A non-profit and a
grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates
essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote
literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people.
Lamar Giles: I remember in my later teens running across a book called Blood Brothers by Steven Barnes. That was pretty much the time I saw something that made me feel like I was seeing a piece of myself in the work.
Jacqueline Woodson: I didn’t know women, black women, could write books, and I didn’t know why I didn’t know this.
WNDB team members and authors Lamar Giles & Jacqueline Woodson note the importance of mirrors in seeing oneself in the books they read and how that inspired them to become the acclaimed authors they are today.
If you #SupportWNDB visit our Indiegogo campaign page to see what initiatives is to bring diverse authors to disadvantaged schools to further reflect what kinds of books students may be missing.
Tim Federle: I’m trying to think when I was a kid what the most diverse book was that I read and I’m having a hard time thinking of it, which is, I think, in a way what underscores the entire campaign.
On #GivingTuesdday consider the gift of how much seeing yourself represented in the literature you read (whether assigned in class or freely found on shelves) could make such a difference in terms of one’s attachment to reading and advocacy of books in general.
If you #SupportWNDB visit our Indiegogo campaign page to see our initiatives for educational kits to give school teachers and librarians on what books are out there and how to share them with young readers.
Meg Medina: When you don’t have a chance to see yourself in a book, you develop a thinking that your ethnicity, your culture, is something that you have to get past in order to be successful.
Pura Belpré Award winning author and WNDB team member Meg Medina recognizes that diversity is a norm, not a problem, and by seeing yourself in books you will better recognize that.
If you #SupportWNDB visit our Indiegogo campaign page to see what initiatives we’re aiming to bring into increasing educational kits and the availability/access of diverse books to educators and librarians.
In honor of #SupportWNDB making $100k (and beyond!) We Need Diverse Books president elloellenoh took one pie, well many pies, for the cause! Thanks, Ellen! Those kids have pretty good aim.
Thanks again for your support everyone! Our campaign is still going strong until December 10th with Sustainability goal to keep We Need Diverse Books and our goals alive and thriving!
John Green: I think we need diverse books because we need to reflect the reality of our communities, and that reality is a very diverse one.
One of the magical things about reading is that it caused me to imagine the life outside of myself.
Bestselling author fishingboatproceeds agrees about the reflection of new and different communities. So important!
If you #SupportWNDB visit our Indiegogo campaign page to see what initiatives we’re aiming to bring into increasing educational kits and the availability/access of diverse books to educators and librarians.
To #CelebrateJackie and her achievements far and wide Daniel Handler, emcee of nationalbook awards, has pledged to donate $10,000 to #SupportWNDB campaign and for the next 24hrs (until 8am EST tomorrow) to match all donations made within that time frame.
So please spread the word, get donations in, and show how much diversity in books and publishing matter!
The new WNDB Publishing Internship Project will help support initiatives that give greater opportunities to individuals from diverse backgrounds who wish to begin careers in publishing.
If you hadn’t already heard one of our aims for our stretch goal during #SupportWNDB is to fund internships for those from diverse backgrounds.
Since migrating to the US from Mexico in 1994, Yuyi Morales has created some of our most celebrated children’s books. She is a multiple winner of the Pura Belpré Medal, an honor bestowed by the American Library Association for Authors and Illustrators whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children. Other honors include the Americas Award, the Golden Kite Medal, the Christopher Award, the Jane Adams Award, and the Tomas Rivera Award.
Born in Xalapa, the city of flowers and springs, Yuyi grew up among giant grandmothers, in a house with mossy walls, and abundant gardens. Eventually she enrolled at Universidad Veracruzana where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Physical Education and Psychology and then worked as a swimming coach until she immigrated to the US with her fiancé and their newborn son.
As a Spanish-speaking immigrant and new mother, Yuyi struggled with English and with loneliness in a culture foreign to her. She took solace in public libraries, where she and her son practiced English by reading children’s books. In her library visits she found a renewed interest for stories, and Yuyi enrolled in evening writing classes to learn how to tell stories in English like the ones she now so much admired. She also bought her first set of paints and brushes, and studying the picture books she loved she began to paint.
In 1998, along with a handful of writers, Yuyi founded the Revisionaries writers group, and became part of a community that would support her goal to pursue a career in children’s books. In 2000, she won the SCBWI Don Freeman grant for her work as a promising illustrator, and shortly afterwards she illustrated her first picture book for the school market, written by Isabel Campoy, titled Todas las Buenas Manos.
