Industry News
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Survey: State Teachers of the Year Would Prioritize School Funding on Anti-Poverty, Early Learning & Reducing Learning Barriers
New York, NY–May 20, 2015–As the school year nears its close, the new class of State Teachers of the Year shared their perspectives on pressing issues facing educators today through …
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Neil Gaiman On His Love of Children's Books
I never forget how much I loved being a reader of children’s books as a kid, and how much they changed me — how much the inside of my head …
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2015 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards Announced
This year’s winners are: PICTURE BOOK AWARD WINNER: The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee (Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division) PICTURE BOOK …
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Industry Q&A with Alyssa Mito Pusey
Senior Editor at Charlesbridge
Interview by Yolanda Scott
Thanks for agreeing to do this, Alyssa. The first diversity question today is how do you self identify?
Growing up in Hawaii, I thought of myself as Japanese American, when I thought of race at all. Because Hawaii is something like 50% Asian, I didn’t think of myself as “Asian”—until I moved to the Mainland for college. Suddenly I was aware of myself as a “minority” and a “person of color.” I started thinking of myself as Asian American, which I still do today.How did your background influence your early reading habits, if at all?
I didn’t really pay much attention to my Japanese heritage, sad to say. I read whatever I liked—whatever the library had. The same childhood classics as everyone else. After Narnia and Middle Earth, lots and lots of fantasy.Did you envision the characters in the fantasy books you read as white or as other races and ethnicities?
White mostly. When you’re reading about someone with red hair and violet eyes, well, she’s white. And when everyone you see in movies, TV, and books is white, you make assumptions. It was actually difficult for me to wrap my head around Ged (from Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea books) being brown-skinned—even though he’s clearly pseudo-Polynesian in the text. It took me a while to figure it out; the cover of my beloved paperback whitewashed him. The only other non-white characters I ran into were in Laurence Yep’s books. He seemed to be the only author at the time writing fantasy about Asian characters.How did you get into children’s publishing?
I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. I even wrote a report in fifth grade about the publishing industry. By the time I got to college, I knew I loved children’s books but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with them. I interned for The Horn Book and a small publishing company but still wasn’t sure. During grad school, I got my first internship where I actually got to edit something. I immediately realized that this was what I wanted to do. I was enrolled in a PhD program at the time, but I took the Master’s and ran.What appeals most to you about the job of editing?
I love the craftsmanship of editing. When you’re actually editing—getting your hands dirty—it’s messy and open-ended and exciting. I love figuring out the weaknesses in a manuscript and brainstorming ways to fix them. Helping the author clarify his or her vision takes creativity, problem solving, and thinking outside the box.Could you tell me about the most recent diverse book you published?
Samurai Rising by Pamela S. Turner, illustrated by Gareth Hinds, to be published in February 2016, is a middle-grade biography of Minamoto Yoshitsune, one of the most famous samurai in Japanese history. It’s one of the most thrilling books I’ve ever edited—full of drama, intrigue, violence, and romance. It still gives me goosebumps every time I read it. Yoshitsune is one of the main characters in The Tale of the Heike, a great Japanese work. I had learned a little about the Heike in college, but when I read the manuscript for Samurai Rising, it came to life. Working on the book pulled together a lot of threads for me: my Japanese heritage, my interest in martial arts (I’m a long-time aikido practitioner), and my love of the Japanese aesthetic. The book has deepened my understanding of, and appreciation for, my own culture. And editing the book made me go to aikido practice with renewed seriousness!
What is one factor holding you back from publishing more diverse books?
Availability. I just don’t see a lot of diverse submissions, and not a lot from diverse authors. Many of the submissions I receive are also serious or sad, with little kid appeal.Can you give an example of a successful diversity title on the Charlesbridge list?
Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas by Nastasha Yim, illustrated by Grace Zong, is a Chinese American retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This book was a surprise success to me. I thought it would do well, but I didn’t expect it to be so widely embraced. It’s an accessible way for Chinese Americans and people from other backgrounds to learn about the basics of Chinese New Year. More universally, it’s a clever story with absolutely adorable art.
Who would you consider to be a diversity pioneer in children’s literature?
Lenore Look’s Alvin Ho books are just brilliant. They’re everything we editors ask for in terms of diverse characters who just happen to be diverse. Alvin’s Chinese American culture is integral to the story, but it doesn’t drive the plot or hit you over the head with a message. The books are about Alvin and who he is as an individual. And they’re funny.If you have an author who wants to write about characters outside of his/her own background, how do you generally handle that?
