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Happy Leap Day! Unlike Leap Day William here I have no candy to bestow upon the weeping children of the world, but I do have some keen links. First and foremost, this old newspaper article (possibly The New York Times) courtesy of Andrew Fairweather. It’s a little difficult to read here but it says, “THE QUESTION: As a librarian, what was the most unusual request ever made of you?” Between the voracious pygmy pig, the nightingale being attacked and the primo embalmer, these are some good reference questions!
Thanks to Andrew Fairweather for the image.
- Just in case you missed it, on Febrary 24th there was a great piece called “You Will Be Tokenized” in Brooklyn Magazine which moves heaven and earth to correct many misconceptions about working in the publishing industry today (monetary misconceptions amongst others).
- I’m not one for wallpaper.
What’s that, you say?
You said there’s Carson Ellis wallpaper out there?
I’ll take three houses’ worth, thank you.
Thanks to Alison Morris for the link.
- Speaking of PW, if you didn’t follow their recent link to this story on publishing children’s literature in Russia, you need to double back and do so. This is the kind of story I’d like to hear about more often. International publishing is absolutely fascinating to me and we hear so little about it.
- Read that article and then follow it up with a brief examination of the talk, “Brown Gold: African American Children’s Literature as a Genre of Resistance.” In one case you have a government cracking down on precisely what children can and cannot read (“Between the ages of 6 and 12, children were allowed to learn about illness but not death”). On the other you have an examination of children’s books by, “Alice Walker, bell hooks, W.E.B. DuBois, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou and James Baldwin…” The sole problem with this piece is that it doesn’t delve into Michelle Martin’s speech or link to a transcript. Still, I love pairing the authoritarianism on the one hand and the resistance on the other. Different cultures. Same battlefield. Thanks to Phil Nel for the link.
And finally, Boing Boing recently highlighted these shoes from Irregular Choices. And though they may require taking out a loan on your home, I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to bequeath them to me in some manner. I’m a size 9 1/2, in case you’re curious: 
Previous shoe-related posts may be found here.
Morning, folks. Bird here. Seems this book I’ve written with fellow bloggers Peter Sieruta of Collecting Children’s Books and Jules Danielson of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is in the last stages of completion. Fun With Copyedits is the name of the game this week, which means that my blogging may suffer a tad here and there. Mea culpa. I give you a bright and shiny blog posts to make it up to you. Eat it in good health.
- First off, April’s only here and that can only mean one thing. There’s a call for new spine poetry. Do you have what it takes to stack books in a coherent and literary manner? Well, do you? Punk?
I love Cracked online but honestly sometimes their headlines tip a little too far into the realm of the hyperbole. Consider the following: 5 literary classics that put x-rated movies to shame. It’s actually not inaccurate to say that of numbers one through three, but by the time you get to number five (Where’s Waldo) it’s stretching it a tad. Then again, the naked clown on the pogo stick isn’t exactly normal . . .
- In case you missed it, Marjorie Ingall alerted me to the children’s literature reference name dropped by Bob Balaban on a recent episode of Girls. Sorry I missed this one. I’ve been too busy catching up on episodes of Once Upon a Time which is admittedly corny, but weirdly similar to LOST before the show went haywire. Hence the fix.
- And what will YOU be doing on April 2nd of this year? Celebrating International Children’s Book Day, I certainly hope. Seriously, are you going to let this Ashley Bryan poster go to waste? For shame!
- Speaking of worldwide travels, care to attend an Irish children’s literary conference? Would I kid? Observe:
“We are delighted to announce that the CBI 2013 Conference Rebels and Rulebreakers is now open for booking! We’re really looking forward to a weekend with some of the most exciting names in writing, illustration, publishing and criticism in the fabulous surroundings of Lighthouse cinema on May 18th and 19th. Click here for the booking form or call CBI on 01 8727475 to secure your place. Remember the conference is open to everyone with an interest in children’s books so tell your friends! We’ve started counting down to the conference weekend with blog features on Sarah Ardizzone, Sarah Crossan and Colmán Ó Raghallaigh.”
- Though she was by no means the first children’s librarian in the country, NYPL’s own Anne Carroll Moore was a force to be reckoned with, back in the day. Now there’s a picture book bio of her coming out called Miss Moore Thought Otherwise by Jan Pinborough. A Women’s History Month series celebrates the book and Ms. Pinborough discusses why she wrote it in the first place. Thanks to Lisa Taylor for the link.
As my recent review of the Matilda musical will attest, I’m a sucker for stage adaptations of children’s books. So how completely and utterly delightful does this version of Owl Moon look to you? Picture book adaptations are always difficult, whether it’s to the stage or the screen. Dance is honestly the only way to go sometimes. Consider this post your required reading of the day.
Hey! In all the flutter and kerfuffle surrounding the ALA Youth Media Awards it’s mighty easy to forget about the 2013 Notable Children’s Books list that was announced at the end of February. Nice to see my beloved Zombie Makers getting some love.
