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The winners of the 2011 Growing Up Asian in America art and essay contest have been announced!

The largest program in the USA to celebrate Asian heritage, Growing Up Asian in America is a signature program of the Asian Pacific Fund and provides a unique forum for youth in grade K to 12 to celebrate being both Asian and American and to express this through creative writing and art. The program is also an important community re source, helping people better understand the experiences of young Asian Americans and learn more about life in a place as diverse as the San Francisco Bay Area.

Each year more than 1,000 Bay Area students compete for prizes totaling $27,000. A new theme is selected each year and for 2011 is “Lost and Found”. Organizers note:

Our hunch was that children and youth of all ages experience loss and discovery throughout their young lives and might not find opportunities to reflect on those changes.

Local Bay Area libraries are hosting exhibits that display the winning entries and honorable mentions of the Bay Area students from now until February, 2012. There you can see Hyejin Ahn’s winning art, “Never Be Lost Again,” a film strip image of war and goodbyes.  Grace Wang’s essay that suggests to her good friend who is adopted that maybe her [birth] mother might have accidentally lost her.  How Payal Ahuja felt lost when she first came to America at age eight; she missed her family and friends in India. Then she found that her library in Mountain View was “a constant source of joy.” Through our 2011 program we learn that loss and discovery are an important part of our experience, especially for those who have traveled thousands of miles to become American.

The exhibit schedule can be found here and is a must see for adults and children! You will be amazed at the insight, creativity, wisdom and talent of these students! One of my favorite winning entries in the art category is pictured above. The image is by Aniketh Umesh, winner in the K-5 art category, and is titled “Lost Out: On Good Times With Grandpa In India; Found: Land Of Opportunity In The United States”.

Celebrations are in full-swing for Asian Heritage Month which is celebrated in both Canada and the USA during the month of May. This a time to honor the legacy of generations of Asian Canadians and Asian Americans who have enriched their country’s history and are instrumental in its future success. It is a time to participate in festivities that celebrate the many achievements and contributions of Asians who, throughout history, have done so much to make Canada and the USA the culturally diverse, compassionate and prosperous nations we know today.

As part of their celebrations for Asian American Heritage Month, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association announced the winner and honor books in the 2009 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. These awards promote Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage based on literary and artistic merit, and our congratulations go out to Wabi Sabi, written by Mark Reibstein and illustrated by Ed Young, which won the picture book award. Back in 2008, PaperTiger bloggers Marj and Aline were thrilled to see the proofs for Wabi Sabi at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Marj posted a great review of Wabi Sabi here.

Winners have also been announced in the Growing Up Asian in America Art and Essay contest, which is open to students in grades K - 12 who reside in the San Francisco area. This year’s theme was “Change- If you could change one thing to make the world a better place, what would that be?”. I was especially drawn to Claire Dworsky’s essay entitled Change Your Assumptions in which she wrote:

To me, growing up Asian is the same as any kid most of the time. I go to school, gymnastics, soccer, play with my dog, play outside – normal stuff.

But sometimes other people say things that make me feel sad or different. They make fun of my eyes and call me Chinese. They yell, “Hey Chinois!” They ask questions that aren’t really questions, like “Are you really adopted?” I say “Yes I was adopted from Kayakhstan, a country between Russia and China. I can show you on a map if you want.” But they’re really using these questions to make fun of me. And it’s even worse. When Asian girls pick on me by saying “Oh, you have blue eyes you think you are all that.” Racism is hurtful, no matter who says it.

Claire concludes her essay with a powerful statement that all of us, young and old, should take to heart: “When you know how it feels to be discriminated against you should use that feeling to imagine how others feel, and change yourself so you can help others.” The winning entries of the Growing Up Asian in America contest will be on exhibit at several locations throughout the Bay Area until February 2010. Click here to see the schedule.

