Plain and Natural

When I joined this committee in January I jumped into the middle of a discussion that’s full of terms and ideas I need to think about.

As I read through various blog posts I was struck by the different points of view, even on the use of “diverse,” and "diversity.” For instance, Annie Schutte posted an interview with the Diversity Committee on the YALSA's The Hub blog and there were two comments: 

1. Hannah Gómez said: “We need to make a push to stop calling those books diverse books and multicultural books if want to emphasize that they are for everyone.”
2.  B.A Binns responded: “I have to disagree. The problem of discovery is difficult enough…We have to name them so we can find them.”

I noticed the way these words inspire unnatural phrases such as “coming from a place of a diversity,” “characters that don’t come from a place of diversity themselves.” Eeyike. Awkward. Aren’t we all Word People? Can’t we speak plainly? Do better?

Wendy Lamb: How I Got Into Publishing

My fourth grade teacher wasn’t surprised that I wound up reading for a living, because I gave 250 book reports that year.  All I wanted to do was read. I had a terrific fake cough and would use that to stay home from school with a pile of books. 

I grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut and my family was close to the family of Maxwell Perkins, the great editor at Scribner’s. Max had died before I was born, but I grew up knowing what an editor was. Max’s daughter, Bertha Perkins Frothingham, shared my passion for books and encouraged my reading in every way. One of my favorite books was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline  L’Engle, which led me to take physics in college. I struggled with that course, but when I botched a lab my professor let me write a story related to physics, which became my first published story. As a creative writing major, a job in publishing seemed like the right path.