Blog
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‘Guess How Much I Love You’ Turns 20!
According to Karen Lotz, president and publisher of Candlewick Press (the book’s US publisher), Guess How Much I Love You was the publishing house’s first breakout hit. Now translated into more than …
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A Letter of Gratitude to Walter Dean Myers
In a letter addressed to the late Walter Dean Myers, Andrea Davis Pinkney — VP and Executive Editor of Trade at Scholastic — introduces next week’s “It’s Possible” series, where five inspiring publishing professionals will share a little bit of their experience with Walter and how working with him helped push his goal of more diverse literature forward. Check back every day next week for new posts.
Dear Walter:
You always had a story to tell. One of my favorites was about the time you spent as a child with your foster mother reading True Romance magazine. This was the beginning of your beginning. Hearing stories being read aloud made an impression that lasted a lifetime. You called this childhood introduction to reading a gift.
I remember thinking, Walter, you are a gift.
Around that time, you were writing Sunrise Over Fallujah, a novel that centers on the war in Iraq, and is the second novel in what has come to be called your “war trilogy.” It is the stunning companion to your seminal Vietnam War novel, Fallen Angels. With each stage of the editing and revision, you delivered your gift ― you poured keen insight into those pages, and made us think about war’s devastating effects. Your gifts continued to come forth while we worked together on your middle grade Cruisers series, and then on one of your final novels, Invasion, a book set during World War II, which completes your war trilogy.
Yes, yes, Walter, you are a gift who shared your deepest self.
You were a Renaissance man from Harlem. And, like a fascinating rhythm on the A train to 125th Street, you brought us along on your Renaissance ride, as beautiful as the jazz played in the uptown neighborhood you so often celebrated in your books.
As an author who is still learning my craft, I sought your advice on the stories I’d written and how best to render them. Walter, you are a gift who told me that the books we write shape a child’s self-image, and have a lasting impact on the souls and psyches of young readers.
I had the great privilege of accompanying you to the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture you had delivered at the Children’s Defense Fund Alex Haley Farm in 2009. Your remarks had been introduced by Children’s Defense Fund president and founder, Marian Wright Edelman. You rose to the occasion brilliantly.
When I was invited to deliver my own May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, I cried out to you with great anxiety and trepidation about its crafting and delivery. How would I ever follow in your awesome footsteps? In your wisdom, you reminded me that we each have our own footsteps, and that positivity can walk us through any experience. Yes, yes, Walter, you are a gift that encourages all of us to step into our own stories, and to use these to move forward while helping others along the way.
I’ll always remember the day you came to Scholastic to spend time with a group of African American boys who were visiting from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s reading clinic. These young men called themselves “brother authors,” and they wanted to be just like Walter Dean Myers.
You treated them as if they were your own brothers, and let them know they were already like you, because they’d found themselves through reading and writing.
The boys were especially intrigued by your Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor Award-winning Somewhere in the Darkness, and they wanted to know what it’s like to win so many medals. You were quick to point out that even with your glittering list of prizes, you weren’t in it for the fame. You were in it for the love of the game.
That’s why those kids loved you and why we love what your message continues to do. You’ve changed the game forever. Through Somewhere in the Darkness, and every book you wrote, you gave a gift that lets us see past darkness. You generously lit a path for the next writer and reader on the road.
In 2012, you were named The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Through your platform, you reminded us that “reading is not optional.” During your tenure, you worked with Every Child a Reader and the Children’s Book Council on the planning and direction of your term.
As a member of the Children’s Book Council’s Diversity Committee, I watched with awe as you fielded endless invitations, reviewing each with your eyes on the prize that mattered most ― literacy. You were also an active participant in the CBC Diversity initiative. Your blog post on Authentic Voices was one of the most visited posts in the history of the CBC Diversity “It’s Complicated” forum. That’s because you brought to it your gift of authenticity.