Daily Image:
Oh good. Something new to desire. I was running low. It seems that a certain Charlotte Olympia has taken it upon herself to create a fairytale line of shoes.
If you happen to purchase that $985 froggy pump for me, I honestly won’t be embarrassed by the largess of your generosity. Scout’s honor. You know where to reach me. Many many thanks to Marjorie Ingall for the link.
Lightning quiz Fusenews today, folks! 
It is one thing to play Nellie Oleson, the much loathed villain of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, in a television show. It is another thing entirely to write a book about the experience. And certainly I would not have know that such an event had taken place were it not for Peter’s post on Collecting Children’s Books. And that’s not even including the news about the children’s author that’s showing up in a soap opera! Alas, you’ll have to read Peter’s post to see who it is for yourself.
- Quiz question, beauties. Do you work in a county library that serves a population under 16,000 or a town library that serves a population under 10,000? Is your library in a rural area, with a limited operating budget, and an active children’s department? And is your budget for books a bit diminished these days? Want some free children’s books? Then now would be the time to apply for this grant from The Libri Foundation. I kid not. Read through the rules, see if you fit, and apply before August 15th for a grant that will help you and your kids out. And I am much obliged to Dawn Mundy for the link.
- You know what author I like? I like Peter Dickinson. He’s one of those blokes I’ve resigned myself to never ever meeting due to the fact that he is, y’know… British. But if you had told me that he was still up for doing online interviews I would have scoffed and huffed and generally made a fool of myself. That said, Scribble City Central has a simply lovely talk with the man up and running right now. And if you don’t know your Dickinson, I advise you to go out and read Eva or The Seventh Raven right now. Particularly The Seventh Raven. Best school play meets hostage situation book for kids I’ve ever read.
- It’s not every day that children’s literature is so heavily featured on NPR, but Monica Edinger, Esme Raji Codell, and Peter Cowden have offered up their picks for summer reading on the show On Point with Richard Ashbrook. Good choices to be found there.
- To be frank, when I heard that Louis Sachar had written a book for kids about the game of bridge, my first instinct was to think, “What next? Golf?” I still pretty much feel that way, even after having read Leila’s review of his book The Cardturner over at bookshelves of doom. But at least I feel a little less weird about the fact that it even exists at all.
- Woah! Woah-we-woah-woah-hold-on-there-woah! Have you read the Oz and Ends piece on the new Indian edition of Mitali Perkins’ First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover? Definitely the strangest bit of news in the course of all our whitewashing controversies. Heavens above!
What do you get the Percy Jackson fan who
Previous shoe-related posts may be found here.
Wow, I never knew I wanted wallpaper until this very moment.
On that first one, are we certain it was a pig, and not a person?
First, please God let my daughter not see those shoes. The girl is a serious shoe obsessive and daddy is tired of single-handedly supporting Zappos.
From the linked Brooklyn piece:
“Of the 3,500 children’s books reviewed by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in 2014, only 400 were about indigenous peoples and people of color. Only 292 were written by an indigenous person or person of color. For every one indigenous writer or writer of color who was published, there were 12 white writers.”
African-Americans are 13% of the population, and that number has been stable for a while. Native Americans are just under 1%. So if publishing were perfectly balanced of the 3,500 books surveyed 910 would be about those two populations. If perfect parity is the goal, we are at about 44% (Check my math, I’m not a STEM person.)
Unfortunately not all percents are equal. 14% of the population is AA or NA but that 14% controls a much smaller percentage of the wealth. As a guy who couldn’t afford to buy a hardcover until well into my 30’s, I can tell you that people without money to pay rent are not going to buy a $17 hardcover. Which means black kids are going to be more dependent on libraries, less likely to hand B&N what may amount to the difference between keeping the lights on and not. Unfortunately, we are not exactly showering money on libraries. If we seriously mean to get more books to more POC readers, more money for library acquisitions would be very helpful.
Good luck with that. I’m sure that’ll be high on Donald Trump’s to-do list.
Another approach is of course to cut the cost of books. But these are not publishing’s salad days. Publishing is under financial pressure and thus ever-more-obsessed with creating big hits, mirroring what’s happening in movies. In fact Hollywood plays a very big role in creating YA megahits – Hunger Games, Harry, Twilight, Divergent, TFIOS- but has far less interest in younger titles. The hits pay the bills for the mid-list, so we all want to see the hits keep coming, but the model means publishers will tend to go “safe” rather than risky. Are books starring POC less likely to make it to the big screen? Did you watch the Oscars?
One obvious solution to cutting cost is e-books. E-books do not need to be $9.95, that price is more about not undercutting the paper market than it is about actual costs of production/distribution for e-books. Many schools, even in poorer districts, are making laptops available to students, so in theory e-books would be part of a solution. But but one of the things that has really surprised me is the resistance of even YA readers to e-books. And in any event publishing has approximately zero interest in cutting into their already thin profit margin or increasing their already substantial risk.
So, OK, a system where profit-hungry publishers are reluctant (or unable) to cut prices and are anxious to create more BIG books, is not going to solve the problem. This is a capitalist system, capitalists chase profit, and if 14% of the population only controls 1% of the wealth, that’s a problem.