We see a lot of submissions of diversity books from people writing outside of their cultures and backgrounds. Alarms go off, and you have to be really careful as an editor. First, I try to be sure that the writing is respectful. I also consult with experts from the culture and try to find an illustrator from that culture. These people bring things to the table that you and the author may never have considered.
For example, in Friends for Freedom, Suzanne Slade wrote about the friendship of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. In Suzanne’s head, she had handled Susan’s and Frederick’s stories evenly. In my head, Susan was the main character—but I didn’t question that direction. When the illustrator, Nicole Tadgell, who is African American, saw the text, she pointed out that the stories were presented as equal but in fact weren’t. She asked if we could do something about that. Suzanne, realizing Nicole was right, worked hard to shift the focus. The two friends are now treated equally, which is one of the main points of the book.
Does being a person of color affect your acquisition or editorial process?
Whenever I receive a manuscript featuring characters of color, I get excited—hopeful. That may be because I’m a “person of color,” but I think it’s true for all of us editors at Charlesbridge. If I’m being honest with myself, books with Asian—especially Chinese or Japanese—characters or settings immediately spark an interest, since I’m more familiar with these cultures.The funny thing is that, as an editor who specializes in nonfiction, I haven’t actually edited a ton of “diversity” titles. When you’re working on books about animals, urban gardening, and black holes, you can may be include scientists of color and a diverse cast in the illustrations—but that’s not usually the main point of the book.
The exception to this, of course, is biographies. Lately there’s been a real surge in biographies of little known people, partly due to Common Core. But even in this burgeoning genre, people of color are still getting shafted. When I was recently looking up Asian and Asian American biographies, I was shocked all over again at how little there is out there—Lee & Low seems to be the only publisher consistently putting out these books.
This is one area where I feel like I could help make a difference. With the publication of books like Mario and the Hole in the Sky (a 2016 biography of chemist and Nobel laureate Mario Molina) and Mountain Chef (a 2017 biography of National Park trail cook Tie Sing)—as well as Samurai Rising—I’m hoping to help young readers find themselves in nonfiction.
Alyssa Mito Pusey is a senior editor at Charlesbridge, editing picture books and middle-grade chapter books and specializing in nonfiction.
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Actress Julianna Margulies to Write Picture Book Story
Editorial Director Maria Modugno handled the acquisitions process. Random House Children’s Books will release Three Magic Balloons in May 2016. Three Magic Balloons centers on a trio of sisters whose …
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16 Students and 5 Teachers Named National 180 Award Winners for Academic Success
NEW YORK, NY – May 11, 2015 – Sixteen incredible students and five dedicated teachers in grades 3 through 12 have been named 2015 National 180 Award winners by Scholastic (NASDAQ: …
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Happy Birthday, Margaret Wise Brown!
Brown was a shy and thoughtful child with a love of animals that would later shine through her work. She attended Hollins University in Virginia before returning to New York …
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Razorbill Acquires Sequel to An Ember in the Ashes, The New York Times Bestselling Novel by Sabaa Tahir
New York, NY — Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, has acquired the sequel to An Ember in the Ashes, the New York Times bestselling debut novel by Sabaa Tahir. An Ember in …
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Diverse Characterization Matters
(or Why I’m Grateful for Being Forced to Watch a Kid’s Show About Mermaids)
I was visiting my sister in Boston a month ago, and found myself amused (and strangely inspired) by watching, of all things, the kid’s show Bubble Guppies. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically a cartoon about a group of merperson preschoolers who go on adventures and learn life lessons in the sea (is merperson correct? Mermaid boys and girls who go to school in the ocean…I’m not sure why I’m looking for any of it to make logical sense. It’s cute and draws my two nephews in like flies).
The point is that this show follows your typical preschool cartoon formula. Present children with a group of very enthusiastic (one might say too enthusiastic) preschool characters who sing, smile a whole lot, and are oh so happy to make learning fun! What caught my attention in watching this show with my two-year-old nephew Cole one morning was that there was one kid in the group (named Nonny) who was clearly different than the rest. I’m not talking about the color of his skin or his cultural makeup (which this show represents nicely with a diverse cartoon cast), but his personality. Unlike the others in the show, Nonny rarely smiles (even when singing, which is amusing to watch. He has a permanent skeptical face). He’s shy, always looks wary of the goings-on around him, and is thoughtful and reserved. Basically he’s the kid I was as a child, the kid I see some of my friends have now, the kid who stays on the outside of the group until it’s safe to come in and play.