Yes, yes, Walter, you are a gift who constantly showed us that all children matter, and that hope can be found in an open book. At the same time, you dared to ask, “Where are People of Color in Children’s Books?" in your New York Times Opinion piece. That simple question rocked a very heavy boat, and forced all of us to batten down our hatches so that we could ride together on the high seas thrusting forward among the winds of change.
And now, Walter, as we embark upon the three-year anniversary of your appointment as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, we celebrate you with a series of guest posts by five members of the publishing community who worked alongside you. Each shares a bit of their experience with the gifts you brought to them, and how these helped advance the goal of more diverse books. Over the course of the next week, your literary agent, Miriam Altshuler; two of your esteemed editors, Phoebe Yeh and Regina Griffin; Virginia Anagnos, your long-time publicist and Executive VP at Goodman Media; and Jennifer Brown, Director of the Center for Children’s Literature at the Bank Street College of Education, will share their memories.
One of the last projects that you and I had the pleasure of working on together was Scholastic’s Open a World of Possible campaign. As part of the initiative, you wrote a story entitled “I Am What I Read” that was published in an anthology of real-life stories.
In your piece, you say: “Once I began to read, I began to exist.” Yes, yes, Walter, you are a gift who reminded us that our very existence ― our living and breathing and giving to others ― happens when we experience the joy and power of reading.
Walter Dean Myers, if joy is a teacher, you are the master instructor. You are a gift ― our ode to joy. And now, in this CBC series so aptly entitled “It’s Possible,” the time has come to pay tribute to your enduring legacy.
Please let us return your gifts to you.
With gratitude,
Andrea Davis Pinkney
Andrea Davis Pinkney is the New York Times bestselling and award winning author of many books for children and young adults. She is also Vice President, Executive Editor at Scholastic, where she served as Walter’s editor. Andrea has been named among the “25 Most Influential Black Women in Business” by The Network Journal, and is the mom of two incredible teens who love to read. -
Scholastic Releases ‘Kids & Family Reading Report™’
Scholastic has released a new national survey, ‘Kids & Family Reading ReportTM: 5th edition,’ focusing on the reading attitudes and behaviors of kids ages 6-17 and their parents. The survey also provides data on early literacy …
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Books for Asia and Publishers Rally for Typhoon Haiyan Relief
In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan took more than 4,000 lives and displaced 4 million people, while entire towns were washed away or severely damaged. With funding provided by the Australian government, Books for …
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ALSC to Host Día Get Together Facebook Chats
The first Día Get Together is slated for January 15th, at 2 pm EST, on the Día Facebook page. The ALSC Public Awareness Committee and Colorin Colorado will participate in the discussion of Día and …
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The CBC’s Common Core Resource Page is Now Live!
We’ve created an accessible resource hub for the Common Core State Standards, including an overview, relevant articles, FAQs, and video tutorials on implementing the initiative. Whether you’re an educator or librarian …
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ALSC Announces ‘Building Steam with Día’ Book Lists
PDFs of the four book lists are available online and are free to download and distribute. Each list also features a child-appropriate STEAM activity to accompany select titles. About ALSCALSC, a division …
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2014 Cybil Award Finalists Unveiled
“Out of 80 Cybils finalists this year, 30 of them feature characters or are by authors from diverse backgrounds. In the graphic novel category alone, diversity accounts for nearly half …
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Philip Pullman Returns to the ‘His Dark Materials’ Universe with Exclusive Story for Audible.com
Fans of the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy can return to Lyra’s Oxford this January, as Audible.com offers members an exclusive new short story written by Philip Pullman and performed by award-winning British …
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CBC Diversity: Embracing the Modern Female Heroine – In All Her Forms
As a children’s publishing professional, I will openly confess that the YA genre can sometimes exhaust me. Of course there are many great, original, and incredible voices in the world of YA fiction, but as I’m entrenched in so many YA manuscripts day in and day out in the world of marketing, it’s rare that a book will stand out among the masses and connect to me on a real, personal level. After all, you have to admit there are so very many YA books out there about the imperfectly perfect heroine encountering a series of struggles in her journey toward true love (occasionally amongst the threat of a dystopian apocalypse…naturally), that it can be overkill after a while.
