CBC Diversity: Little Brown

Showing posts with label Little Brown. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

First, Know Yourself

An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by author, Diana López.

“Write about picking cotton,” my family said when they heard I wanted to be a writer. “Write about how we used the fabric from flour sacks to make our dresses, and how Grandma hates fish because that’s all she ate during the Depression, since it didn’t cost anything for them to go fishing for food.”

Closely examine my family, or any family, and you’ll discover all the drama of a telenovela. Naturally, I wanted to write about being chastised for speaking Spanish, about living on a ranch in San Diego, about my grandmother being “Rosita the Riveter” during World War II. I tried to write those stories. But my only experience working the land comes from fifteen minutes in a field off Old Robstown Road where my parents showed us how to pick cotton. It was interesting to feel the texture, so unlike a T-shirt, which is what I had imagined.

My grandmother might have hated fish, but I loved it. We had a boat that we’d take to Laguna Madre, where we’d compete to see who could catch the most, the biggest, or the strangest. (Once, my brother caught a seagull when it chomped on the bait as he cast.) Back home, Dad filleted the fish in the backyard, the cats begging and fighting over scraps. Then, Mom used cornmeal batter to fry the fish, and we ate, delicately picking meat off tiny bones.

All this to say that my family’s experiences and the emotions associated with them are not exactly mine.

What Is Personal Perspective, Really?

An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by author, A.S. King.

Writing outside of my “personal perspective” is easy because I am fascinated by human beings, and not particularly fascinated by myself.

And what is personal perspective? Is it the body I am in? This physical, sometimes smelly, sometimes sunburnt, sometimes arthritic shell? Is it the color of my skin? The house I grew up in? The amount in my parents’ bank account in 1984? Is it my family’s traditions during holidays? How often we went to church—or the fact that it wasn’t often? This question of personal perspective concerns me because it seems to be the thing a writer is supposed to transcend when he or she writes a novel. It’s also the thing a writer is supposed to plug into. It’s tricky like that.

When thinking about my characters and how they relate to me and more importantly, how they don’t relate to me, I find the dissimilar parts the least important. For example: I am not a young man. I never have been a young man. I am also not a child from a poor home, I’ve never lived in a trailer park, neither have I lived in a gated community of mini-mansions. So how do I write authentically from the point of view of a young man? How do I write authentically from the point of view of a poor girl who lives in a trailer park? A boy who lives in a mini-mansion?

Diversity in the News

July 25th – August 2nd, 2013

NEW AT CBC DIVERSITY THIS WEEK

Guten Tag! My trip with the German Book Office by Connie Hsu, editor, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

CBC DIVERSITY/COMMITTEE MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

Editor Namrata Tripathi: The Exclusive #LA13SCBWI Team Blog Interview at I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?

ON OUR RADAR

Spanish Magazines for Kids Hit Mainstream at Latinas 4 Latino Literature -- Cricket now offers some of the only Spanish-language magazines for kids
A Book that Looks Like My Family (VIDEO) on Huffington Post Live – Host Nancy Redd invites Erica Perl (from First Book), Deborah Heiligman (author), Todd Parr (author) and Cara Lemieux (journalist) to weigh in on diverse families in children’s lit
Writing Race in Novels: The Audio Version by Mitali Perkins (Bamboo People) – 10 tips for writing race in novels

Guten Tag! My trip with the German Book Office.

Riky Stock holding a
very special German cheese.

Back in April, Riky Stock, director of the German Book Office in New York reached out to me with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—to join a group of children’s book editors on a trip to Frankfurt and Hamburg to meet with German publishers and agents. The German Book Office hosts this annual trip for editors to experience the wonders of beer, brats, and books in hopes of building a bridge between our two countries, for both American books that could succeed in Germany and vice versa.

