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Well, well, as we predicted a few days ago, BookCon is becoming a major brand for ReedPOP’s  portfolio, and it’s getting a major boost with the announcement that this year’s New York Comic Con will have it’s very own BookCon @ NYCC. The event — which will be open only to NYCC badge holders — […]

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Once again, publishers, publicists, booksellers, bibliophiles, and other assorted individuals converged for the annual BookExpo America trade show, held last week. And once again, I joined those 18,000 trades people, returning to Chicago just a month after C2E2. As a change of pace, the show was moved to Chicago (last seen locally in 2004), and […]

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Speaking of ReedPOP, BookCon, the festival of literary superstars that owes more to Comic-Con than to a book faire, was held as a one day event following this year’s BEA (Book Expo America) in Chicago. According to PW’s Claire Kirch, it was a hit: The biggest complaint from attendees at this year’s BookCon literary fanfest […]

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ReedPop has published an e-book entitled 12 Books You Can’t Miss at BookCon 2015. This digital project contains excerpts from 12 highly anticipated books.

According to the press release, “each author has also written a unique, personalized note addressing BookCon fans.” Below, we’ve posted the full list of books.

Titles Featured in 12 Books You Can’t Miss at BookCon 2015

• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
• Another Day by David Levithan
• Soundless by Richelle Mead
• You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir by Felicia Day
• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
• I Justine: An Analog Memoir by Justine Ezarik
• The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
• Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
• Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
• Off the Page by Jodi Picoult & Samantha Van Leer
• Killing Monica by Candace Bushnell
• The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand

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BookCon—the consumer-focused book show that is tacked on to the trade BEA show—is expanding to two days this year, May 30-31, with way more authors, more exhibitors and more more. And there will be a very cool panel on comics, on  Saturday, May 30th at 11:30am. Here’s the logline:

 COMICS ARE AWESOME!

Join comics superstars Ben Hatke (Little Robot), Jenni Holm (Sunny Side Up), Jeff Smith (Bone), and Raina Telgemeier (Sisters) as they talk about how comics work, how they make their own comics, and what makes comics so completely awesome.  If you’re a fan of comics, don’t miss this great discussion – it’ll have amazing authors sharing their latest work and exciting art drawn right before your eyes!  Moderated by Heidi MacDonald (Publishers Weekly).

That’s right, this super awesome panel will be moderated by me; I’ll try to live up to the awesomeness. But getting to listen to four such talented creators in a whole new arena is a very exciting challenge. Be there!

Ticket information for BookCon are in the above link.

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Actress/author Mindy Kaling, star of the Fox series \"The Mindy Project,\" is teaming up with B.J. Novak, her former co-star on “The Office,” to kick off BookCon.

The two will take to the stage on Saturday, May 30 at 11:00 AM.  The two actors join BookCon’s impressive list of bestselling authors and Hollywood players already on the agenda.

Speakers at the show also include: Julianne Moore, Nick Offerman, John Hodgman, Taye Diggs, Rainbow Rowell, Mamrie Hart, Meg Cabot, Jodi Picoult, Jacqueline Woodson, Sherman Alexie and David Levithan.

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Saturday morning (May 31, 2014) I woke early with a feeling of joy and excitement. Several hundred miles away from me, a group of eight men and women were in New York City, getting ready for their session at Book Con 2014 (BookCon is part of Book Expo America, BEA for short). The weeks, days, and hours prior to their session were--for me--a roller coaster of highs and lows. I cannot imagine what it was like for them. What follows is the story of We Need Diverse Books as I experienced it. It is my thank you and shout out to a group that sparked a moment and movement that may mark the turning point in the all white world of children's books...

In April, two things happened. BEA announced a panel of blockbuster kidlit writers. That panel was composed of four men and a cat. And, BookCon announced its line-up of authors. This "blindingly white" situation prompted indignation amongst a lot of people. A group was formed. That group is We Need Diverse Books. Their goal was/is to promote books that showcase and promote diversity of content, and diversity of authors that create that content. On May 28th, Aisha Saeed wrote about the upcoming trip to NYC.

I followed the campaign when it was launched in late April, offering help as I could behind-the-scenes, but mostly I used social media to promote the We Need Diverse Books campaign. This is the first graphic the WNDB team released:

Gorgeous, isn't it? The energy radiating from the team was inspiring. With twitter driving it, the campaign took off around the world. Media covered it. The result? BookCon invited the team to do a session in NYC on Saturday morning.

