Today we’re kicking off this year’s Summer Reading Series! We will have a new “If You Liked” post every day this summer.
If you liked Jacqueline Woodson’s BROWN GIRL DREAMING, read THE TEQUILA WORM by Viola Canales because both are about girls who have to find their places in the world.
elle.com
Women—particularly women of color—are coming for the old guard in literary writing circles and have been for some time now.
I made a list of books included in my Modern Brown Girl Canon, and I think you might like them too. So just check them out!
(via brandycolbert)
It is Friday afternoon and I’m sitting in a restaurant in Vancouver, B.C. In an hour, I will give my final talk of a two-day visit. In these two days, I’ve visited a number of schools in Vancouver — both independent and public. As I stood in front of each crowd, I was astonished by a thing I’ve not encountered for many years now — being the only African American in an otherwise incredibly diverse room. I kept thinking to myself — “We are all almost here.”
Almost.
Wonderful CSK award acceptance speech from WNDB advisory board member Jacqueline Woodson!
"I know for people who are not people of color the National Book Award is a big deal,” Woodson said. “But historically people didn’t give National Book Awards to people of color. The Coretta Scott King Award is just as important because people of color need to see books written by people of color for people of color."- Jacqueline Woodson at the Hudson Children’s Book Festival
Congratulations to all the finalists and honorees for this years LA Times Book Prizes! Including LeVar Burton as Innovator’s Award Winner!
Young Adult Literature
Fiction
- See more at: http://events.latimes.com/bookprizes/#sthash.MepcG51A.dpuf
barnesandnoble.com
One of the best things about reading as a kid is the first time you see yourself in a book, read a character who feels and looks and sounds so much like you that it’s as if the author liquefied your soul and used it as ink…We look forward to promoting diverse titles year round, and in honor of Black History Month, here are some recent favorites featuring African American main characters.
Great list from the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog! And congrats to WNDB team member Lamar Giles (FAKE ID) & WNDB advisory board member Jacqueline Woodson (BROWN GIRL DREAMING) for making this list!
If you missed it here’s the live telecast and list of winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards! And yes on diversity of the Newberry Medal winner & honorees and in many of these categories! Congrats everyone!!! Your books mean a lot to so many readers (young and adult).
John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature:
“The Crossover,” written by Kwame Alexander, is the 2015 Newbery Medal
winner. The book is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Two Newbery Honor Books also were named:
“El Deafo” by Cece Bell, illustrated by Cece Bell and published by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.
“Brown Girl Dreaming,” written by Jacqueline Woodson and published by
Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for
children and young adults:
“Brown Girl Dreaming,” written by Jacqueline Woodson, is the King Author
Book winner. The book is published by Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint
of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
Three King Author Honor Books were selected:
Kwame Alexander for “The Crossover,” published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing.
Marilyn Nelson for “How I Discovered Poetry,” illustrated by Hadley
Hooper and published by Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Books (USA)
LLC.
Kekla Magoon for “How It Went Down,” published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award:
“Firebird,” illustrated by Christopher Myers, is the King Illustrator
Book winner. The book was written by Misty Copeland and published by G.
P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
Two King Illustrator Honor Book were selected:
Christian Robinson for “Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine
Baker,” by Patricia Hruby Powell, published by Chronicle Books LLC.
Frank Morrison for “Little Melba and Her Big Trombone,” by Katheryn Russell-Brown, published by Lee and Low Books, Inc.
Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award:
“When I Was the Greatest,” written by Jason Reynolds, is the Steptoe
winner. The book is published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an
imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division.
Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement:
Deborah D. Taylor is the winner of the Coretta Scott King – Virginia
Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award pays tribute to the
quality and magnitude of beloved children’s author Virginia Hamilton.
Taylor’s career in public service began more than 40 years ago with the
Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, where she is currently
coordinator of School and Student Services. Her career has been spent as
mentor, educator and literacy advocate for young adults. As an
inspiring young adult librarian, leader in national associations and
university instructor, she has been distinctly effective in introducing
young people and her professional colleagues to the outstanding work of
African American authors.
William C. Morris Award for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens:
“Gabi, a Girl in Pieces,” written by Isabel Quintero, is the 2015
Morris Award winner. The book is published by Cinco Puntos Press.
Four other books were finalists for the award:
“The Carnival at Bray” written by Jessie Ann Foley and published by Elephant Rock Books.
“The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim” written by E.K. Johnston
and published by Carolrhoda Lab™, an imprint of Carolrhoda Books, a
division of Lerner Publishing Group.
“The Scar Boys” written by Len Vlahos and published by Egmont Publishing.
“The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender” written by Leslye Walton and published by Candlewick Press.
