Year: 2014
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New Editions of ‘Charlie & The Chocolate Factory’ to Be Released as a Penguin Modern Classic in The UK
Penguin executives made this decision to honor the 50th anniversary of the book’s original publication date. A new cover has been designed and a release date has been set for …
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Gayle Foreman Remembered Four Lost Friends By Writing ‘If I Stay’
“Writing that book was an ecstatic experience, in part because, despite the sad premise, it was about all the love Mia had in her young life. But also because when …
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Dear Book Publishers: Letters from the 5th Grade
The Dear Book Publishers series is a showcase of letters written by 5th graders from Dothan Brook School. These students were tasked with looking at the diversity in their school library’s picture book collection along with the race of children featured on Kindergarten Second Step cards. Reacting to what they had learned, the students wrote letters to book publishers, the Vermont Agency of Education, the school principal, and the district superintendent. During the month of August, CBC Diversity will showcase all of the letters created by the Dothan Brook School’s 5th grade class.
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Three Authors Endorse Unusual Fictional Couples
Some of the respondents included young adult writers Rainbow Rowell, Holly Black, and John Green. For Rowell, the pairing she “ships”* would be Mrs. Frisby and Justin from Robert C. …
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Tween Metal Band Unlocking The Truth Inks Book Deal With Penguin
New York, NY – Unlocking the Truth, the Brooklyn-bred, tween heavy metal band, will publish a book with Putnam Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. Written by the …
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To Turn On The Light: Dumbledore’s Letter to Cassidy Stay
“This afternoon, I talked to a friend of Cassidy’s who confirmed that JK Rowling did, in fact, write her a personalized letter from “Dumbledore” (hand-written with purple ink). She also …
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Dear Book Publishers: Letters from the 5th Grade
The Dear Book Publishers series is a showcase of letters written by 5th graders from Dothan Brook School. These students were tasked with looking at the diversity in their school library’s picture book collection along with the race of children featured on Kindergarten Second Step cards. Reacting to what they had learned, the students wrote letters to book publishers, the Vermont Agency of Education, the school principal, and the district superintendent. During the month of August, CBC Diversity will showcase all of the letters created by the Dothan Brook School’s 5th grade class.
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Authors Remember Beloved Children’s Books in Honor of National Book Lovers Day
The majority of the writers who contributed to this list named children’s books in their responses. Elizabeth Gilbert adored The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Karen Russell worshipped A …
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Donalyn Miller Joins Scholastic Book Fairs as Manager, Independent Reading
NEW YORK, NY — Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, today announced that Donalyn Miller is joining the company as Manager of Independent Reading and Outreach, Scholastic …
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Dear Book Publishers: Letters from the 5th Grade
The Dear Book Publishers series is a showcase of letters written by 5th graders from Dothan Brook School. These students were tasked with looking at the diversity in their school library’s picture book collection along with the race of children featured on Kindergarten Second Step cards. Reacting to what they had learned, the students wrote letters to book publishers, the Vermont Agency of Education, the school principal, and the district superintendent. During the month of August, CBC Diversity will showcase all of the letters created by the Dothan Brook School’s 5th grade class.
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Blood, Roses, Snow: An Interview with Francesca Lia Block
“It’s amazing to me that Weetzie is still as popular as it is, even way more so than in the beginning, that she continues to draw people to her. That fascinates me. …
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Dear Book Publishers: Letters from the 5th Grade
The Dear Book Publishers series is a showcase of letters written by 5th graders from Dothan Brook School. These students were tasked with looking at the diversity in their school library’s picture book collection along with the race of children featured on Kindergarten Second Step cards. Reacting to what they had learned, the students wrote letters to book publishers, the Vermont Agency of Education, the school principal, and the district superintendent. During the month of August, CBC Diversity will showcase all of the letters created by the Dothan Brook School’s 5th grade class.
