From: Lyn Miller-Lachmann <lynml_at_me.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:55:41 -0500

I think we need a two-pronged approach here. It's important to make the point that the CBC Diversity list is incomplete because it only includes titles from CBC members--in other words, the largest publishers. We need to make sure lists like the one from the Brown Bookshelf and awards lists that regularly include small-press published books, such as the Tomas Rivera, Belpre, and Americas Awards and the Skipping Stones Honors Awards, get the attention they deserve. At the same time we need to pressure the major houses--the CBC members--to publish more and better books that feature diverse characters and to support the books they do publish. I see the CBC Diversity Committee as both an effort to do the latter and a means of educating authors, editors, and reviewers who are in that circle about what makes a book good vis a vis diversity and why it's important to publish those books. I don't see those efforts as mutually exclusive. In fact, I'm writing a piece for the CBC blog Diversity 101 on creating authentic
 characters with emotional and developmental disabilities while at the same time championing the small presses that have traditionally been more open to unknown authors and illustrators of color and others outside the mainstream.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann Gringolandia (Curbstone Press/Northwestern University Press, 2009) Rogue (Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin, 2013)
Received on Wed 13 Feb 2013 11:55:41 AM CST