Diversity in the News

May 2nd—May 9th, 2013

ON OUR RADAR

• Lionsgate Acquires Film Rights for R.J. Palacio's Wonder via the CBC
• This, That, Both, Neither: The Badging of Biracial Identity in Young Adult Realism at YALSA
• YA Author Maureen Johnson Calls for an End to Gendered Cover Designs with a "Coverflip" Challenge via the CBC
• Racial and gender inequalities in YA literature covered in new issue of YALSA's Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults at American Libraries Magazine
• Historical fiction starring girls at the Horn Book
• Amazing TED talk: “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Adichie
• The “Radioactive Energy” of Bullies | An Interview with Meg Medina via SLJ
• Award-Winning Author Fredrick McKissack Dies at 73 via the Brown Bookshelf; also at SLJ; great video interview with Patricia and Frederick via Reading Rockets
• DiversifYA: Michelle Smith – the author of Kingdom Come (May 22) talks about mental illness and stigma. More great interviews here.

School Visit: Bushwick Leaders High School

One of the goals of the CBC Diversity Committee is to recruit a wider, more diverse range of people to work in the children's publishing industry. In service of this goal, committee members visit schools in the New York area to talk about how we got into the industry and how students of today might find their way into it in future.

This past Tuesday, in honor of Children's Book Week, my fellow committee member Antonio Gonzalez, author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, and I visited Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence in Brooklyn. Gbemi is the author of the wonderful Eighth Grade Superzero, which I edited, while Antonio handles school and library visits for Scholastic as part of our marketing department. Thus together we covered almost the entire publishing process, from the author's initial inspiration to putting books into kids' hands.

Namrata Tripathi: How I Got into Publishing

I'm from India, but I grew up in the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, India, Canada, Pakistan, Germany, and Poland so stories from diverse traditions and with diverse characters have been interesting and important to me. I went to Columbia University in New York City and studied English literature. When it came time to graduate, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to work with literature--read it, talk about it, analyze it. I thought perhaps academia was the right path for me. But not wanting to go into a six year commitment simply out of momentum, I decided I should take a year away from school and get "a real job." That's when I learned about the Columbia Publishing Course (a summer graduate course on all aspects of publishing). Unfortunately, I learned about the course the day after the application was due! Fortunately, however, a very kind graduate of the course could tell that publishing might be a good fit for me and she persuaded the admissions board to consider my (late) application.

I attended the course, learned about various parts of the industry, and realized that I only wanted to work in children's books. The people who worked in the field were smart, interesting, and driven. And I wanted to be a part of it. Plus, with children's books, you get to work not only with text, but also with visual storytelling (if you work on picture books) and that was very appealing to me.