On the 29th (Thursday), I made a graphic with the WNDB logo and location info for their session. I started to tweet it:



On Friday morning (May 30), excitement was building. Ilene Wong of the WNDB team sent this tweet:



My excitement grew when I saw tweets of photos of large displays announcing the location of the WNDB session:



That excitement was tamped down a bit as I read tweets from Cheryl Willis Hudson of Just Us Books. She was walking through the exhibit halls at BEA, looking for books within the diverse framework.  She didn't see much, but did take photos and sent them out. Aren't they terrific? Here's her photo of Because They Marched at the Holiday House booth:



And here's a photo she snapped of Jacqueline Woodson signing books. See what Cheryl said? "Long line" --- cool!


 Here's more photos Cheryl sent out:












As I read tweets from Cheryl and those in the We Need Diverse Books hashtag on twitter, I saw that Cinco Punto Press had tweeted a photo of Tim Tingle's House of Purple Cedar. It was there, on their table, at BEA. I retweeted their photo:



There were to be two other sessions at BEA that focused on diversity. I tweeted info on them, too. One was "Multicultural Publishers in Conversation." Here's that flyer. As you can see, Just Us Books and Cinco Punto Press were scheduled for that conversation on Saturday at 12:45.



Here's the flyer for the third session, "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?":



And Jacqueline Woodson snapped a way-cool photo of Matt de la Pena arriving at her house. They were going to head over to the Javits center together.

As 10:00 AM drew near, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks tweets from the conference were growing in number.




I saw that the WNDB team had created swag!


And panelist Grace Lin had a "cheat sheet" handout with ways that booksellers can hand-sell books to consumers who shy away from books by or about people of color (get the pdf from her blog):



I wondered how big the room was but when the first photos of the room (as it filled up) started to come across twitter, I estimated 200 chairs. This photo was taken by Ilene Wong, as she notes, 35 minutes before the panel started.


And...


And of course, people in the audience were taking/tweeting LOTS of photos of the panelists:


The room itself filled up and people were turned away (media reports later said there were 300 people in the room, with people in the aisles and three-deep along the back wall). Meanwhile, in the room, the panelists received a terrific reception from the audience:



Panelists delivered powerful remarks that were tweeted and retweeted. Again and again I wished I was in that room rather than hundreds of miles away. I was glad to see tweets indicating that Matt de la Pena had a few things to say about the shut down of the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson Unified School district. Over and over, I was glad for twitter. The emotion captured in photos was astounding.

An unedited audio of the session is now available at the We Need Diverse Books tumblr. No doubt the panelists and WNDB team was bursting with joy once the session ended. Marieke Nijkamp's tweet captures some of their emotion:



I was especially moved by Mike Jung's tweets as he left the conference:



It was VERY poor planning on the part of BEA to offer WNDB and the "Where are the People of Color" session at the same time. I assume it and the "Multicultural Publishers in Conversation" session were both in the program. 

A curious thing, though, was the floor announcement, as captured in this photo tweeted by Daniel Jose Older (photo taken by Tiffany D. Jackson). See the title for the session? How small it is in comparison to the titles of other sessions? And doesn't it look like it was pasted on there? Why?!



Of course, Daniel's jab ("Diversity is so awesome!!!!) is directed at conference planners, and not diversity itself. I don't know if he made it to the 12:45 session. Cheryl Willis Hudson was there and tweeted some photos. Here's one:



Today (June 2, 2014), several recaps of BEA were loaded online. I especially liked what Lyn Miller Lachmann said in her piece, and what Allie Bruce said in hers. Both are committed to diversity, and their commitment shows in their writing. I loved hearing the voices of Ellen Oh, Lamar Giles, and Jacqueline Woodson in their interview with NPR. Claire Kirch's recap for Publishers Weekly is here. Among the things you'll read is that WNDB is working with the National Education Association, and that Lee and Low is launching a "New Visions Award." The big news? That a book festival is being planned...

A good many people have been pushing for diversity for a very long time. With respect to Native people objecting, I think back to William Apes, a Pequot man who was raised by a white family for a portion of his childhood. He read the books they gave him, and because of what he read, was afraid of Indians! He wrote about that fear as an adult, in his Son of the Forest, published in 1831.