(Click on event name for more information)

Shanghai International Literacy Festival~ Mar 1 - 15, Shanghai, China

The Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival~ Mar 2 - 12, Hong Kong

Adelaide Festival Awards For Literature Winners Announced~ Mar 2, Adelaide, Australia

Growing Up Asian in America Art & Essay Contest for Youth~ entry deadline Mar 6, San Francisco, CA, USA

World Book Day~ Mar 6, United Kingdom and Ireland

The 12th Annual Charlotte S. Huck Children’s Literature Festival~ Mar 7 - 8, Redlands, CA, USA

Masak-Masak: A Potluck of Delectable Stories from Around the World~ Mar 8, Singapore

Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Winner Announced~ Mar 12, Vimmerby, Sweden

World Storytelling Day~ Mar 20

World Poetry Day~ Mar 21

Harmony Day~ Mar 21, Australia

Bangkok International Book Fair~ Mar 26 - Apr 7, Bangkok, Thailand

The Toronto Festival of Storytelling~ Mar 28 - Apr 6, Toronto, ON, Canada

Storylines Margaret Mahy Award Lecture~ Mar 29, Pakuranga, New Zealand

Tom Fitzgibbon Award and Joy Cowley Award Winners Announced~ Mar 29, Pakuranga, New Zealand

Bologna Children’s Book Fair~ Mar 31 - Apr 3, Bologna, Italy

Hans Christian Anderson Awards Announced~ Mar 31, Bologna, Italy

I'm happy today to present a brief interview with Kerry Madden, the author of the brand new book Louisiana's Song. Louisiana's Song is the sequel to Gentle's Holler, which got starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Children's Literature Award in 2006.

I first met Kerry almost exactly a year ago in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. We were both in town to sign and sell books at the Knoxville Festival of Reading on the former site of the 1982 World's Fair. She was gracious enough to join me and Wendi for a late lunch at The Sunspot, where we learned her connection to Knoxville: Kerry first came to our fair city as a teenager when her father was hired as a coach at the University of Tennessee under then Head Coach Johnny Majors, whose tumultuous tenure with the Vols I remember dominating the conversation at every Gratz family gathering for more than two decades. Kerry later attended the University of Tennessee, as did I, and like me still finds herself drawn in to the gravitational pull of East Tennessee even though she now lives in L.A. Given her connections to Tennessee football, I had to throw in a question about her first book, Offsides, even though she's moved on to even greater success with her "Maggie Valley Trilogy" . . .

GI: Give us the thirty-second blurb about your new book, Louisiana's Song, and its place in your Maggie Valley trilogy.

KM: Thirty seconds, Alan? I'm too long-winded with gaps, breaks, and unfinished sentences. . . but here goes: Louisiana's Song is a story of art, auditory hallucinations, music, and family. When Daddy comes home from the Rip Van Winkle Rest Home dramatically different than the daddy the children knew, the kids band together to bring him back to them through murals, flashcards, fairy hunts, and songs. Louisiana "Louise" is the hero despite her terrible shyness - and the story is set against the backdrop of Ghost Town in the Sky, Maggie Valley, and the turbulent history of 1963. (I bet that's longer than 30 seconds.)

GI: That's all right. We forgive you. But points will be deducted from your overall score. Now, did you know when you were writing Gentle's Holler that you wanted this to be a three-part story, or did that come later at the request of the publisher?

KM: No, I didn't know it would be a trilogy. I thought I would write a book from each kid's point of view, but Livy Two is the family storyteller and I'm so glad she is the voice of the first three books. (Thank you, wise editors!) Of course, I still have more Weems' stories to tell, but these three books felt right as a Smoky Mountain Trilogy of Maggie Valley stories.

GI: What is the larger story being told by this trilogy?

KM: I think the larger story is family and imagination and longing - I wanted a big messy family who loved art and music and yet had regular squabbles and longed for adventures.

GI: How do you balance telling a larger, three-part story with the need to make each book work as a stand-alone volume?