It occurred to me in watching this character that I would have loved Nonny growing up because he reflected me and didn’t fit in naturally with the rest of the more extroverted and boisterous group taking the focus and attention. And in the show, that was presented as a-OK.
I mention this story because I think this sort of thoughtful characterization on the part of the show creators (yes, on a preschool cartoon) is applicable to the way we look at the literature that is shaping our children today. When you take a look at the ongoing diversity conversation in this industry, you have to experience it through an impressionable child’s eyes, and how all characters in every story are portrayed within the diversity spectrum from top to bottom. Children are so malleable and so hungry to explore and understand the world around them and, most importantly, how they fit inside it, that they are hyper-attuned to how any character they see that reflects their own image fits into his or her surroundings (in television, literature, and other mediums). Nonny works well because, while he’s different, he’s not called-out for being so, nor ostracized from the group as the stereotypical quiet kid. He just joins into the group when he wants, and kids who watch the program have the benefit of watching a character who is a little quieter and yet still has a place inside that world (of merpeople).
Now I’ll confess here that I’m a white female working inside the publishing industry, so my inspirational characters growing up were Eloise (as a small child), Catherine (from Catherine, Called Birdy), and Jane Eyre (minus the crazy wife in the attic). But those characters were so vital to my own childhood development in identifying with strong female figures with heart and intelligence and endurance I could aspire to in my own life, that they’ve stuck with me still now that I’m into my thirties. And for my nephews, my friends’ children, and my own (theoretical) children down the line, I want to gift them with a world where they have access to a variety of characters who fit their identities that they can safely attach to and learn from, both in personality and in their cultural makeup.
While I think we are making strides toward more diverse children’s literature, so, so many children of differing cultural backgrounds remain so sorely underrepresented in the books created for them today. And just like my connection with little Nonny on Bubble Guppies, there are so many children throughout the world looking for a bit of themselves in everything they’re soaking in with the literature they devour. It breaks my heart that some of them likely aren’t finding it.
So it’s worth reiterating that producing, marketing, publicizing, and selling children’s books featuring diverse characters isn’t just an item to check off our list to then move on to the next thing. It’s a necessary, fundamental shift that is vital to how we do business to gift future generations with a more colorful and safe world to develop in, to become the best people they can be. With so many kids of all different backgrounds looking for a little bit of themselves in the literature that’s shaping them, day by day, it is our duty to make sure that literature is up to the task.
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Hollywood Director Todd Haynes May Adapt Wonderstruck
Selznick drew inspiration from a great number of sources for this project including an E. L. Konigsburg novel, a documentary called Through Deaf Eyes, and two exhibits at the American Museum of Natural …
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Chelsea Clinton Aims to Inform and Inspire Young Readers to Change the World in Book this Fall
New York, NY — In a new book for young readers ages 10-14 scheduled for publication on September 15, 2015, Chelsea Clinton breaks down some of the world’s biggest challenges …
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Coloring Books for Adults
Penguin Random House recently acquired the next two books by Johanna Basford the “queen of coloring,” to be released in the fall of 2016. The book will be edited by …
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Rick Riordan Has Written a New Percy Jackson Companion Book
Artist John Rocco created both the interior illustrations and the cover art. Disney Hyperion will release the book on August 18, 2015. That date coincides with Percy Jackson’s birthday. (Rick Riordan’s …
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New York Times Bestselling YA Fantasy Author Laini Taylor Signs New Three-Book Deal with Little, Brown Books For Young Readers
New York, NY – Following the international success of the Daughter of Smoke & Bone Trilogy, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish three new young adult novels by New …
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Happy Birthday, L. Frank Baum!
Baum did not begin writing for children until he was in his forties, having previously worked as a journalist and businessman. He developed a love of storytelling by spinning tales …
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Erin Stein to Launch Imprint
The first title that will be released by Imprint is a book entitled Babies Ruin Everything; the release has been scheduled for Spring 2016. Matthew Swanson and Robbie Behr, husband-and-wife …
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Tuck Everlasting Musical to Debut On Broadway in 2016
The Broadway-bound musical — about love, family and living life to the fullest — features a book by Claudia Shear, music by Chris Miller and lyrics by Nathan Tysen. It …
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What Are You?