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More Than 900 Writers Sign a Letter Addressed to Amazon
Recently, more than nine hundred writers decided to voice their feelings on the situation. The authors banded together to sign an open letter to Amazon; some of the participating children’s …
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Gayle Forman’s IF I STAY hits #1 on USA Today and New York Times Bestseller Lists
New York, NY – Gayle Forman’s internationally bestselling novel IF I STAY hits new heights this week, landing at #1 simultaneously on the USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists. IF I STAY is an emotionally arresting …
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Dear Book Publishers: Letters from the 5th Grade
The Dear Book Publishers series is a showcase of letters written by 5th graders from Dothan Brook School. These students were tasked with looking at the diversity in their school library’s picture book collection along with the race of children featured on Kindergarten Second Step cards. Reacting to what they had learned, the students wrote letters to book publishers, the Vermont Agency of Education, the school principal, and the district superintendent. During the month of August, CBC Diversity will showcase all of the letters created by the Dothan Brook School’s 5th grade class.
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Kids Break 2013 World Record In The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, Logging 200 Million Minutes And Counting
NEW YORK, NY – Children worldwide are making this the biggest summer ever for reading and have set a new world record by logging 200 MILLION MINUTES in the Scholastic Summer …
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“Please don’t turn this into a teenage romance”: Lois Lowry on Hollywood’s Adaptation of ‘The Giver’
NYT: “‘The Giver,’ like much contemporary Y.A., has a totalitarian setting, although the society was designed to be an egalitarian utopia.”LL: “People do things that turn out badly, often for …
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Dear Book Publishers: Letters from the 5th Grade
At the beginning of 2014, the Diversity Committee finished its first meeting of the year with answering the questions “How do we want to move forward?” and “What perspectives haven’t we covered on the blog just yet?” After discussing some of the interesting high points of 2013, one aspect kept sticking out.
The committee loves hearing from actual kids.
The term “actual” is important here because we’re referring to hearing kids’ and teens’ opinions, not their “collective” opinions through librarians and teachers—the adults in their lives with which publishers are more likely to communicate.
We all know that kids have opinions, and they are very honest about them, so the Committee wanted to find a way to give the youth of our nation a way to speak up about the diversity in the literature they see, what they want more of, and what they want to change.
Serendipitously, Rebecca Lallier, M.Ed., the School Counselor for the Dothan Brook School in Vermont found the Children’s Book Council and presented a project she facilitated with the school’s 5th graders. Here’s the project in Rebecca’s words:
In the late winter of 2014, 5th graders at the Dothan Brook School in White River Junction, Vermont completed a unit on implicit racism during their classroom counseling lessons. As a culminating activity, students replicated a 2012 study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin by collecting data about the race of main characters in children’s fiction picture books in the school library’s collection. A subgroup of students also collected data about the race of children featured on Kindergarten Second Step cards. They compared the data they had collected with the results of the CCBC 2012 study and data about children and race from the 2010 U.S. Census. Using this data and the information that they had learned about implicit racism, the fifth graders wrote letters to decision-‐makers (their choice of the school principal, district superintendent, the Vermont Agency of Education, or book publishers) outlining the issues they had uncovered and making recommendations for addressing these issues.
Dothan Brook School is a small, rural school of 263 kids that is socioeconomically and ability diverse with a variety of family structures. That being said, the school’s racial/ethnic diversity is very small.
Native American: 0%
African American: 1.5%
Asian/Pacific Islander: 1.9%
Latino: 3.4%
Multiracial: 4.2%
White/Caucasian: 88.9%
Most of the kids who are racial/ethnic minorities have White/Caucasian parents, and all of the staff is White/Caucasian. These numbers are very representative of Vermont, where 95.2% of the population is in the racial majority.
The project fits perfectly with the CBC’s goal of sharing young readers’ thoughts about diversity in children’s literature with the world and what perfect timing to do this before the next school year unfolds.
For the month of August, we’ll be sharing every letter the 46 5th graders at the Dothan Brook School wrote to decision-makers about the diversity they encountered during their unit and their thoughtful suggestions for change.
We hope you’ll share their letters, too, so that their opinions on the reading material created for them might make a difference as well as show other kids that their thoughts and ideas matter and deserve to be heard.
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Happy Birthday to the Original Miss Rumphius, Barbara Cooney!
Of all the books I have done, ‘Miss Rumphius,’ ‘Island Boy,’ and ‘Hattie and the Wild Waves,’ are the closest to my heart. These three are as near as I …
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‘We Need Diverse Books’ to Launch a Diversity in the Classroom Initiative
WNDB has formed a partnership with First Book and the National Education Association’s Read Across America program. Together, they will launch the Diversity in the Classroom initiative. Every month, students …