My fellow editors for this year’s trip included Stacey Barney from Putnam/Penguin (and one of the founders of CBC Diversity!), Sheila Barry from Groundwood Books in Canada, Grace Maccarone from Holiday House, Ben Rosenthal from Enslow, and Reka Simonsen from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Our group had a great vibe, and by the end of the trip, we had our fair share of inside jokes and insightful discussion about books and, in particular, why foreign translations are so difficult for the North American market.

Book Spotlight: Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel

Happiness, anger, love, jealousy, peace, and worry. Everyone has experienced these feelings, especially as a thirteen-year-old, and these are all the emotions Erica “Chia” Montenegro is feeling the summer before eighth grade.

In Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel (coming out this June) Diana Lopez, author of Confetti Girl and Choke, introduces us to Chia, whose life is turned upside down when she learns her mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer and must undergo a mastectomy and radiation treatments. She finds herself juggling the responsibilities of family, school, and friendship, all while keeping up the façade that she can handle it all without help. This story captivated me in its honesty, heart, and humor; the protagonist is funny without forcing it, and the emotions, which as indicated by the title, swing from excitement and anticipation to dread and sadness, are authentic. Chia is a character any reader can connect with. And it doesn’t matter that she also happens to be Latina.

Diversity in the News

April 4th - April 11th, 2013

CBC DIVERSITY/COMMITTEE MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

Matt de la Peña mentioned the CBC Diversity blog during his keynote at SLJ's Think Tank last Friday. Listen to the entire speech here.
Four Latina bloggers band together to promote Latino literary talent to Latino readers and mainstream book publishers , via Latina Lista – mentions working with CBC Diversity!

ON OUR RADAR

List: "Classic" young adult books by authors of color at Diversity in YA
What Are “Diverse” Children’s Books? at Mamiverse
My transgender novel is too personal to be propaganda by Cris Beam, author of I Am J (via The Guardian) -- “But literature, at its best, doesn’t live in this world of agendas and witch hunts, as tools for any side’s political purpose. Literature and its readers are in an alternate realm, and they’ll continue to meet in this quieter place.”
A Different Light: On Identity at YALSA’s The Hub – reflects on the recent articles
“What Makes a Good YA Coming-Out Novel” (The Horn Book)
“A New Way for Gay Characters in YA” (Atlantic Wire)
The Holocaust: Rescue and Resistance | Focus On at School Library Journal – includes list of recommended reading
“Are there any girl bears?”: Gender and the 21st Century Picture Book by Betsy Bird at Fuse 8

Diversity in the News

March 7^th– March 14^th, 2013

ON OUR RADAR

HarperCollins and Lee & Low create winning proposals for First Book’s Stories for All Project
The Diversity in YA Tumblr, managed by YA authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, is back!
On Goodreads: Best YA Books with Non-White Protagonist
Lovely interview with Grace Lin for the Girl Scouts’ Storyteller Series
The CBC’s visual Ode to Ezra Jack Keats, who would have been 97 on 3/11/13
For Women’s History Month, Open Road Media spotlights Virginia Hamilton (author of 41 books, including M. C. Higgins, the Great): Virginia Hamilton, The Great
PW KidsCast: A Conversation with Alaya Dawn Johnson on the cultural, technological, and musical influences that helped shape the futuristic Brazilian setting of her new book.
Two Rappers’ daughters are working on a YA novel: Lil Wayne's daughter Reginae Carter and Birdman's daughter Bria Williams have teamed up to write, "Paparazzi Princesses" – set to be published in June by “Cash Money Content.
An Interview with Harlem’s Little Blackbird Author Renée Watson on Watch. Connect. Read

Diversity in the News

February 28^th – March 7^th, 2013

CBC Diversity felt it was time to step up our game when it came to participating in the conversations outside our blog concerning children's books and the representation of people within them. We want you, our readers, to know that you can rely on the CBC Diversity blog to provide links to news stories, discussion threads, tweet trends, and blog posts about these important conversations. We'll be posting weekly roundups to keep everyone abreast of the conversation and we'll be entering into a few more ourselves. We hope you do too!