In June of 2014, it feels like some substantial change will take hold because the demographics in the country are shifting dramatically. I am optimistic. And--I look forward to meeting members of the WNDB team in Washington DC in 2016 at a festival of diversity in children's books! The plans are in the works. Till then, AICL stands with We Need Diverse Books. This is a cheesy closure but I'll use it anyway... STAY TUNED.

A special note of thanks to Cheryl Willis Hudson of Just Us Books for all that she shared from BEA.

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I met Philip Gulley at Book Expo.  He is so warm and F(f)riendly. AND I got his new book.  It seems that Sam got "released" from his Friends Meeting in Harmony for standing in for the Unitarian minister for awhile.  I can't wait to read that one.

 I think I will avoid BookCon in the future.  It WAS awesome.  John Green spoke and the crowd waiting for him acted like they were waiting to see the Beatles - except most of them only have a vague notion of who the Beatles were.

Another thing about Book Con that was wonderful was the HUGE number - HUGE! - of younger readers on the floor.  What a great marketing idea!  Give your best now-and-potential customers access to their favorite authors?  Feed the future, publisher-folk.

So, maybe?  I might change my mind about BookCon.  The energy was amazing.   However, the Saturday crowd is always bigger.  The lines to meet authors were extremely long.  And I left my schedule of events on the BUS!!!  I will write my must-see events on my skin next time.

Well, I just remembered that I have MUCH to do today and time is fugit-ing.

Be well.  Read.

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The real question about Santa Barbara killings?

How some feel about diversity entering the SF/F world

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This Saturday the previously business only trade show Book Expo America will turn into the very first BookCon, an event that is open to the public (8000 advance tickets have been sold) and very much modelled on the successful New York Comic-Con. Both shows are run by Reed Exhibitions, the world’s biggest business-to-business (B2B) event planner, but BookCon is being run by ReedPop, the consumer show arm of Reed. Although Lance Fensterman, a frequently quoted personage on this site, runs ReedPop, BookCon’s manager is Brien McDonald, who has been working on BEA proper for five years. I was offered a spot to interview McDonald, and given my fascination with convention culture, I couldn’t turn down the chance.

In some ways, the coming of BookCom was inevitable. I’ve been attending BEA for years, and it’s a perfectly nice trade show, but when compared with the energy and excitement of a Comic-Con, it’s a wet noodle—which is weird because prose authors are way more popular and famous than comics creators! Yet both organizers and publishers have struggled with the idea of how to bring the passion of book readers to an event like a Comic-Con. Publishers have been wary of going face to face with the public, and the logistics of the event weren’t clear.

But a solution has been found. While tomorrow and Friday will be the traditional BEA with trade only programming and author signings, exhibitors who want to remain for BookCon will all be set up in a specific area that will convert to a consumer show, where for the price of only $30 you can look at books and meet and hear authors like John Green, Jodi Picoult, David Mitchell, Holly Black, Carl Hiasson, Stan Lee, and so on. Some of the celebrity authors from BEA will be hanging around like Amy Poehler, Jason Segal and Jason Bateman. And the film version of Green’s beloved novel The Fault in Our Stars will be given the equivalent of a Hall H presentation with a panel featuring the producers and Green. (And probably a star or two unless I miss my guess.)

Given that many of these authors successfully appear at actual comic-cons, it’s really only the quiet—and hugely popular—lakes of mainstream fiction and non fiction “fandom” that are being accessed here. While the whole idea seems sounds—book fairs around the country like the huge Miami Book Fair or the bustling Brooklyn Book Fair are hugely popular for instance—BookCon stumbled right out of the gate with the announcement of its first panel, “Blockbuster Reads: Meet the Kids Authors That Dazzle”– which happened to feature four white men, Daniel Handler, Jeff Kinney, James Patterson, and Rick Riordan. In a world where, unlike comics, female authors and readers are dominant, this seemed pretty odd. (Rachel Renee Russell, the African American author of the Dork Diaries series has since been added to the panel.) As if this wasn’t enough, the second list of guests was all white—unless you count Grumpy Cat, who is Siamese. The social media outrage was so intense this time that a whole hashtag was coined, #WeNeedDiverseBooks. And in response a panel on diversity was added.

If BookCon is a lot like Comic-Con in this regard, it may eventually be more like it in the pleasurable engagement of readers with their literary idols. As I am always saying, meeting the author of your favorite book is an experience that you will remember for the rest of your life. It’s done all the time as those book fairs I mentioned, signings and other book events show. Translating that experience from the orders and meetings focused world of BEA to a whole new experience may take a while. But, the transition is, I feel pretty sure, just the start of an even wider application of the Comic-Con Experience to other things.

