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  • Carrying On After Orlando

    Contributed by Ashley Woodfolk, Marketing Manager, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

    Weeks ago, when I signed up for a guest post in June, I had planned it to be a celebration of Pride month. I had planned to do a round-up of all my favorite YA novels that feature LGBTIA plus characters, like Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, I’ll Give You the Sun, Carry On, and Ask the Passengers. But I can’t write light-heartedly about how I love Simon Vs. The Homosapien Agenda almost as much as I love Oreos, or how Boy Meets Boy was the first book that made me really think about the things I’d been raised to believe, because 49 people senselessly died this month just because of where they were and who they love, and writing about books feels embarrassingly insignificant, if not completely impossible.

    But when I sat down to write this post, I started thinking that maybe writing isn’t as insignificant as it feels. Maybe if stories like Two Boys Kissing weren’t being banned by schools or challenged by parents, more people would read them and understand that two boys kissing isn’t so bad. That two boys feeling safe enough to kiss is kind of beautiful.

    Maybe if books like The Miseducation of Cameron Post were used to reeducate, the world would be a little bit better for girls who love other girls. For girls who have been told that loving another girl is wrong or bad or evil, and who believe it.

    If more people were reading magical novels like Ash and The Raven Cycle, they’d realize that for most gay and lesbian people, finding love can sometimes feel like magic, just as it does for everyone else.

    And maybe, if there were more stories out there like Not Otherwise Specified, None of the Above, If I Was Your Girl, and A + E 4ever, there wouldn’t be so much hate towards people we can’t fit into the neat little boxes we’ve created.

    Stories like these need to be told, because people like the characters in these stories are real. They shouldn’t still be made to feel other—they shouldn’t have to hide or feel ashamed. And they certainly shouldn’t be killed during the one month of the year when they’re allowed to openly and proudly be their truest selves.

    I wanted to write this post because too many people aren’t reading these stories. And we’ve all seen the explicit and physical danger of only having a single, flawed narrative with what happened in Orlando.

    To everyone feeling the impact of this tragedy: You are loved. You are wanted. You are brave. My hope is that one day soon, you will be safe.

    Embrace diverse books. Read a diverse story that may be a window into a world you know nothing about. It’s one small step we can all take, and it’s one of the few ways we, as individuals, can hope to change the world.

    Ashley Woodfolk graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English and her life-long love of books led her straight to the publishing industry. She’s a member of the CBC Diversity Committee and markets books for children and teens at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and pit bull puppy, Winnie. Her debut young adult novel, Unraveling Lovely, is due out in Fall 2017 from Delacorte/Random House Children’s Books.

  • Candlewick Press Titles Win Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and Honors

    BOSTON, MA — Candlewick Press books received the Boston Globe–Horn Book Picture Book Award, as well as Honors in the Nonfiction and Fiction Award categories, as Roger Sutton, editor in …

  • All Aboard for Curious George’s Latest Digital Adventure

    NEW YORK, NY — Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), announced today the availability of Curious George Train Adventures, an educational game for iPad and iPhone that helps kids …

  • LitWorld and Scholastic Reinvent Summer School as LitCamp™ to Help Kids Avoid the Summer Slide

    The innovative summer reading program LitCamp is launching in more than 1,000 U.S. classroomsNEW YORK – June 15, 2016 – LitCampTM, a groundbreaking summer reading program created by the literacy-focused …

  • The New York Public Library Challenges Kids and Parents To Read 20 Minutes A Day This Summer

    New York, NY – In an effort to combat “summer slide” and keep kids and teens thinking over break, The New York Public Library has issued a challenge to all …

  • A House Built By Many

    Contributed by Alyssa Mito Pusey, Senior Editor, Charlesbridge

    “Every single day,” Michelle Obama told the graduating class at the City College in New York, “I wake up in a house that was built by slaves.”

    She’s right; the White House was built in large part by slaves, along with freed black men and immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. So why did I edit a book called The House That George Built? As Allie Jane Bruce points out in a recent blog post on Reading While White, the book privileges white perspective and glosses over the contributions of slaves.

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    When I first read Allie’s review, my stomach sank. I was horrified. Of course she was right. Why hadn’t I seen it before?

    The House That George Built is a play on the old rhyme “The House That Jack Built.” At the time, it seemed like a clever and appropriate twist for a book about how George Washington conceived of a President’s House and then oversaw its construction. I set about editing the text with two primary goals: (1) to keep the text tightly focused on George and (2) to explain the building process as clearly as possible. As a nonfiction editor, I’ve always been concerned with structure, focus, and technical accuracy in picture books.