There are small-bore solutions that have small-bore effects, but so long as the system is a beast in search of money rather than social justice, the solution is unlikely to come from publishing. Social pressure will move the needle a point or two, but probably not more. It won’t make up long-term for the absence of POC lead characters (or writers.)
Adding to the steepness of the slope are demands that books about or by POC be bibliotherapeutic, which is why, Betsy, I appreciated your piece the other day on giving permission to writers of color (and white writers) to write entertaining stuff rather than feeling pressured to write definitive, transcendent works of high literature.
It is incorrect to say that writers of color cannot get published. It takes 30 minutes to put a manuscript up on Amazon. The difficulty is in getting paid. (This is the United States: it’s always about money.) And getting paid requires profit. Profit requires sales, which takes us back to 14% with just 1% of the wealth. Boil it down and we need to go from 400 books to 910 books, more than doubling current output. How do we do that given the various gvens?
I have an idea which is probably dumb, but what the hell. Why not create a minority publishing non-profit funded by a voluntary and self-imposed “tax” of, say 1%, on more well-paid writers, and a matching amount from their publishers. In effect this would be a redistribution from only the top end, the equivalent of raising taxes on the wealthy. A writer earning more than 200k (just a place-holder number) would contribute 1% of everything above that amount, and publishers who hit a certain threshold of sales on a particular book would match that amount. That would put hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars (again: not a math person) into this non-profit. Use a third of the money to develop POC talent, a third goes to poorer kids in the form of a book voucher they can use in any bookstore, bricks-and-mortar or digital, and the remaining third goes to support school library acquisitions.
This would not require a revolution in the system, it would cost publishing very little as they’d only be giving up a small fraction of their most successful titles. 90% of writers are bleeding heart liberals and I think response from writers would be good. (I’d have no problem with it, neither would my wife.) Publishers and writers could take it as a deduction on taxable income, so the net cost would actually be less than 1%. Money in the form of vouchers would flow to the 14%, from thence to the retailers and some of it would go back into the non-profit. Minority writers would get some support, perhaps in the form of development grants, and school libraries in poorer districts would get some targeted cash for acquisition of the titles produced in connection with the non-profit corporation. In theory we’d have created a viable market parallel to the existing market, and if sales resulted we’d have a sort of proof-of-concept. If the bigs saw sales (and hence profit) being created they would leap like hungry tigers to exploit it, and problem solved.
The details would be a bitch, but since in the end it’s a pretty basic (and quite small) wealth-transfer I don’t think it would be insoluble. But you don’t change capitalism by yelling at it, capitalists seek profit (as well they should) and no amount of pressure will make a lasting change in that essential dynamic. So let’s go Bernie Sanders on it, tax the rich, support the not-rich a little. In theory this would give us more writers of color, more books about POC characters, and thus: a market. Try it for ten years, re-evaluate.
Then again, it’s probably a dumb idea because in addition to not being a STEM person, I am also not a businessman as my accountant will enthusiastically attest.
We are not certain at all but we’re hoping desperately for it to be a pig. Really really hoping.
Wow, I feel shallow after that marvelous comment but I just have to ask you, Betsy–what’s the strangest reference question YOU’VE ever had? And would you ever wear a hat like one of those?
Strange isn’t quite right. As a children’s librarian when you get asked things it’s sort of on a different level. My favorite was the kid who came in (couldn’t have been more than 4 years old) and asked for the book about the woman in the white hat, “SHE’S NOT A PILGRIM!!!” and the baker and baby Jesus. Upon further questioning he mentioned a pasta pot. Don’t know how baby Jesus worked into all of that, but he was thrilled when I pulled STREGA NONA off the shelf.
The issue of diverse books is about supply and demand. There’s less supply because there isn’t a demand for those books. More diverse books are being published but getting non-poc to buy them and read them is really the problem to be solved.
I think this is in part a consequence of the insistence by many of the well-meaning that books by or about POC be bibliotherapeutic. “Good for you” books. Minority kids want to read Hunger Games, too. A black Divergent or Fancy Nancy or Wonder would be the best thing for minority representation in the market.
I don’t believe readers reject minority characters, the big fan favorites from my own Gone series (setting aside the ‘hot’ white sociopath,) are an undocumented Honduran gay boy and a black lesbian. This list of fan’s top ten Animorphs books includes two with Cassie, an African-American girl on the cover who also serves as narrator: http://cinnamonbunzuh.blogspot.com/2012/12/ifis-list-of-lists.html. I can check our royalty statements but I don’t think there was a fall-off in sales for books with a black character on the cover, and that was almost 20 years ago. I think some publishers believe a black face on the cover hurts sales, but if it’s an entertaining rather than a “good for you” book, I suspect they’re wrong.
Preee-cisely my point. The only reason people think black faces don’t sell is that so much of those time those faces are set against sepia backgrounds. Fun Fact: Sepia doesn’t sell. Brown covers? They do not sell. Not if the book looks old-timey.