If you'd rather look at everything all at once, you'll still be able to find the links to these news articles and blog posts on our all-inclusive News & ... page as well as event details on our CBC Diversity Google calendar located on our Events page.

NYPL Diversity Panel Recap

Connie Hsu, Sofia Quintero,
Zetta Elliott, Betsy Bird
(Photo courtesy of SJL.com)

This past weekend, authors Zetta Elliott, Sofia Quintero, and I sat on a panel discussion hosted by librarian and School Library Journal blogger Betsy Bird. The panel, titled Diversity and the State of the Children’s Book, was part of the Children’s Literary Salon series, held at the New York Public Library. About 80 attendees filled the seats, which was a great sign—clearly this is a subject that people across the industry are passionate about, enough to get folks to come out on a chilly Saturday afternoon.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about the panel. The CBC Diversity Committee discussion at the American Librarian Association Midwinter conference ignited much conversation, including heated debates on online forums and calls for action. I went into the panel knowing that there were two goals in mind—one, talk about why this issue is important to me, as a reader and editor, and two, to stress the importance of keeping the conversation moving forward, rather than having it hindered by criticism.

Building Your Reading Room

An It's Complicated! — Marketing & Sales guest post by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers School & Library Marketing Director, Victoria Stapleton.

You have no idea how many, MANY times I have tried to reduce my thoughts on this very large topic to 600 words. You have no idea how many, MANY times I have cried thinking I needed to write 600 WORDS. And all of this while trying to make sure they are the right 600 words. What I have left are some observations from ten years of trying to do this work and do it respectfully. Please forgive me in advance if I have not managed to identify the correct words.

I approach the issue of diversity from the perspective of someone raised as a religious minority in the United States. A religious minority with very strong views (some of which it continues to hold today) about those who do not fit its paradigm. So I have a bit of experience being both outside and inside a dominant power structure. If you prefer a less political analogy, I spent of a lot of my early years negotiating my path between competing worldviews with their own claims to priority and attention.

The book I go back to over and over again when wrestling with these issues is A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. The book opens with the author confronting the great, massive, mustachioed, history of British Learning. It continues as a consideration of the writer’s struggle to assert the right to a reading and writing identity that is uniquely her own. Reading this book in my early teens was revelatory, giving me the permission to choose my own reading identity and communities. I did not have to be bound by the lists my school gave me, or the interpretation of books my teacher endorsed. I could begin to build my own reading room.

Take Three! A New "It's Complicated!" Conversation

Here we go again! As part of CBC Diversity's ongoing effort, we're pleased to present the third dialogue in the "It's Complicated!" blog series starting later today, this time addressing the sales and marketing of multicultural books.

The following voices inside and outside the publishing industry will each contribute one blog post to the series over the week, addressing how to market multicultural books to teachers, librarians and, ultimately, kids. The guest bloggers will also be participating in the open dialogue in the comments section of the site:

Nina Lindsay, Supervising Librarian for Children’s Services at the Oakland Public Library in CA
Victoria Stapleton, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers School & Library Marketing Director
Shelley Diaz, Assistant Editor at School Library Journal's Book Reviews
Corinne Hatcher, Librarian/Media Specialist at Champaign Central High School
Amy Bowllan, Coordinator of Media Resources and Research at the Hewitt School in New York City

Our first "It's Complicated!" blog dialogue in May 2012 addressed a topic that has arisen frequently at the Diversity table — the concept of responsibility and authenticity when writing about diverse characters and how authors, editors, and agents can choose/write stories that reflect the diverse nature of our society.

Our second "It's Complicated!" blog dialogue in September 2012 addressed a topic that had been bubbling up for quite some time — book covers and the faces and aesthetic choices we see and/or do not see on the front of picture, middle grade, and YA books.

Review both conversations by clicking here and scrolling down!