In 2003 her illustrations for Harvesting Hope, the Story of Cesar Chavez, written by Kathleen Krull and published by HMH Books for Young Readers, garnered much acclaim , and were awarded the first of four ALSC Pura Belpré Honors, as well as a Christopher and a Jane Adams Award, these last two in recognition of the causes of peace, social justice, and the higher human spirit. The book is also available in Spanish as Cosechando esperanza: La historia de César Chávez. Yuyi then wrote and illustrated, Just a Minute; A Trickster Tale and Counting Book, published by Chronicle Books, earning her The Americas Award, a Tomas Rivera Award, and her first of four Pura Belpré Medals. Next came Los Gatos Black on Halloween, written by Marisa Montes and published by Henry Holt and Co., which also won the Pura Belpré award for illustration. In 2007, she published Little Night /Nochecita (Neal Porter Books/ Roaring Brook Press), which won the Golden Kite Medal and Just in Case ((Neal Porter Books/Roaring Brook Press) which won a Pura Belpré Award for illustration and Honor for narrative. My Abuelita, by Tony Johnston (HMH Books for Young Readers) won her a Pura Belpré Honor for illustration. In 2009, she illustrated Ladder to the Moon (Candlewick Press) written by Maya Soteoero Ng, sister of President Obama, Yuyi’s first book to reach the New York Times Best Sellers List. Yuyi’s most recent book, Niño Wrestles the World (Neal Porter Books / Roaring Brook Press) makes her the first author/illustrator to have won the Pura Belpré Award four times and has reinforced her reputation as one of our leading children’s book creators.
Today, Yuyi’s little son has grown up and enrolled as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. She continues creating children’s books for children, divides her time between the San Francisco Bay Area and her home town of Xalapa, Veracruz.Mexico.
And here’s the beautiful art Yuyi did for the WNDB Art Poster!
Isn’t it gorgeous? You can own a copy of the beautiful WNDB Art poster if you donate to the Indiegogo campaign.
Matt de la Peña: “Do you ever encounter characters that look like you in books?”
Abbie: I’ve been reading Fancy Nancy. Well, she’s white, but I like that her and her friend are friends, but her friend is an African American.
Matt: Oh, interesting.
Abbie: And it’s almost like me and my neighbor friend. Because me and her—I’m white, I mean, I’m African American, and she is sort of white, but we’re still friends, like Fancy Nancy is with her friend Bree.
To see the entire video visit our #SupportWNDB Indiegogo page.
The We Need Diverse Books team discusses the diverse books that impacted them as children, and campaign friends reveal why they #SupportWNDB. To donate to our campaign go to http://igg.me/at/diversebooks!
Our first #SupportWNDB twitter chat on October 28th went well and so have the ones we’ve been having thereafter! We love hearing from you all and hope you’ll join today’s chat at 9pm EST. Our next one will be November 11th where we discuss LGBTQ representation in books!
Our partnership with ABA extends with many plans of diversity initiatives and providing materials to educators, librarians, booksellers. Our IndieGogo campaign aims to fund all these along with grants for diverse books/writers and our first diversity festival in 2016!
Why do you #SupportWNDB? What does diversity in books build for you? Why do you want to see diverse books? We love hearing from you! And your support on our Indiegogo campaign so far has shown us even more concrete proof that diversity matters! Thank you!
Hey all! We’ll be having our next Twitter chat with WNDB members, and we hope you, on Tuesday, October 28th at 1pm EST/10am PST.
What we’d like is for you to share your stories with us! Using the hashtag #StoryofUsAll let’s reflect the diversity in books we’d like to see and perhaps may be creating. We love to hear from you, check in, tell us what you’d love to read that reflects you or others, and let’s get #SupportWNDB trending again and make our voices heard!
Thanks to EVERYONE who’s shared, tweeted, twibboned, FB shared, Tumblr reblogged, donated, and all that good stuff to our Indiegogo Campaign. We’re making headway and want to keep up the momentum.
We’ll also have another Twitter chat on Friday night (9pm EST) with a call for adorably diverse Halloween pictures! #DiverseHalloween mark your calendars!
Are YOU a face of WNDB Support? Show us your pics! Grab a cue card and tell us why diversity in the arts is important to you!
So many of us want to see ourselves in art and it’s with this core understanding in mind that we work to make this a reality. Our indiegogo campaign is going strong and we’d love to hear from you and garner your support.
#SupportWNDB images with the most Tumblr reblogs/Twitter RTs over the course of one week will win a prize announced by the weneeddiversebooks team! Make sure to use the #SupportWNDB hashtag.