THE BEAT: I was really curious about BookCon and how it evolved. People have been talking about this kind of thing for a long time, but how did Power Readers Day go to BookCon under ReedPop? I know Reed runs BEA but how did BookCon go over to ReedPop?

MCDONALD: We have this long standing amazing b-to-b show, which is Book Expo America, with so much great content there and so many great authors available to us. Since we’re in New York City, the perfect place for a book and pop culture event, it just made sense to take the leverage and the equity we had in the publishing world through Book Expo, and then infuse that with the ReedPop way of doing things with fans first. We had a lot of great things kind of right in our hands, and we were able to collaborate and bring in the ReedPop philosophy to books and book related content.

THE BEAT: I know for years, everybody has been looking at BEA and then they look at New York Comic Con. And they’re like, “hmmmmmm?” [laughs]

MCDONALD: This is my fifth BEA and my previous job and still a lot of what I do is working with our key clients in the publishing world, and I wish I had a dime for every time I went to a meeting and were asked, can we get some of that Comic Con energy? Not that there’s anything wrong with the b-to-b side of Book Expo, that has a distinct purpose and it’s excellent and it’s great and it’s achieving certain objectives, but people like the zeal of a fan based event.

THE BEAT: Right. The zeal, that’s a great way of putting it actually. What kind of transition did you make for the show?

MCDONALD: The Power Reader Day, that brand is over. It went pretty well the last year, but to plug fans and consumers into a b-to-b event doesn’t work all that well. And that’s no one’s fault, it’s just not the way that it should be. So we decided that Saturday would be BookCon and we’re going to put a concerted effort towards creating a fan experience. So we went out to every client and said if you want to activate with consumers here’s how to do it. If you don’t, that’s totally cool, if you want BEA to remain a trade only show for you, you’re more than welcome to do that. Many Book Expo exhibitors feel that BookCon is not applicable to them—distributors, e-book producers, and so on. It doesn’t make sense to pour consumers into those booths because there’s nothing there for either side.

In addition to the core exhibitors that will be there, we also have I think 45 new exhibitors coming in solely for Saturday in BookCon. So it’s cool from that perspective. But as far as the publishers that have decided to activate with consumers it’s who you think they are, Random House, Simon and Schuster, Abrams, MacMillan, and Chronicle, Diamond Distributors, Andrews McMeel, so it’s really cool. Publishers have been really receptive and they’ve raised their hands to do some cool things.

THE BEAT: Well I’m fascinated by this story because I have been covering Comic Cons for many, many years, and the rise of Comic Con culture that we’ve seen in the past decade, spiraling out of control really for the past 5 years. I’m fascinated to see the change, because let’s face it, books are a lot more popular than comics. But a lot of people just like to quietly read a book about economics, and they’re probably not going to stand in line to meet the guy who wrote the book…but maybe they would if it was Thomas Piketty!

MCDONALD: Yes I think you’re definitely going to see that. There’s a film tie in to John Green’s work, but look at John Green on the Today Show when he was in Miami last week. Hollywood talent is attached, but John Green is at the center of that story. And that’s kind of what BookCon is trying capture, things like True Detective where people are so passionate about that but it was based on an older book that no one would have known about unless there was a TV show. Reading is very much a private enterprise, but it’s something that people are really passionate about and they build a community around it. I think one reason that cons are blowing up is [as a way to meet in person, as opposed to social media.]

THE BEAT: Well it is very experiential. The programming with Amy Poehler and Martin Short, obviously there’s some celebrity elements to it, but you also have a lot of just very famous book authors, much loved book authors. How did you approach the programming? What did you look at in Comic Con and say we’ve got to do that for BookCon?

MCDONALD: When we started our conversation we had a whole lot of equity in the publishing world due to our work on BEA and to Comic Con. So we went out and just explained the concept to publishers. We pursued some people hard like we made hard asks, particularly authors, but then other publishers said hey this author has a super passionate audience, we’ve done a lot of cool live events with him or her, here’s what we could do. So we kind of went for content that has a great following, but we also looked at the cross over in pop culture too. We wanted stories that cross over into all different elements. And obviously we were able to make some big hits with a lot of actual celebrities, Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Amy Poehler, Martin Short, those type of folks, and then also some celebrity type authors and then, I don’t want to say cult authors, but then you have someone who’s like a super literary guy like David Mitchell who has an amazing following. And then there’s Brandon Stanton, the photojournalist from Humans In New York. That’s someone to me who is very cool, telling a great story, and brings something different to BookCon.