KM: Well, I picked three characters I wanted to focus on in each of the books. In Gentle's Holler, the character of Gentle is a huge part of the plot - her eyes - blindness - and the introduction of Uncle Hazard, the dog, who becomes her loyal friend and guide. In Louisiana's Song, I wanted to explore the life of a very tall girl and shy artist who finds her courage and her father, who is lost in his own recovery from the accident. And in Jesse's Mountain, we go back to the 1940s through Mama's diary, her love of birds, and we see the girl she was and how she came to have ten children. So even though Livy Two is our narrator and eavesdropper and plotter, I focused each book on one particular character in the Weems' family. Now I have to decide whether to write more Livy Two stories or write from the point of view of say, Gentle or Caroline or Cyrus or even Jitters - Jitters, though, does get her chance to shine in Jesse's Mountain.

GI: Okay, I can't resist, because I know your connection to UT football. Your first novel, Offsides, was well-reviewed when it came out more than ten years ago. Can you tell us where that story came from, and what happened with that novel?

KM: People have noted Offsides was a lot like The Great Santini, only from the girl's point of view with a football instead of a military backdrop. It was a New York Library Pick for the Teen Age in 1997. The story came from my own life growing up on the gridiron in the world college football, dressing in orange and white, blue and gold, purple and white - and considering myself a Cyclone, Wildcat, Demon Deacon, Volunteer - wherever my dad happened to be coaching. Offsides is the metaphor because Liz Donegal, my alter-ego, is perpetually "offsides" in the world of high-haired coaches wives, locker rooms, Catholic Schools, and constantly moving around from the North to the South to the Midwest - she is swept up in her father's search for the opportunity to win some football games!

Offsides also went through the Hollywood mill, optioned by Jim Henson Productions with Diane Keaton and Bill Robinson of Blue Relief attached to produce and direct. We had meetings in Hollywood for four years - I'm not kidding. It was tossed around as a feature film, a one hour pilot (LIFETIME for a minute), a half-hour sitcom - you name it. We had meetings at Working Title, Jim Henson, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Family, Lifetime, UPN, WB . . . every incarnation: can the coach be African American? Could it be the Thursday Night Wives Club? Could it focus on Mom and Dad instead of the kid? Diane Keaton did send me chocolate football - a regular football of solid chocolate - and she came for dinner. Here is an essay about her coming to dinner called "Toys in the Crawlspace" from LA Weekly.

My agent is currently submitting Offsides as a YA novel because it was never published YA, so maybe it will have a new life. (Frankly, I think it needs cutting.)

GI: I hope it finds a second life then! Now, I know that your father's occupational wanderings when you were a child eventually led you to Knoxville, Tennessee, my hometown, and that you attended the University of Tennessee. Your own travels have taken you to Europe and Asia, and you now live on the West Coast. What is it about the mountains of East Tennessee/Western North Carolina that won't let you go? Was it love at first sight, or did the mountains have to win you over?

KM: You're right, Alan. They won't let me go. And I never ever planned for that to happen. I left Knoxville never dreaming I'd look back, and I've spent two decades looking back in one form or another. When I got my driver's license on my sixteenth birthday in Knoxville, my mother handed me the keys and said, "Congratulations. Now go pick up your brothers from football practice." From that day on, I drove everywhere, and when friends would come to town, I would drive them to the mountains. Friends were always stunned by the beauty, and I began to feel proud of the mountains - a tiny claim to them - after an itinerant childhood. I was always searching for home with moving so much and being the new kid. We go back every year - we even found Maggie Valley on a road trip when the kids were tiny. When I began to write Gentle's Holler, I picked the most beautiful place I could think of - the Smoky Mountains. My dream is to live there again and teach at a university and write my novels. I have never felt really like Los Angeles is home - I love our friends and our lives, but it's not home.

GI: Thanks Kerry - we hope you come back to stay. In the meantime, everyone here at Gratz Industries wishes you the best of success with Louisiana's Song!