Later today we will be launching a new feature here on the PaperTigers’ blog entitled Global Voices. Each month we will be inviting a guest to join us and write three blog posts. The posts will be published on three consecutive Wednesdays within each month under the title “Global Voices”. Our guests, located around the world, are all involved in the world of kid and YA lit and include award winning authors and illustrators, bloggers, librarians, educators and more! It is our hope that through the Global Voices posts we can better highlight the world of multicultural kid lit and YA lit in different countries around the world. The Global Voices line-up for May, June and July is:
Holly Thompson (Japan/USA)
Holly Thompson was raised in New England and is a longtime resident of Japan. Her verse novel Orchards (Delacorte/Random House) won the 2012 APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and is a YALSA 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults title. She recently edited Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press), and her next verse novel The Language Inside (Delacorte/Random House) will be published in 2013. Her picture book The Wakame Gatherers was selected by the National Council for the Social Studies in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council as ‘A Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2009′. Holly teaches creative writing at Yokohama City University and serves as the regional advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Visit her website: www.hatbooks.com
Tarie Sabido (Philippines)
Tarie is a lecturer of writing and literature in the Philippines and blogs about children’s and young adult literature at Into the Wardrobe and Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind. She is also on the staff of Color Online, a blog about women writers of color for children, young adults and adults. Tarie was a judge for the 2009 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (CYBILS) and the 2010 Philippine National Children’s Book Awards. At the 2010 Asian Festival of Children’s Content, Tarie and I joined Dr. Myra Garces-Bacsal in the panel discussion Building a Nation of Readers via Web 2.0: An Introduction to the Kidlitosphere and the YA Blogsphere.
René Colato Laínez (El Salvador/USA)
René Colato Laínez was born in El Salvador. At the age of fourteen he moved to the United States, where he later completed the MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults at the Vermont College. René is the author of I Am