CCBC-Net Archives
Re: Three more thoughts on discovering and growing the numbers of diverse books
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Uma <uma_at_gobrainstorm.net>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 11:29:04 -0800
Cheryl, one thing that occurs to me is that publishers and agents are often more on top of the new releases than the rest of us. I’d love to invite other editors and publishers on this list to chime in as you have done, with a sampling of titles by authors of color and Native authors, titles they find exciting, energizing and pushing the boundaries.
Also, in the Department of Unashamed Bragging, may I cheer for two stellar writers you mentioned, Varian Johnson and Sundee Frazier? They’re both graduates of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and I can’t help myself. I believe deeply in the value of writers mentoring writers, and it’s surely another side to what we’re talking about—ways to grow new voices to carry on the work we do.
Best,
Uma
Uma Krishnaswami http://www.umakrishnaswami.com The Problem With Being Slightly Heroic (Atheneum, 2013) The Girl of the Wish Garden: A Thumbelina Story (Groundwood, 2013) Out of the Way! Out of the Way! (Groundwood, 2012, Tulika Books, 2010) Book Uncle and Me (Scholastic India, 2012) The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum, 2011)
On Feb 8, 2014, at 9:16 AM, Klein, Cheryl <CKlein_at_Scholastic.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Thanks for the great ongoing conversation here. I wanted to offer three more thoughts/avenues of discussion:
>
> 1. If librarians, booksellers, or general readers are interested in learning about new releases of diverse titles, I highly recommend the CBC Diversity newsletter, which comes out every two weeks. It includes a roundup of all the diverse titles published recently (by CBC member publishers, granted) and links to discussions of diversity around the web. You can sign up for it here:http://www.cbcbooks.org/membership/newsletter-sign-up/
>
> 2. I was struck by the example one list member offered that "many African Americans applaud the attention paid to movies such as Twelve Years a Slave, Fruitvale Station and The Butler - in public. But in private, the chasm shifts and you find that those lauds are not from the younger generation who are sick of that being the only image they get."
>
> This puzzled me a little, as 2013 also included films like THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY (which was a big success at the box office), BAGGAGE CLAIM, PEEPLES, BLACK NATIVITY, and several Tyler Perry movies, all telling contemporary stories with attractive middle- or upper-class casts. Similarly, there's been a repeated assertion that all African-American books are either issue-focused or historical -- but this ignores terrific recent books like Sharon Flake's PINNED, Crystal Allen's HOW LAMAR'S BAD PRANK WON A BUBBA-SIZED TROPHY and THE LAURA LINE, Nikki Grimes's WORDS WITH WINGS and Dyamonde Daniel titles, books by Lamar Giles (FAKE ID) and Alaya Dawn Johnson (THE SUMMER PRINCE, which is future-set speculative fic) and Sundee T. Frazier (most recently BRENDAN BUCKLEY’S SIXTH-GRADE EXPERIMENT) and Varian Johnson (who has an awesome middle-grade called THE GREAT GREENE HEIST — a multicultural middle-school OCEAN'S 11 — coming out in June) (full disclosure: I edited it) and of course Walter Dean Myers (INVASION and DARIUS AND TWIG) . . .
>
> I bring this up to make the point that if “we get what we measure,” as has been said repeatedly, the whole measure of what is being published has not always been accurately portrayed in this discussion. Are the overall numbers and proportions still too small? Yes, absolutely. But I would offer the parallel truism that “we get more of what has worked in the past” — the results that HAVE been measured and succeeded, which, in book terms, means titles that publishers and booksellers know they can sell. So let’s talk more about the great diverse books that ARE out there (as list members like Uma have been doing), read and purchase more of these books ourselves, help THOSE get more visibility and more sales, and that will encourage publishers and editors and assist them in acquiring new titles more than almost anything else I can name.
>
> 3. One of publishers’ biggest problems in reaching audiences of color is that there are not many bookstores (chain or indie) in areas with majority people of color. (One welcome exception here in New York is La Casa Azul in El Barrio.) As a result, discoverability of titles becomes that much harder for mirror communities. There was a great suggestion in this timely Wall Street Journal article (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/04/the-lost-boys-and-girls-of-childrens-literature/) that “to reach consumers, publishers and booksellers have to think out of the box. Go to the people – church bookstores, social and civic organizations. Here you will find a willing audience – willing to invest in their children.”
>
> I love this idea, but I would venture that most publishers would not know where to start here — which African-American churches have bookstores, which of the hundreds of possible social and civic organizations in the thousands of cities in the U.S. would be interested and willing to help. And from the other end, I’m sure that it could be extremely frustrating and time-consuming for people from those church bookstores or social and civic organizations to reach out to all the individual publishers to find the diverse books they’re interested in. So I’m asking genuinely: What could we do to make this easier for everyone? Do we need a cross-publisher catalogue of titles by diversity groups that would make it easy for interested groups to find the titles that mirror them? Is there an association of church bookstores or a network of literacy-focused organizations whom publisher representatives can contact? What connections and clearinghouses do we need to build to make discoverability easier within mirror communities?
