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.
"I think being a Black person making art that intentionally centers our stories will always be resistance in itself given it literally resists our disappearance."
We love Black Girl Greatness in Middle Grade! Done reading this week’s WNDB Summer Reading pick, A GOOD KIND OF TROUBLE by Lisa Moore Ramée? Check out our discussion guides and activities for the book, along with the reads below:
We spy some WNDB Team Members in Ebony Magazine!!! Renée Watson and Jennifer Baker talk about I, Too Arts Collective. Check out the gorgeous pic of them, Dhonielle Clayton, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, and Ibi Ziboi at Langston Hughes’s historic home in Harlem.
Today we’re hosting a #coverreveal for PIECING ME TOGETHER by author and WNDB team member Renée Watson! The book comes out February 14th, 2017, so mark your calendars!
Here’s the synopsis from the publisher:
A timely and powerful story about a teen girl striving for success in a world that feels too often like it wants to break her.
Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she’s ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. And she has. But there’s one “opportunity” that Jade doesn’t really welcome: joining Women to Women, a mentorship program for “at-risk” girls. Because really, it’s for black girls. From “bad” neighborhoods. She’s tired of being singled out at her mostly-white school as someone who needs support. And just because Maxine, her college-student mentor, is black and graduated from her high school doesn’t mean she understands where Jade is coming from. Maybe there are some things Jade could show these “successful” women about understanding the world and finding opportunities to be real, to make a difference.Renee Watson, acclaimed author of This Side of Home, once again delivers a thoughtful and relevant story about issues of race, privilege, and female relationships.
It shouldn’t be as hard as it is to find a YA book written about black girls, by black girls, on the shelves. And 11-year-old Marley Dias shouldn’t have to do all the work herself. Luckily, we’ve pulled together a list of black girl authors and their novels for you to check out. They’re sharing why what they do is so important, and the stories that made them believe they could grow up to become the authors they are today.
Renée Watson: Many of your books deal with the intersection of race, sexism, gender, and sexuality. Why do you weave these together in your stories?
Jacqueline Woodson: I think it’s important to respect the genre of realistic fiction by keeping it real. I also am concerned with making sure the stories of people who have been historically missing from our body of literature are on the page. I try to mirror their experiences in the real world. My hope is that my work reflects a broad range of identities and experiences.
Wonderful conversation between Renée Watson and Jacqueline Woodson!
“Young people deserve to have a wide range of books available for them and that it shouldn’t be curated based on what people think will sell. It’s interesting the conversation of what will sell based on what hasn’t sold. But if you don’t publish that than you just continue to fulfill your own prophecy of what doesn’t sell when you don’t publish those books.”
In episode 16reneewatsonauthor agrees that the basis for the argument of “diverse books don’t sell” isn’t founded on any real numbers available if the books aren’t being published to begin with.
Writers Jacqueline Woodson and Renée Watson discuss writing the importance of bringing life experience to the page. Photographed in Brooklyn by David Flores. Winter 2015.
In honor of Black History Month, We Need Diverse Books hosted its February chat with four award-winning African-American children’s & young adult authors: Brandy Colbert, G. Neri, Jason Reynolds and Renee Watson. Here’s a transcript of most of the chat (minus some RTs and other OT posts).
Here’s the Storify of our first WNDB chat of 2015! Thanks to Sandie Chen for putting this together.
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.
On Saturday, December 13, I had a difficult choice between joining a march in New York City to protest the recent police shootings of unarmed black men and attending a book event in Brooklyn to cel…
A summary of a lovely event that happened over the weekend celebrating Black female authors, and artists, and their current works.
