CCBC-Net Archives
February Discussion: Multicultural Literature
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From: K.T. Horning <horning_at_education.wisc.edu>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 10:21:36 -0600
Good morning, and welcome to a new approach for CCBC-Net. As we announced in January, each month we will focus on a broad topic or trend for the first two weeks, and then we will host a discussion of two recent books that are related. Before we get started, we want to thank you all for the feedback and ideas you gave us in January. These will prove very helpful to us as we plan and shape the upcoming discussions.
This month we will be discussing a topic near and dear to our hearts at the CCBC, Multicultural Literature. My colleague, Merri Lindgren, and I will be facilitating this discussion throughout the month. In the third week (beginning on February 17) we will begin a discussion of two novels from last year:
"How I Became a Ghost" by Tim Tingle (Road Runner Press)
"If I Ever Get Out of Here" by Eric Gansworth (Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic)
Please seek these books out and read them if you'd like to participate in February's book discussion. In addition to your comments about the books, we hope to have the insights of the authors of these books, as well, to enrich our understanding and appreciation. So feel free to come to the discussion with questions,
People have asked if it is okay to talk about other relevant books in this time, and the answer is, yes, of course! We welcome your examples and recommendations, particularly in the first two weeks of our discussion. We will aim for a deeper discussion of the two books we have selected because we have encouraged people to read them in advance.
*And now on to multicultural literature in general. *
As you probably know, the CCBC has been collecting statistics on the numbers of books published each year by and about people of color since 1985. These statistics can be found on our website at:http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
<http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp>Every year, we get phone calls and emails from the press and from people doing research, requesting our statistics. In fact, we just got our first press call this morning from the Wall Street Journal, asking for the 2013 stats. Merri Lindgren is busy compiling them to add to our website, and we'll have them for you a little later today.
It may interest you to know how we collect these statistics. The CCBC gets review copies of most of the children's trade books published in the United States. As they come in, we note which ones are by and/or about Africans/African-Americans, Asians/Asian-Americans, Native/Indigenous Peoples, and Latinos. We enter the authors and titles into logs that are further broken down like this (using Latinos as an example):
Latino (General)
Argentina Chile etc.
United States
General --
Chicano/Mexican-American
Cuban-American
Puerto Rican
etc
Author/Artist of Color (no cultural content)
** For any author or illustrator who is Latino we put their name in boldface type. This makes it easier to count when we compile our statistics. what this also reveals is that the majority of books by people of color are not written BY people of color.
We will be able to get the exact statistics for 2013 soon, but when I did a preliminary mid-year count back in July, I found that 37.9% of the books about people of color were written by people of color. Specifically, I found that of the 1103 books we had received as of July that were about human characters, 124 (or 10.4%) were about people of color. Of these 124, just 47 (37.9%) were written and/or illustrated by a person of color. You can read more about this on our blog here: http://ccblogc.blogspot.com/2013/07/last-week-i-posted-mid-year-statistics.html
Do these statistics surprise you? And how important do you feel it is for a book about, say, an African-American character to be written by an African-American author?
--KT
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 10:21:36 -0600
Good morning, and welcome to a new approach for CCBC-Net. As we announced in January, each month we will focus on a broad topic or trend for the first two weeks, and then we will host a discussion of two recent books that are related. Before we get started, we want to thank you all for the feedback and ideas you gave us in January. These will prove very helpful to us as we plan and shape the upcoming discussions.
This month we will be discussing a topic near and dear to our hearts at the CCBC, Multicultural Literature. My colleague, Merri Lindgren, and I will be facilitating this discussion throughout the month. In the third week (beginning on February 17) we will begin a discussion of two novels from last year:
"How I Became a Ghost" by Tim Tingle (Road Runner Press)
"If I Ever Get Out of Here" by Eric Gansworth (Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic)
Please seek these books out and read them if you'd like to participate in February's book discussion. In addition to your comments about the books, we hope to have the insights of the authors of these books, as well, to enrich our understanding and appreciation. So feel free to come to the discussion with questions,
People have asked if it is okay to talk about other relevant books in this time, and the answer is, yes, of course! We welcome your examples and recommendations, particularly in the first two weeks of our discussion. We will aim for a deeper discussion of the two books we have selected because we have encouraged people to read them in advance.
*And now on to multicultural literature in general. *
As you probably know, the CCBC has been collecting statistics on the numbers of books published each year by and about people of color since 1985. These statistics can be found on our website at:http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
<http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp>Every year, we get phone calls and emails from the press and from people doing research, requesting our statistics. In fact, we just got our first press call this morning from the Wall Street Journal, asking for the 2013 stats. Merri Lindgren is busy compiling them to add to our website, and we'll have them for you a little later today.
It may interest you to know how we collect these statistics. The CCBC gets review copies of most of the children's trade books published in the United States. As they come in, we note which ones are by and/or about Africans/African-Americans, Asians/Asian-Americans, Native/Indigenous Peoples, and Latinos. We enter the authors and titles into logs that are further broken down like this (using Latinos as an example):
Latino (General)
Argentina Chile etc.
United States
General --
Chicano/Mexican-American
Cuban-American
Puerto Rican
etc
Author/Artist of Color (no cultural content)
** For any author or illustrator who is Latino we put their name in boldface type. This makes it easier to count when we compile our statistics. what this also reveals is that the majority of books by people of color are not written BY people of color.
We will be able to get the exact statistics for 2013 soon, but when I did a preliminary mid-year count back in July, I found that 37.9% of the books about people of color were written by people of color. Specifically, I found that of the 1103 books we had received as of July that were about human characters, 124 (or 10.4%) were about people of color. Of these 124, just 47 (37.9%) were written and/or illustrated by a person of color. You can read more about this on our blog here: http://ccblogc.blogspot.com/2013/07/last-week-i-posted-mid-year-statistics.html
Do these statistics surprise you? And how important do you feel it is for a book about, say, an African-American character to be written by an African-American author?
--KT
-- Kathleen T. Horning Director Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park St Madison, WI 53706 http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc horning_at_education.wisc.edu 608-263-3721 (phone) 608-262-4933 (fax) --- You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu. To post to the list, send message to: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu To receive messages in digest format, send a message to... ccbc-net-request_at_lists.wisc.edu ...and include only this command in the body of the message: set ccbc-net digest CCBC-Net Archives The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp To access the archives, go to: http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net and enter the following: username: ccbc-net password: Look4PostsReceived on Mon 03 Feb 2014 10:21:58 AM CST
