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.
Hi ho. Time to round-up what Jules and I have been up to over at our Wild Things blog (book promotion for bloggers means more blogging, you see). Here’s the long and short of what you may have missed:
Whew! We’re busy little bees, aren’t we?
- Tra la! It’s coming! The greatest conference of children’s and YA literary bloggers is coming! And Liz Burns not only has the info but also the reason such an event is cool. Quoth she: “What I love about KidLitCon is it’s about the bloggers. Full stop. That is the primary purpose and mission of KidLitCon. It’s about what the bloggers care about. Oh, there may be authors and publishers there, presenting, and that can be great and amazing. But it’s not about them. They are there to support the blogging community: they are not there saying, what can the blogging community do for us.” Amen, sister. Preach! By the way, the theme this year is Blogging Diversity in Young Adult and Children’s Lit: What’s Next? Be there or be square.
- So there’s a new Children’s Book Review Editor at the New York Times and by some strange quirk of fate her name is NOT alliterative (note Julie Just, Pamela Paul, and Sarah Smith). Her name? Maria Russo. Which pretty much means I’ll be tracking her like a bloodhound at the next Eric Carle Honors event. Trouble is, we don’t wear nametags at that event so I’ll probably be the crazy lady grabbing all the women, staring intently into their eyes. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I blame Saving Mr. Banks. One little children’s writer biopic comes out where the writer isn’t seen as all kittens and sunshine (I still loathe you Miss Potter and Finding Neverland) and all hell breaks loose. Now we hear that McG is going to do a Shel Silverstein biopic on the one hand and that there are plans to examine the relationship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on the other. I’m just counting the minutes until someone tackles Margaret Wise Brown or the whole Anne-Carroll-Moore-didn’t-like-Stuart-Little story (which you just KNOW is in the works somewhere).
- Speaking of films, when I heard that Alan Snow’s delightful Here Be Monsters was being turned into a film called The Boxtrolls I was incredulous. That book? The one I couldn’t get kids to even look at until they made a blue paperback version? I mean I liked it (it came out in a year when sentient cheese was all the rage in children’s literature) but how long was this film in production for crying out loud? Doesn’t matter because according to iO9 it’s brilliant. Good to know.
- So Phil Nel, our ever intrepid professor with a hankering for children’s literature, went to ComicCon. Best of all, he’s willing to report his findings to us (so that we don’t have to go!). Read up on Part 1, Part 2 (my favorite for the cameo of Bananaman), Part 3, and Part 4. Phil was there promoting his Barnaby books (which he co-edited with Eric Reynolds). These include Barnaby Volume One: 1942-1943 (2013) and Barnaby Volume Two: 1944-1945 (2014).
- Did I know that Amanda Palmer wrote a song about what she owes to Judy Blume? I do now.
- This is what separates the true fangirls from the poseurs. Thanks to the CBC for the link.
- Two Little Free Libraries have sprung up near my home across the street from the Harlem branch of NYPL. I couldn’t be more pleased because they mean just one thing to me . . . a place to give away my books!!! Culling books is terribly enjoyable. It’s also part of BookRiot’s incredibly useful post 8 Tips for Moving When You Have a Ton of Books.
Two words. Bookish shoes. My personal favorites include . . .
Remember, by the way, that my sister told you how to make some of these yourself. Thanks to Mom for the link.
First and foremost, hello. How are you? Are you having a nice day? So nice to see you here, but before we go any further I must tell you that you very much need to leave me. Just for a little while. As you may have heard, my book with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta, Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature, is coming out August 5th. To prepare, Jules and I have created a blog that posts a story a day that got cut from our final book. Here’s what you may have missed so far:
- A story about the greatest ALA Conference photo of all time.
- A tale of all the various authors and illustrators who have gotten advice from Maurice Sendak over the years.
- Advice on why you should never invite Hans Christian Andersen to stay the night.
- A tribute to everybody’s favorite Wicked Angel.
- Two rough broads / Newbery and Caldecott winners.
- A tribute to the fantastic Nancy Garden.
That said, here’s all the other news what wuz.
- All the world is ah-buzz with the information that J.K. Rowling just released on Pottermore. Rita Skeeter is still reporting (so no, there is no justice in the universe) and she has the scoop on 34-year-old Harry today, as well as his buddies. For my part, I’m just socked that I’m only two years older than Harry. Makes my crush on Snape that much more creepy, I guess.
- One of my favorite blogs, Pop Goes the Page by the Cotsen Children’s Library, is turning one! Best of all, if you send them your artistic birthday well-wishes, the selected winner will receive a $150 online shopping spree at Discount School Supply. Not half bad! Go do that thing.
- Credit Martha Parravano for creating a quite incisive interpretation of the Caldecott winners and near misses of 2013. Lots to chew on, even if you don’t always agree.
- There were many reasons to attend this last ALA Conference in Vegas. But three in particular are standing out for me today. Reason #1: I could have seen Mo Willems and Daniel Handler sharing a stage at the same time. THAT would be an event well worth witnessing. Can I get a witness who was there?. Reason #2: Starr LaTronica’s Shoes.
Need I say more?
Reason #3: This blog got a little shout out in Brian Floca’s Caldecott speech. See if you can spot where it is (hint: it’s not by name).
