Diversity in the News

June 20th – June 27th, 2013

NEW BLOG ALERT

• July 1—31: Disability in Kidlit —Organized by Kody Keplinger and Corinne Duyvis, the blog series  “will feature posts by readers, writers, bloggers, and other peeps from the YA and MG communities discussing disability and kidlit.” Call for bloggers now closed.

ON OUR RADAR

• As Demographics Shift, Kids' Books Stay Stubbornly White via NPR’s Code Switch
• Why Hasn’t the Number of Multicultural Books Increased In Eighteen Years? (includes infographic) at Lee & Low Books – features opinions from Kathleen T. Horning, Director of Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC);  Poet/Author Nikki Grimes, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emerita, The Ohio State University, and more
• Related: Coloring Outside the Lines: The Diversity Gap in Children’s Literature via Bookriot
• Roger Sutton from Horn Book weighs in: A very good question
• How Young Adult Literature Challenges Gender Norms at the Thought Catalog
• One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Malinda Lo at YALSA’s The Hub
• Summer Reading Challenge for Latino Students at the CBC
• When Every Culture Is a Foreign Culture: Writing on the Autism Spectrum by Lyn Miller-Lachman at Rich in Color
• An Interview with Nancy Garden, author of Annie on My Mind, about how writing LGBTQ literature has changed over the years at ALSC blog
• Diversity in Secrets by Amy Reed, author of Over You (Simon Pulse) —“While my books are full of queer characters, it is never this trait that the book is about.”
• Guest Post: Sarah Fine Talks Writing Traumatized Characters at YA Highway
• DiversifYA: Fida Islaih, part two the college student, poet and writer discusses being Palestinian Malaysian American and having a muscle disability at Diversity if YA

NEW RELEASES

• Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan (Putnam, June 27)
• Golden Girl (The American Fairy #2) by Sarah Zettel (Random House Children’s Books,  June 25)
• A Moment Comes by Jennifer Bradbury (Atheneum, June 24)

BOOKLISTS

• NPR is now soliciting nominations for The Best Books For Kids Age 9-14 – let’s make sure wonderful diverse titles are represented!
• Queer Young Adult Fiction To Curl Up With via Housequeer
• MORE Queer Young Adult Fiction To Curl Up With: My To-Read Edition at Housequeer
• Ten Cinderella Tales from Around the World at Ink & Pen
• Five Diverse Fantasy Novels at Ink & Pen
• Can YA be happy and gay? at YALSA’s The Hub – includes recc’s of “mostly positive” LGBTQ lit

AWARD NEWS

•  Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu (Morrow/HarperCollins) has been chosen as the One Book, One San Diego Book for Kids!

EVENTS
This Month

• June 28 - September 22: Witness: The Art of Jerry Pinkney at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• June 30: ALA Attendees! Don’t miss the APALA President’s Program Pushing the Boundaries: Presentation and Representation of LGBTQ Members of/by Asian/Pacific American Writers, Authors

Upcoming

• July 6—August 17 in NYC: La Caza Azul Summer Pop-Up Shop - the pop-up shop will carry approx. 300 books, roughly 50% of those being bilingual children's books

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT EARLIER THIS MONTH

• The Grey of Gender: Intersex and Gender Variant/Non-Binary Characters in YA by Laura Lam, author of ‘Strange Chemistry’ (Angry Robot Books) at GayYA.org

EVEN OLDER, BUT WORTH READING

• Describing Characters of Color, pt. 2 at The Magic District