard-Perry. When de la Cruz started writing the first Blue Bloods novel, she originally imagined Oliver as a vampire and …