In her inspired Young Adult debut, This Side of Home from bloomsburybooks, Renée Watson explores the experience of young African-American women navigating the traditions and expectations of their culture. Watson author of Harlem’s Little Black Bird: The Story of Florence Mills, will be in conversation with Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming, winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
On March 18th authors jacquelinewoodson and Renee Watson will be in conversation at the Schomburg Center in New York City. You can RSVP (for free) at Eventbrite here.
slj.com
Jacqueline Woodson talks about her National Book Award win, her handling of Handler’s comments, and how she approached the writing of one of the most distinguished memoirs for young readers in recent memory.
Includes quotes from books by Meg Medina, Varian Johnson, Isabel Quintero, Helen Oyeyemi, Jacqueline Woodson, and cakeliterary (book due out in 2015)!
latenightlibrary.org
Welcome to Late Night Conversation! Our guest this week is writer and activist Jennifer Baker. Jenn has more than ten years of experience in publishing and is active in advocating for diversity in publishing. Bookending a day job in production, Jenn writes essays, short stories, and other prose. Erika Anderson sat down with Jenn to discuss … continue reading »
On the latenightlibrary Late Night Conversation podcast WNDB team member jbakernyc discusses the lack of diversity in publishing, We Need Diverse Books’ missions post-campaign, and how inclusivity in publishing is necessary.
Listeners also have a chance to win a copy of jacquelinewoodson’s nationalbook award winning memoir in verse BROWN GIRL DREAMING. Details at the beginning of the podcast.
npr.org
Woodson won the National Book Award for young people’s literature for her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming. She says that growing up in South Carolina, she knew that the safest place was with her family.
Lovely interview with National Book Award winner (we’ll never tire of saying that) Jacqueline Woodson!
What made you decide to tell this story in verse?
brown girl dreaming is memory. Memory doesn’t come in these straight up narratives, it comes in these small moments with all this white space around it. And you don’t know how one moment was connected to the next moment, but you know they’re all the moments that build a life. For me, I really started by writing those moments down and paid attention to how they settled on the page – I wanted the reader to come to them hearing them and seeing them the way I did.
Excellent interview! WNDB team member Sona Charaipotra (sonacharaipotra) interviews National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson for Parade magazine.
I was a brown girl growing up in the United States. By that point in my life, I had seen the racist representations associated with African-Americans and watermelons, heard the terrifying stories of black men being lynched with watermelons hanging around them, watched black migrants from the South try to eke out a living in the big city by driving through neighborhoods like my own — Bushwick, in Brooklyn — with trucks loaded down with the fruit.
Jacqueline Woodson writes an eloquent, beautiful op-ed about the now-infamous watermelon “joke.”
via The New York Times (log-in required)
On Wednesday, We Need Diverse Books™ advisory board member Jacqueline Woodson—author of the marvelous Brown Girl Dreaming—was one of several authors honored with a National Book Award. As has been reported on various websites, host Daniel Handler made a number of racist remarks during that night, including regarding Jacqueline Woodson. Handler has since apologized and said:
My remarks on Wednesday night at #NBAwards were monstrously inappropriate and yes, racist. It would be heartbreaking for the #NBAwards conversation to focus on my behavior instead of great books. So can we do this? Let’s donate to #WeNeedDiverseBooks to #CelebrateJackie. I’m in for $10,000, and matching your money for 24 hours up to $100,000. Brown Girl Dreaming is an amazing novel and we need more voices like Jacqueline Woodson.
Many people on Twitter have urged Handler to donate to our fundraiser, and we’re glad to see this has had an effect. For twenty-four hours starting at 8AM EST on Friday, November 21, Handler is doubling donations—up to $100,000—made to the We Need Diverse Books™ campaign. If anyone has been intending to donate, we’d like to suggest they do it within this time frame to let their donation count double.
Among many other goals (detailed on the fundraiser page), we intend to use these donations to fund publishing internships for people from diverse backgrounds in an effort to diversify the publishing industry behind the scenes. We believe that’s an important step toward making the industry more welcoming to people of all backgrounds and prevent mistakes like Wednesday’s.
To center this conversation back on National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson and her astonishing accomplishment, we have added several special today-only #CelebrateJackie perks to our fundraiser. Donors can choose to receive signed books, including her most recent release Brown Girl Dreaming.
Please spread the word and #CelebrateJackie!
UPDATE: We’ve exceeded $50k in donations today! We have under twelve hours left to raise further money toward the $100k goal, so please keep spreading this post. We especially suggest writers to keep checking our IndieGoGo page, as we’re working on offering several new editor and agent critiques as perks.
Thanks to today’s generous donations, we've surpassed $150,000 and thus both our our campaign’s stretch goals. This brings us to our third stretch goal: sustainability.
The problem with diversity in children’s literature won’t be solved over night or even in a year. Battling entrenched barriers for diverse books takes sustained effort. Your donations from here on out, every single dollar, helps WNDB maintain our long-term viability and to continue to change the face of children’s literature for years to come.
Thank you so much for your support in the aftermath of this event.