    Unfortunately, I wasn’t as aware of issues of inclusion and representation. The focus on George meant that the contributions of the people who literally built the White House were minimized. The focus on the what of construction meant that the who ended up as short mentions in the main text and author’s note. Looking back, the author and I regret these decisions.

    I edited The House That George Built back in 2009. Fast-forward to 2016. The publishing climate has dramatically changed—for the better in terms of awareness of diversity issues.

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    For me, it’s a nerve-racking time, in some ways. Authors and editors are being held to more rigorous standards, and I really don’t want to mess up. I certainly don’t want to incur the wrath of the blogosphere. More importantly, I don’t want to produce books that perpetuate racial stereotypes and white privilege, however unintentionally.

    My fears aside, this is also an exciting and empowering time. I feel like my eyes are being opened, like I’m learning and growing with every article and blog post—Allie’s included. I’m receiving and acquiring more biographies of people of color. I’m asking experts and other readers for honest feedback on questions of representation. And I’m trying with every book to be as inclusive as possible.

    I’ve got a long way to go, clearly. But I hope to keep on improving as an editor—and to do what I can to help publish nonfiction that accurately reflects our diverse world.

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    Alyssa Mito Pusey is a senior editor at Charlesbridge, editing picture books and middle-grade chapter books and specializing in nonfiction.

  • National Ambassador Gene Luen Yang’s Reading Without Walls Podcast: Episode 4 with Hope Larson

    Through his platform, “Reading Without Walls,” Yang hopes to inspire readers of all ages to pick up a book outside their comfort zone. In episode four of his podcast, Yang talks …

  • #DrawingDiversity: ‘Ada’s Violin’ by Susan Hood, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport





    Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Susan Hood, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, May 2016). All rights reserved. @simonandschusterbooks

  • YALSA Announces its Teens Succeed With Libraries Video Contest Winners

    CHICAGO, IL — The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has announced the winners of its Teens Succeed with Libraries video contest. The contest was open to library staff and the …

  • Scholastic to Launch ‘Horizon,’ a new Multiplatform Series Led By #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Scott Westerfeld

    NEW YORK, NY (June 10, 2016)— Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education, and media company, and the pioneering force behind the groundbreaking and bestselling multi-platform properties The 39 Clues® and …

  • The Reading Experience of Kids and Adults

    For Prose, the immersive reading experience of childhood is difficult to recapture as a mature reader, but still possible. Moser prefers to revisit favorite reads, allowing himself to turn off his …

  • National 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Recipients to be Celebrated at Carnegie Hall

    NEW YORK, NY — More than 660 creative teens from across the country will gather at Carnegie Hall in New York City tomorrow evening to be recognized as national recipients …

  • YA Roundtable

    Though they write in different genres, the four authors are united by an enduring connection to the joys and struggles of young people, which makes their writing ring true. From the recent …

  • Reading the Cultural Revolution

    Contributed by Faye Bi, Senior Publicist,  Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing

    This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution in China, which historians agree took place 1966-1976. Many Western media outlets were quick to provide retrospectives (see: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, CNN, and The Atlantic), but up until recently, it represented a huge gap in my historical knowledge, despite being born to two Chinese immigrant parents. This colossal historical event that caused nearly 2-30 million deaths (depending on whom you ask) was barely touched on in my formal education; China was nowhere near its current economic prowess when I was a kid, not important enough to be put under the international spotlight until now.

    My parents, who arrived in Canada in 1989 with an infant-me in tow, were tight-lipped about their life in China beforehand. They were born in 1960, young children who came of age during the Cultural Revolution under conditions of which I was blissfully unaware. There were clues, of course—we lived a frugal life on my father’s Ph.D. stipend, and I was taught from an early age not to waste food. Education was highly prized, and my wardrobe was a steady rotation of homemade clothes, knits, and hand-me-downs. And then there were offhand comments, like, “I would have had to work in the countryside if I hadn’t moved to Canada” from my father, or “My parents sent me away as a baby to live with my grandmother” from my mother. I knew my mother had worked in a shoe factory, on her feet for 12 hours a day, which meant our early weekends selling spring rolls at the flea market for extra cash were pittance.

    I suspect my story is not uncommon amongst Chinese immigrants of this time. As I got older, I found it difficult to ask questions, especially if the memories were painful. My attempts were casually brushed aside, with a “there’s a reason we moved—to make a better life for you.” It wasn’t long before I did what I usually do when I’m stuck: turned to a book.