- Anywho, I wasn’t able to attend that conference because of my pregnancy. I also wasn’t able to attend this conference: The Second Annual 21st Century Nonfiction Conference. Doggone it. Held in lovely New Paltz, NY, I was pleased at least to see that my co-worker Amie Wright kicked butt and took names. You can read a great write-up of the event here.
- I know you have a lot going on today, but if you enjoyed watching Faerie Tale Theater with Shelley Duvall back in the day then maybe you’ll appreciate this catchy little ditty made out of all the times the charming host said, “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall.” I don’t do ringtones but if I had to choose one . . .
- I can still remember it like it was yesterday. Way back in 1992 I listened to a librarian read Sukey and the Mermaid by Robert D. San Souci (illustrated by Brian Pinkney) to a group of kids. It was remarkable at the time, not just because it featured a black mermaid, but because it featured a mermaid at all. I don’t know if you read my recent review of The Mermaid and the Shoe, but mermaid picture books aren’t exactly prevalent. Well over at Latin@s in Kid Lit, Cindy L. Rodriguez has written the post Diversity Needed Under the Sea: Not All Mermaids Have Blond Hair and Blue Eyes. Their focus is mostly YA, but it’s interesting to note that aside from Sukey, picture book mermaids of color are few and far between. Fairies of color have it even worse.
- Get out your fightin’ gloves. SLJ has just launched the Up for Debate series. Them’s fighting words (literally).
Trying to figure out how we could pull this off in the States. Over in Britain the Story Museum hired a photographer for its 26 Characters exhibition. His mission? To photograph famous authors as their favorite literary characters. The image of Neil Gaiman as Badger from Wind in the Willows circulated a couple months ago. Now more pics have been revealed and they are lovely. Here are two . .
Philip Pullman as Long John Silver
Michael Morpurgo as Magwitch from Great Expectations
Naturally I’m trying to figure out how we could do this here. The Eric Carle Museum could host the images (we’d have a brief debate over whether or not photography is technically “illustration” and then decide ultimately that it was). Or maybe the Rich Michelson Gallery could do it. Then it’s a question of finding a photographer and picking the authors. As for the costumes and make-up, Britain utilized The Royal Shakespeare Company. Can’t really top that but it would be nice to get professionals involved. Pondering, pondering, pondering . . .
Those of you familiar with the Jackson 5 song I’ve referenced in my title are probably now throwing virtual rotten fruit in my general direction. Still, I can’t say it isn’t accurate. This weekend I am pleased to be a speaker at the SCBWI Indiana conference in Zionsville, IN. I haven’t been back in Indiana since my last college reunion in 2010. It’ll be good for me to fill the lungs with some pure uncut Midwestern air once more. A gal need to fill up before heading back into the NYC fray. While you read this I may be zooming up into the clouds above, so enjoy some ephemera in my absence.
Sure. On the one hand Spain’s reading net, highlighted by Boing Boing this week, looks AMAZING. But while it may work well for Spanish children, you just know that our kids would be leaping and jumping all over that thing within seconds. Plus, there appears to be a gigantic hole in it that’s just asking for trouble. Or maybe that’s how you get in. That would make sense.
- Views From the Tesseract has reached its 100th post and as a result Stephanie came up with What Stories Have Taught Me in 100 Small Lessons. It’s nice without being sentimental. Plus, if you’re in the market for good quotes from children’s books, this here’s the place to go for your one stop shopping!
- My l’il sis is at it again. This time she came up with a way to create comic book shoes. I cannot help but think that this might be possible with old Advanced Readers Copies. Or YA craft programs. Yeah. I think you can tell that the next time I go to the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet I’m recruiting Kate to help me with my outfit. She made one shoe superheroes and one supervillains.
For the record, she also did a post on how to make a hollow book. If you read it, just remember that the world is FULL of extra Harry Potter 7s. One or two less isn’t gonna hurt anything.
- And while we’re feeling crafty, Delightful Children’s Books has come up with such a good idea: a Bookish Advent Calendar. Genius! I may have to steal this idea myself. If I do, though, I’d better get cracking. Start placing holds now. December is practically nigh!
- On the more serious side of things, Marjorie Ingall writes great posts no matter where she is, but it’s her titles that consistently blow me away. At the blog Modern Loss (a site for “navigating your life after a death”) Marjorie wrote 5 Kids Books That Go There: The best of the ‘talking to kids about death’ genre (drumroll, please). It’s a strong five. I’m trying to think what I might add. This year’s Missing Mommy by Rebecca Cobb, maybe. That book ripped my heart from my chest and danced a tarantella on the remains.
- *sigh* Well, if nothing else, this clarifies for me who exactly “McKenna” is and why folks keep asking me to buy her books. And Saige, for that matter. Alexandra Petri writes a rather amusing piece on what has happened to American Girl.
I’m far less upset about the fact that they’re turning What Does the Fox Say? into a picture book. For one thing, I’m weirdly thrilled that the Norwegian YouTube hit sensation has a Norwegian illustrator. And one that clearly has a sense of humor. Hey! Whatever it takes to get some new names from overseas into the American market. At the very least, I want to see it (though I’m fairly certain it is NOT the first picture book to be based on a YouTube sensation). Thanks to Playing By the Book and Matt for the info.
Today, I show something I may have shown before. It’s lithographs of famous books where the text from the story makes up the image itself. Here are some examples:
A Christmas Carol
Alice in Wonderland
A Little Princess
Thanks to Marci for the link!
Previous shoe-related posts may be found here.
Thanks for the shout-out Bets!
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.