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

Book Spotlight: The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

A Coming of Age Nuyorican History Lesson 

Undoubtedly one of America’s most influential Latinas in pop culture, the Emmy-winning New Yorker Sonia Manzano continues to define the TV-watching experience of many kids—especially young Latino and Hispanic children.

For me and many Latinos who grew up watching the humorous, albeit always educational, antics of Burt & Ernie and Cookie Monster, no human face is more associated with the globally broadcast Sesame Street (Plaza Sésamo en Español) than "Maria" embodied by Sonia Manzano.

Manzano joined the production of Sesame Street in 1971, where she eventually began writing scripts for the series. She has won 15 Emmy Awards as part of the Sesame Street writing staff. Many of those kids who grew up with Maria—myself included—will forever regard Sonia Manzano as a cherished storyteller.

This is why her powerful debut YA novel The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano (Scholastic Press) is so important and relevant for young readers of all backgrounds.

Adriana Dominguez: How I Got into Publishing

Guest post by a literary agent, professional translator, online book reviewer, and Latino children's book expert

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Adriana Dominguez

English is not my first language, though this statement doesn’t ring quite as true now that I have spent most of my life living in the United States, speaking and working in English. But the fact is, when I arrived in the US at age 12, I did not speak a single word of it. I quickly learned to say the phrase “I don’t speak English” so fluidly, that folks often seemed to question the legitimacy of my assertion. Learning a language anytime after the age of twelve is difficult—as difficult as it is to be twelve in the first place! And so I believe that my fascination with reading and language emanates first from the fact that my mother read to me constantly from a very early age, and secondly, that I mostly developed my English language skills by reading lots and lots of books, often with a dictionary on hand to prevent me from getting “stuck” when I came across a term or phrase I did not understand.

Who Will Create the New Normal?

An It's Complicated! — Book Covers guest post by Elizabeth Bluemle, a children's book author, blogger for Publishers Weekly, and owner of The Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, Vermont.

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Elizabeth Bluemle

 For sixteen years, I’ve been a bookseller in small-town, semi-rural Vermont, in a region that is progressive but fairly homogenous. I spend a lot of time introducing people to new books I think they might love, and over the years, I’ve encountered the usual range of responses from white customers to books with brown faces on the covers. Many of these responses are positive; some are reluctant or downright resistant, and represent mistaken assumptions about these books, that they are limited in focus and applicable only to a narrow, nonwhite audience.

I’ve got a toolbox full of tactics I use with hesitant customers, from subtle to overt, depending on how the situation reads. By emphasizing plot and character, by getting them to “forget” about race, I can get the adult excited about the story. I say adult deliberately, because out of the thousands of kids I’ve recommended books to, only a handful have ever shown even an awareness of the race of the cover character, much less a resistance to difference.

But the resistance is not entirely the reader’s fault. The extreme lack of diversity in children’s books (if it were hunger, it would count as starvation) — both featuring people of color as main characters and books published by writers of color — has led readers to some justified perceptions. For a long time, brown faces on covers by and large signaled certain kinds of stories: slavery, Civil Rights, gritty urban plight, outsiderness. The problem wasn’t with the stories themselves, of course; these were powerful, enriching, worthy books. But they were funneling nonwhite experience into particular tubes, and if readers were in the mood for something else—adventure or fantasy or mysteries, say—they looked elsewhere. They had to; there were few other choices. And that is still largely the case, with a few noteworthy, marvelous exceptions.

Publishers Weekly Nod to the CBC Diversity Committee

CBC Diversity Committee at Kick-off

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Bluemle

Last week the CBC Diversity Committee was honored with a wonderfully detailed article in Publishers Weekly. PW writer John A. Sellers contacted the chair, Nancy Mercado; vice-chair, Alvina Ling; and the Children's Book Council to get the whole story behind the formation of the CBC Diversity Committee. Sellers' article takes the reader back to the beginning when the committee that represents CBC Diversity today was just a group of like-minded editors from varying houses trying to make a difference. Fast forward to a year later when their group was brought to the attention of the CBC by Ling and wham!, the CBC Diversity Committee was born.

Not only does the article explain the beginnings of the CBC Diversity Committee and the thought-process of the members behind the initiative, it also highlights some of the great things the Committee and its partners have been up to including the CBC Diversity Goodreads list that is constantly expanding, the school visits performed by committee members at the beginning of this month, and the "It's Complicated!" blog series that was just wrapped up last week.

If you're new to the blog or even a constant follower, check out the PW article and then come back and explore all the different offerings of this site with fresh eyes!