As always, we urge everyone to participate in what we hope will be an informative and insightful conversation. We really appreciate hearing from you, our readers, through the comments section of the posts about the parts of the discussion that you feel are most important and want to talk further about.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

A Year of Thinking About Diversity

Guest post by Malinda Lo, author of several young adult novels including Ash, Huntress, and Adaptation.

In 2011, my friend and fellow YA author Cindy Pon and I put together a national book tour called Diversity in YA. Our goal was to showcase middle grade and young adult novels that featured diverse characters; specifically, characters of color and/or LGBT characters. For this tour, Cindy and I traveled to five U.S. cities and invited local authors who had written diverse books to join us at bookstores and libraries to talk about diversity and what it meant to us as writers and readers. As part of our tour, we also launched a website, Diversity in YA, where we featured guest posts by authors and book lists of diverse titles.

In the two years since Diversity in YA, Cindy and I have continued to get feedback from readers and librarians and book people about how much they valued DiYA. This is so rewarding to us to hear! This is also why I was excited to hear about the launch of the CBC Diversity Committee. I think it's wonderful that the publishing industry is now directly involved, through CBC Diversity, in making sure this discussion about diversity continues — and hopefully in ways that will make a real difference in children's literature.

The Diversity in YA website, like the tour, was only meant to be live for one year, so we shuttered it at the end of 2011. When CBC Diversity asked Cindy and me if they could repost some of our DiYA posts, we thought this was a great way to give those posts a second life. That's why I and some of the other authors who wrote for diversityinya.com have given permission to CBC Diversity to reprint our posts on the CBC Diversity blog over the next several months.

The last piece I wrote for DiYA was called "A Year of Thinking About Diversity," in which I described what I'd learned during the DiYA experience. Although some of the piece is focused on the specific issues Cindy and I dealt with while managing DiYA, my thoughts about diversity and publishing remain largely the same. I'm happy to repost it on CBC Diversity today.

Diversity 101: The Transgender Perspective

Contributed to CBC Diversity by Cris Beam

I was honored when I was asked to write a Diversity 101 post about transgender identity. Honored and a little daunted. Because while I’ve written two books on the topic, I’m not transgender—and speaking about always ends up becoming speaking for. Which is part of the problem with gender representations in general: who gets to speak for whom? Especially in children’s literature where gender variance is, well, not so variant yet, I know I’m walking into hot water. The scarcity of GLBT (accent on the T) depictions yields strong opinions as to how we should talk—and write—about the few transgender characters we have.

People used to say that transgender was an umbrella term to encompass all kinds of gender variance—from drag king to transsexual to the little boy who wears tutus to play with his trucks. While the umbrella concept’s fallen out of favor somewhat, the core idea is useful: there are a myriad of ways to express one’s sense of self. Transgender is fundamentally an internal identity wherein one’s understanding of self is different from the body one was born with. The expression part is separate, and can range from wearing different clothing to undergoing medical procedures to doing nothing at all. The bottom line is, only transgender people can decide that they’re trans, and it’s up to the rest of us to support and celebrate that.

Liz Waniewski: How I Got into Publishing

While at Boston College and trying to decide what I wanted to do with my English major degree, my parents asked me, pre-Avenue Q, “What do you do with a BA in English? Because you are not moving home.” (Well, this is how my 20-year-old brain interpreted a very loving conversation about the importance of being able to support yourself and not needing to depend on anyone else to live the life you want to live.)

And I realized that I wanted to get paid to read. Actually, I wanted to get paid to read books for kids because the books I read growing up shaped me and touched me in ways that nothing else could. Diana Wynne Jones, Lloyd Alexander, Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume – these were authors who didn’t know me but somehow understood me. They made me feel connected to people, places, and ideas that were new, different, and bigger than my own world. To be part of the process of bringing a book to life for someone else to connect with, well, that was my dream job.