>
> Thanks again for all the wonderful energy and discussion —
>
> Cheryl Klein
>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 11:29:04 -0800
Cheryl, one thing that occurs to me is that publishers and agents are often more on top of the new releases than the rest of us. I’d love to invite other editors and publishers on this list to chime in as you have done, with a sampling of titles by authors of color and Native authors, titles they find exciting, energizing and pushing the boundaries.
Also, in the Department of Unashamed Bragging, may I cheer for two stellar writers you mentioned, Varian Johnson and Sundee Frazier? They’re both graduates of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and I can’t help myself. I believe deeply in the value of writers mentoring writers, and it’s surely another side to what we’re talking about—ways to grow new voices to carry on the work we do.
Best,
Uma
Uma Krishnaswami http://www.umakrishnaswami.com The Problem With Being Slightly Heroic (Atheneum, 2013) The Girl of the Wish Garden: A Thumbelina Story (Groundwood, 2013) Out of the Way! Out of the Way! (Groundwood, 2012, Tulika Books, 2010) Book Uncle and Me (Scholastic India, 2012) The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum, 2011)
On Feb 8, 2014, at 9:16 AM, Klein, Cheryl <CKlein_at_Scholastic.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Thanks for the great ongoing conversation here. I wanted to offer three more thoughts/avenues of discussion:
>
> 1. If librarians, booksellers, or general readers are interested in learning about new releases of diverse titles, I highly recommend the CBC Diversity newsletter, which comes out every two weeks. It includes a roundup of all the diverse titles published recently (by CBC member publishers, granted) and links to discussions of diversity around the web. You can sign up for it here:http://www.cbcbooks.org/membership/newsletter-sign-up/
>
> 2. I was struck by the example one list member offered that "many African Americans applaud the attention paid to movies such as Twelve Years a Slave, Fruitvale Station and The Butler - in public. But in private, the chasm shifts and you find that those lauds are not from the younger generation who are sick of that being the only image they get."
>
> This puzzled me a little, as 2013 also included films like THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY (which was a big success at the box office), BAGGAGE CLAIM, PEEPLES, BLACK NATIVITY, and several Tyler Perry movies, all telling contemporary stories with attractive middle- or upper-class casts. Similarly, there's been a repeated assertion that all African-American books are either issue-focused or historical -- but this ignores terrific recent books like Sharon Flake's PINNED, Crystal Allen's HOW LAMAR'S BAD PRANK WON A BUBBA-SIZED TROPHY and THE LAURA LINE, Nikki Grimes's WORDS WITH WINGS and Dyamonde Daniel titles, books by Lamar Giles (FAKE ID) and Alaya Dawn Johnson (THE SUMMER PRINCE, which is future-set speculative fic) and Sundee T. Frazier (most recently BRENDAN BUCKLEY’S SIXTH-GRADE EXPERIMENT) and Varian Johnson (who has an awesome middle-grade called THE GREAT GREENE HEIST — a multicultural middle-school OCEAN'S 11 — coming out in June) (full disclosure: I edited it) and of course Walter Dean Myers (INVASION and DARIUS AND TWIG) . . .
>
> I bring this up to make the point that if “we get what we measure,” as has been said repeatedly, the whole measure of what is being published has not always been accurately portrayed in this discussion. Are the overall numbers and proportions still too small? Yes, absolutely. But I would offer the parallel truism that “we get more of what has worked in the past” — the results that HAVE been measured and succeeded, which, in book terms, means titles that publishers and booksellers know they can sell. So let’s talk more about the great diverse books that ARE out there (as list members like Uma have been doing), read and purchase more of these books ourselves, help THOSE get more visibility and more sales, and that will encourage publishers and editors and assist them in acquiring new titles more than almost anything else I can name.
>
> 3. One of publishers’ biggest problems in reaching audiences of color is that there are not many bookstores (chain or indie) in areas with majority people of color. (One welcome exception here in New York is La Casa Azul in El Barrio.) As a result, discoverability of titles becomes that much harder for mirror communities. There was a great suggestion in this timely Wall Street Journal article (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/04/the-lost-boys-and-girls-of-childrens-literature/) that “to reach consumers, publishers and booksellers have to think out of the box. Go to the people – church bookstores, social and civic organizations. Here you will find a willing audience – willing to invest in their children.”
>
> I love this idea, but I would venture that most publishers would not know where to start here — which African-American churches have bookstores, which of the hundreds of possible social and civic organizations in the thousands of cities in the U.S. would be interested and willing to help. And from the other end, I’m sure that it could be extremely frustrating and time-consuming for people from those church bookstores or social and civic organizations to reach out to all the individual publishers to find the diverse books they’re interested in. So I’m asking genuinely: What could we do to make this easier for everyone? Do we need a cross-publisher catalogue of titles by diversity groups that would make it easy for interested groups to find the titles that mirror them? Is there an association of church bookstores or a network of literacy-focused organizations whom publisher representatives can contact? What connections and clearinghouses do we need to build to make discoverability easier within mirror communities?
>
> Thanks again for all the wonderful energy and discussion —
>
> Cheryl Klein
>
---
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: Look4Posts
Received on Sat 08 Feb 2014 01:29:28 PM CST