And then this week I read Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl (I’m very late on the Rowell bandwagon, but I’m so there now). And I fell in literary love. The main character Cather was one of the most real, affecting characters I’ve encountered as of recent – an introverted, slightly awkward, nervous, but still strong-willed girl from Omaha, Nebraska, finding her way through college on her own terms. As an introverted, slightly awkward, nervous, but still strong-willed girl from Omaha, Nebraska myself, let’s just say Cather naturally felt very personal to me, and I wish I had this book as a manual my freshman year of college. Cather constantly pushes against what she’s told she’s supposed to be in college, and faces a series of very real struggles to maintain her personal identity in a world where who you become as a woman is supposed to be a defined path of frat parties, cramming for finals, and the inevitable freshman 15.
Cather is one of many female characters that I wish I had access to as a young reader in my own path toward self-identity, and more so that I wish so many boys who found females confounding in my college years could understand. And Cather is just one of many females who have impacted me this year. No others forged a personal connection quite like Cather, but a variety of females from all ends of the spectrum impressed me this year – and reading this delightful YA book reminded me just how important the development and evolution of the female heroine is to a diverse literary landscape as all other facets of the diversity conversation.
This was the year I obsessively read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl for the third time and found myself rooting for Amy Elliot all the way through (twists, psychotic tendencies and all). On TV, I cheered on The Walking Dead’s Carol as she officially completed her transition from quiet wife to morally ambiguous bad-ass; I celebrated How to Get Away With Murder’s Annalise Keating as she directed her life above the challengers who defied her; and I enjoyed watching Lisa Kudrow’s vain, barely likeable actress struggle to achieve success in a world that mocked her in HBO’s The Comeback. This was a year I delighted in discovering females who appealed to different sides of my personality, and represented well-rounded characters on every end of the spectrum.
While the challenges of ethnic, racial, and sexual diversity still loom large, I found some comfort this past year in seeing an emergence of strong, complex, and challenging female characters depicted in modern entertainment. Women depicted making morally questionable choices. Women whose principle dilemmas didn’t revolve around a dashing leading man. Women who took on what society often dictates as standard male personality traits (physical and emotional strength, relentless determination, and even questionable moral conduct) and redefined them as their own. Women who traveled down paths of their own making, shaped by a clear understanding of who they are as people, and holding onto that identity with all they have.
So to that I say, what have you got 2015? I can’t wait to read and see it all.
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‘The Fault in Our Stars’ Leads in Print Sales During 2014
The trade paperback edition of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars counted more than 1.8 million books sold. Jeff Kinny’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul came …
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Kate DiCamillo Named ‘Star Tribune’ Artist of the Year
As National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, DiCamillo travels the country spreading the joy of reading to her young fans. It should come as no surprise that, in honor of her …
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Remembering Walter Dean Myers
Since publishing his first book in 1968, Where Does the Day Go, Myers went on to write books across various genres and forms. Throughout his career he remained a fierce champion …
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J.K. Rowling Shares Her Favorite Quote From The ‘Harry Potter’ Books
The line was spoken by Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” …
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Happy Birthday, Jacob Grimm!
Grimm’s Fairytales has been translated into countless languages and is considered a hallmark of the storytelling tradition. Stories such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’ have inspired adaptations across various cultures and …
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Celebrating the Tomboys of Children’s Literature
A lifelong fan of spunky heroines, author Megan Mayhew-Bergman imagines the rough-and-tumble tomboy as a figure of empowerment, standing in contrast with the conventionally “likeable” and feminine teen protagonist: The tomboy protagonist …
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Carroll County Libraries Encourage Families to Talk, Sing, Read, Write And Play
“These five practices grew out of a body of research showing that parental interaction with children at an early age is crucial to later success in school. A study done …
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Coming in January: Multicultural Children’s Book Day Spotlight
Running from January 1 through the 25th, the series will feature interviews with 25 “inclusive authors and illustrators,” providing readers an inside look at their creative processes. Visit MCCBD’s official site for information about the participating …