A Post That Has Nothing to Do with Sookie Stackhouse
Contributed to CBC Diversity by Christian Trimmer
“What are you?”
“Uh…”
“I mean, where are you from?”
“Oh! Chicago.”
“No, where are you from from?”
“America?”Throughout my life, I’ve had conversations like the above. It’s human nature to put people into categories, and I was not easily placed. I inherited my Vietnamese mother’s eyes and cheekbones and my white father’s nose and skin tone, giving me what has been called an “exotic” look.
From an early age, I made efforts to define my racial identity (something kids do as early as two years old, for themselves and others, according to a number of studies). As a boy, I identified as white. Other than my mom, who was the only one in her family to move to the United States, all of my relatives were white. The neighborhood I lived in was predominantly white. Plus, everyone on the TV shows I watched and in the books I read were white (or animals). On top of that, when I went to Little Saigon in Chicago with my mom, I felt distinctly “other.” It’s not surprising that I would choose to identify with my white half. Dr. Erin Winkler, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, notes, “[C]hildren pick up on the ways in which whiteness is normalized and privileged in U.S. society…picture books, children’s movies, television, and children’s songs…all include subtle messages that whiteness is preferable.”
But my classmates had different ideas. My eyes were slanted enough to earn me the label “Chinese” (it was the 1980s—everyone Asian was Chinese). I excelled at school, particularly in math, and was an accomplished tennis player (a sport that requires focus and discipline), only because, as my peers regularly informed me, I was Asian.
Throughout high school, I continued to try to downplay my Vietnamese heritage—I wanted to be like the cool, popular white kids around me. When I got to college, though, I started to self-identify as Asian (I’ll tell you why over a drink). Mind you, I didn’t join any of the Asian-American groups on campus; I simply started saying “I’m Asian” when asked “What are you?” After moving to Los Angeles, I switched back to white (I’ll tell you why over a drink). My commercial agent thought differently, sending me to castings where I was alternately the whitest, most Asian, or least Hispanic person there.
It’s only within the last decade that I’ve embraced both sides of my heritage. (The opportunity to choose one’s own racial identity is a relatively new one.) It’s important to me that I honor my mom and dad’s influences on me, so I make a point to correct people if they place me in just one category. For a while, I used the word “Eurasian.” Now, I describe myself as biracial and give the specifics if asked.
I’ve chatted with friends who are biracial or multiracial, and we’ve all had very different experiences, depending on our mix, gender, and geography. One thing we have in common is that none of us could single out a book from our childhoods that captured the experience of being multiracial. Where were the books for us? Don’t “exotic” people deserve to have their stories told, too?
Happily, today there are a number of children’s books that are about or star kids who are mixed. (Do a search on Goodreads and you’ll find lists for all reading levels.) I’ve had the pleasure of reading novels that have characters whose upbringings mirror my own, books like The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by Lindsay Tam Holland, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I saw myself in Vee, Lara Jean, and Park’s stories. I would have loved to have read them as a teenager.
With nine million Americans identifying as more than one race, with one in every seven marriages being between spouses of a different race or ethnicity, and with the number of mixed-race babies soaring, the demand for more of these stories is growing.
As an editor, I’m looking to acquire projects that address the biracial experience. As a writer, I hope someday soon to add to the canon of existing titles.
Christian Trimmer is an executive editor for Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. He is also the author of the picture book Simon’s New Bed, out 8/25/15. Learn more at christiantrimmer.com.
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Little Free Library® Announces Worldwide Book Drive for Children's and Young Adult Books At Its 25,000 Locations
Minneapolis, MN — To mark its third anniversary as a non-profit organization on Saturday, May 16, 2015, Little Free Library® invites the public to participate in the Worldwide Little Free Library Book Drive by donating new …
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Turning Prisons into Reading Centers
Every child in the world deserves reading and literacy, not just those whose parents live in the free world.
Contributed to CBC Diversity by Deborah Jiang-Stein
At a time when most babies coo along with lullaby wind-up toys, my ambient sounds were women’s voices in small clusters and the wail of a siren across the prison compound for count time. Count is when prisoners report to their bunks in their cells or living units while the guards count the population. Three times a day for a year, the siren blasted in my backyard—the prison yard.