    Ying Chang Compestine’s Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party had been on my radar for a few years. I was wary of adult non-fiction or even adult fiction, given my personal relationship with the subject matter, but Compestine’s slim tome was perfect—inspired by her own life growing up in Wuhan, where my mother has relatives. The book begins with nine-year-old Ling, the daughter of two doctors in the best hospital in Wuhan. She lives a comfortably middle class life, with new dresses in pretty fabrics and occasional treats of chocolate. Her upstairs neighbors have a sewing machine and a water heater. She complains when her mother makes food she doesn’t like; loves learning English from her father and listening to Voice of America; and lives the life of a young girl we wouldn’t find so unfamiliar to our own.

    Then Comrade Li shows up and Ling’s father’s office is cleared out to be transformed into a bedroom for him. Comrade Li’s portrayal is a nuanced one; Compestine certainly depicts him as a villain, but tender conversations between him and Ling include exchanges of origami and eggs, later transforming into Comrade Li basically taking all of the family’s food. Ling begins to hate school when fellow students form a unit of the Red Guards and viciously bully her for her love of dresses and her middle class background, calling her a “bourgeois sympathizer.” The tragedies become more and more frequent: when Ling and her father rescue an intellectual from committing suicide in the river; when Ling and her mother watch Red Guards beat a midwife’s family; when their neighbor, Niu, denounces his family and Ling’s, drawing a class line; and when Ling’s own father is taken away and jailed.

    Compestine does touch on the political events of the time, but she focuses the story on Ling. In a sense, I’m not as interested in what Chairman Mao did or what his motivations were, but how so many lives were irrevocably, irreparably changed. Descriptions of waiting in line with ration tickets hoping for meat; Niu being sent to reeducation camp in the country and trying to escape; Red Guards and comrades trashing Ling’s home;, or just not having enough food. Aside from the violent political struggles by the Red Guards against dissenters, the utmost killer of the Revolution was famine.

    It was a difficult read for me, with heartache and occasional tears, imagining my parents growing up during this time period. Given that the Red Guards were primarily made up of students, Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party’s perspective is rich and harrowing, right at the center of the action. Though I’m sure it doesn’t fully cover its vast scope, I was able to tell my father I’d read a book about the Cultural Revolution. He wanted to talk about the political effects; I wanted to talk about people. It was rough getting him to open up, but he did tell me that he was one of the lucky ones—schools and universities had re-opened by the time he was getting his education. His siblings (my aunts and uncles who were 8-12 years older than him) didn’t have those opportunities. “It set back an entire generation,” he says. “I remember attending school sitting next to students twice my age.”

    Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party has an uplifting ending, though hints at the troubles to come. After Chairman Mao’s death, the political tides turn and Comrade Li is arrested. Ling’s father is released from prison, and her family is reunited. My family has a happy ending as well—and I appreciate every opportunity to learn those stories. I have books to thank for starting the conversation.

    Further Reading

    Chun Yu, Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution

    li Jiang, Red Scarf Girl

    Moying Li, Snow Falling in Spring

    Ying Chang Compestine, Revolution is Not a Dinner Party

    Faye Bi works as a Senior Publicist at Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Saga Press, and also volunteers for Sirens, a conference dedicated to women in fantasy literature. She tweets at @faye_bi.

  • YALSA Announces its 2016 Top Ten Summer Learning Programs

    CHICAGO, IL — The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has announced its list of 2016 Top Ten Summer Learning Programs from its Teen Programming HQ contest. The top ten …

  • The CBC Partners with the unPrison Project for Second-Consecutive Year to Build Prison-Nursery Libraries for Incarcerated Mothers and Their Babies

    BRAND-NEW LIBRARIES CREATED IN 20 STATES New York, NY – June 8, 2016 – The Children’s Book Council (CBC) has partnered once again with The unPrison Project — a 501(c)3 …

  • 2016 Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced

    The 2016 Lambda Literary Award winner in the LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category is: George by Alex Gino, Scholastic Press 2016 Finalists: About a Girl: A Novel, Sarah McCarry, St. Martin’s Griffin Anything …

  • #DrawingDiversity: ‘More-igami’ by Dori Kleber, illustrated by G. Brian Karas

    More-igami by Dori Kleber, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (Candlewick Press, May 2016). All rights reserved.

  • 2016 Ned Vizzini Teen Literary Prize Announced

    The first-ever prize was presented on June 7 at the Brooklyn Public Library. The poetry winners were Kat Snoddy, Odelia Fried, and Lucy Berry. The prose winners were Stina Trollbäck, Adil Gondal, and …

  • Reading Is Fundamental Implements Summer Reading Grant Initiative

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation’s largest children’s literacy organization, announced the recipients of a Read for Success grant to promote summer reading, and help improve reading proficiency …

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