Book Spotlight: Fifty Cents and a Dream

This December, Little, Brown Young Readers will be publishing Fifty Cents and a Dream: Young Booker T. Washington by Jabari Asim, illustrated by Bryan Collier. I had the honor of working with these two talented men—Jabari’s text is evocative and lyrical, and Bryan’s collage art is, per usual, stunning. This dynamic pairing already makes Fifty Cents and a Dream a special book. But what makes this book even more special is the story itself—a true and often overlooked piece of history about perseverance and triumph.

Booker T. Washington is a common figure in social studies classes. He’s briefly covered in most schools, particularly during Black History Month, grouped with other influential African American leaders. While growing up in Alabama, I learned and relearned about Washington; we had Alabama History every year, up until freshman year in high school. Here’s what I gleaned from my many years with Mr. Washington:

Creating a New Narrative

An It's Complicated! — Book Covers guest post by Joseph Monti, a once bookstore buyer, editor, and now prominent literary agent at Barry Goldblatt Literary.

I'm writing today, discussing middle grade and young adult book covers, as a former children's fiction buyer at Barnes and Noble, Inc., and thus this is not wholly my opinion, but also fact based upon sales numbers at the largest bookstore chain in the world. That said, I am not speaking for the company in any capacity, just my personal experience.

The simplified truth to the quandary about book covers is that good covers sell books, and bad covers hurt book sales. A good book with a bad cover may overcome it, but it will not reach the sales potential it could have had with a good cover. A mediocre book with a good cover will increase sales. The marriage of a good cover and a good book is what I am going to showcase.

Joseph Monti: How I Got into Publishing

Guest post by a once bookstore buyer, editor, and now prominent literary agent at Barry Goldblatt Literary.

I grew up thinking that no one in publishing ever came from where I grew up, Yonkers, NY. I had the kind of high school experience that smothered dreams, said you weren’t smart enough to have what you wanted. I grew up with a limited perspective and a small idea of what the world of publishing was like, that it was elite. And it is an elite environment because it is a intimate field, not because:

You need an ivy league degree.

You need to be financially well off.

You need to have an upper middle class background, minimum, and the worldliness that life presumed.

I was a lower middle class kid from a mixed-race immigrant background, whose guidance counselor recommended I abandon my goals of either becoming an editor or a professor of English and take a look at a solid trade like sanitation management. Fortunately I have a personality that is a combination of old fashioned romanticism, which came from reading, and a deep sense of practicality, that comes from the way I grew up, being sickly, and poor enough to know I could not have everything I wanted. Then something wonderful happened: I stayed home one Saturday afternoon and watched T.V.

PBS on channel 13 was playing a marathon of The Power of Myth interview series by Bill Moyers with Joseph Campbell. It changed my life. It fulfilled my romantic idealism with a plan: Follow your bliss. So I thought about a way to get what I wanted, a life in words. I was working already, part-time, at a local B. Dalton Bookseller (#321), so that was my back-up plan: Be a full-time bookseller; rise in rank, and run a store. Then I lied.

15 Authors Who Promote Diversity in Author Visits

One great aspect of the CBC Diversity blog is that we can highlight and celebrate many exciting new voices. We can also offer valuable resources for teachers, authors, librarians, and publishing industry insiders who want to incorporate more diverse and multicultural authors to their curriculum, or collection, or reading list, or professional network.

If you are a teacher or librarian who is looking to diversify your author visit experience, here is a small sample of authors to consider — including a few new names that you may not already know.

This list is in no way comprehensive. Stay tuned to the CBC Diversity blog for a more robust directory of authors — from the many CBC member publishers — who actively promote diversity through author visits to schools, libraries, and state and regional conferences. If you would like to be included in our directory of authors, please comment below or send us an email.

Full Disclosure: It is my job to arrange paid author appearances and some of the authors listed here include authors I represent. I really enjoy working with my authors and take every opportunity I can to promote their amazing work.