I was born in prison during the beginning of one of my birth mother’s many prison sentences. She was a heroin addict sentenced for drug-related crimes, much like many in prison today. She was in the first months of pregnancy at the time of her sentence, and I lived in the prison for a year until Child Protection Services removed me for placement into foster care. Later, I was adopted into a family of academics, my parents both English teachers.
But sometimes I’ve wondered: Did anyone read to me in prison? Was my birth mother allowed board books in the room I shared with her for the year we spent together?
Whether she did or didn’t, I’ll never know. What I do know is that my love of learning, one reason why I am a writer today, is because the family who adopted me instilled a love of words and reading within me, along with a passion for art, music, theater, and dance — all things creative.
My exposure to reading as a child led me to found The unPrison Project because:
1. I have a deep-rooted tie to women in prisons, especially mothers.
But most of all because the facts prove what I’ve known all along:
2. Life skills like reading and literacy, and non-cognitive skills like persistence, goals planning, and self-confidences, all contribute to success in our communities.
I also founded The unPrison Project because:
- Two thirds of women in prisons are mothers, the majority with young children under age 10.
- 7-10% of women sentenced to prison are pregnant at time of sentencing.
- Most often, infants are removed at birth and if arrangements aren’t made with a family member for custody so the baby enters the foster care system. Thus begins a second generation of trauma due to mother-child separation.
The science of early childhood development teaches us that a child acquires the ability to think, speak, learn, and reason during his or her first three years of life. A baby’s early experiences shape his or her brain’s architecture, building either a strong or a fragile foundation for life, learning, and health. Adverse early experiences and deprivation can impact a baby’s brain development for an entire lifetime, and positive learning experiences can set the path for self-esteem and possibility.
After years of speaking in prisons to talk about the value of life skills, I recognized the void of children’s books in visiting rooms as well as in the prison nurseries where I visited mother-baby programs.
Nine states (New York, Washington, West Virginia, California, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, South Dakota) currently have on-site nurseries for a select number of pregnant inmate mothers to live with and care for their babies born during their prison sentence, and another nursery is scheduled to open in the Wyoming women’s prison in the near future. Often, local community agencies will donate nursery supplies, clothes, cribs, and other material needs, but there’s always a need for new and current diverse books.
Many prisons say they only have “only a few dog-eared books” in their visiting rooms. Visiting rooms in prisons, as well as in juvenile detentions, are the equivalent to one of the largest “in the margins” classrooms. These spaces are ripe for the development of on-site children’s book library carts and reading centers for learning and literacy.
By stocking prison nurseries with inclusive children’s books for ages 0-3, babies born in prison are groomed for a lifelong love of reading and learning.
Literacy is learned, and parents who can’t read or write often pass on illiteracy.
A partnership between the Children’s Book Council and The unPrison Project is providing an abundance of new books for prison nurseries, and also for visiting rooms in prisons. Our goal is to help set the groundwork for literacy in the next generation and, at the same time, nurture new bonding and parenting skills for incarcerated mothers, which is as important inside prison as it is outside.
This specific and large diverse market of incarcerated mothers and their children need attention. What if prison nurseries and visiting rooms were turned into reading centers? Providing an environment of reading and literacy will help change the prospects of babies born to mothers in prisons. As the late Walter Dean Myers said, “What I believe is that we need to have every child reading to give them a shot at life.”
The CBC/unPrison Project partnership makes a statement that reading is for every child, not just those with parents in the free world. The CBC/unPrison Project partnership makes a statement that reading is for every child, not just those with parents in the free world.
Reading creates an altered state, a grounding between parent and child. If it weren’t for my early exposure to reading and the exploration I’ve found in words and books, I most likely would have continued to follow in the footsteps of my birth mother. Instead, I’ve made my mission to give back in whatever ways I can to the communities of my roots, those inside prisons.
Our world will be a better place when we each find ways to give service to others and, for me, I can’t imagine a better way than to open up a world of possibilities through stories.
Deborah Jiang-Stein, author of the memoir, Prison Baby, is a national speaker and founder of The unPrison Project, a 501c3 nonprofit working to empower and inspire incarcerated women and girls with programs, resources, and tools for life skills and mentoring. For more than 10 years, Deborah has championed support for people in need of freedom, education, shelter, and job development.
- Two thirds of women in prisons are mothers, the majority with young children under age 10.