THE BEAT: I notice you have speed dating which is a very popular event from Reed’s Comic Con events also. Funnily enough, it says registration for females looking for males is closed. At Comic-Cons it’s sometimes the other way around. [General laughter] Anyway, you’re also bringing these kind of fun, social events, I guess you could say.

MCDONALD: Social’s the perfect term. We want it to be immersive, we want people to go there from, the show’s open from 9, there’s activities going on from 9 to 6 and we want people to be busy all day and having a great time, doing different things, so something like speed dating is a perfect interactive activity. But then maybe you want to sit down and take in a panel or you want of embrace your comics side and go and see Stan Lee, but then your literary side and go see David Mitchell. So we try to offer people a pretty active lively day that has kind of different points. And the speed dating thing was definitely taken right from the Comic Con model.

THE BEAT: You also have some actual Comic-Con type events like Stan Lee and the Great Graphic Novel Panel. Is this an attempt to appeal to NYCC type attendees?

MCDONALD: Oh for sure. We definitely welcome them in and then hope they find some of our content enthralling.

THE BEAT: BookCon unfortunately got its most notoriety for the whole diversity issue. And there was sort of a, mis-messaging, or what would you call it?

MCDONALD: Diversity in books and in the publishing industry and in everything in life I mean is critical. And we wanted our authors to be as diverse as possible and we work with publishers to help ensure that’s happening. Now, there was what would we call it, I guess kind of a backlash about who we announced, and if I could turn back the clock I would change the announcement strategy a little bit. In the first [group of] authors that we announced, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. But as we kept saying, we’re not done yet. So by the time we get to the event on May 31st I think we’ll have a really good representation of authors from all sorts of backgrounds. And I feel confident that we’ve now achieved that, but when we came out of the gates, that wasn’t shown in the initial announcement. If I could change that we certainly would have, but there’s pressure to announce an event and build buzz and that kind of thing. So we went out with some of the bigger names that were not completely reflective of what our event will be when it goes off on May 31st. Since then we’ve been able to work with our partners and bring in some awesome content.

THE BEAT: Is there anything about BookCon that you’re especially looking forward to or you’re really excited about?

MCDONALD: The whole thing! When you’re planning these events you just want to get there. I’ve been in it from the B-to-b side like working BEA, but I’m actually really excited to be in with passionate book fans, which I consider myself one of, But I’m just really interested to see who turns out at the show and how they interact and what they love.

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Morning, folks!  I do believe my comments feature is busted at the moment, so please don’t be alarmed if you can’t get anything to go through.  It’s frustrating for me as well.  Feels like an echo chamber in here.  Hm.

• Well, as you may have heard, A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy will not be continuing here on the SLJ blog network.  Liz Burns posted her final post just this past Friday.  But fear not!  This is not the end of Tea Cozy as we know it.  Liz has a new site so update those bookmarks and RSS feeds and get thee over there.  Her post on the We Need Diverse Books Campaign should start you out right.

• Speaking of fellow SLJ blogs, I admit that I don’t often read the excellent Adult Books 4 Teens since the topic isn’t really in my wheelhouse.  Still, recently Mark Flowers had a great post up on The Problem with Stories About Amnesia Solved by Robert Glancy and Jason Bourne.  He gave a nice shout out to my husband’s blog Cockeyed Caravan in the post saying, “Anyone who cares about narrative, movies, or both should be reading Matt Bird’s Cockeyed Caravan blog. He spends most of his time there deconstructing the narrative structure of Hollywood movies and explaining how and why movies do (and don’t) work. But while he only discusses movies (and usually big-budget Hollywood ones at that), his insights are invaluable for anyone interested in the way narrative works in any kind of fiction. I’ve cited his ideas many times over on my personal blog and in conversations with other book lovers.”  Love you, Mark!  Thanks!

• And since I’m just on a bloggers-discussing-bloggers kick, I was so pleased to hear that Sue Bartle, Mary Ann Cappiello, Marc Aronson, Kathleen Odean, and Myra Zarnowski are restarting the excellent Common Corps blog Uncommon Corps.  In an era where so many people are desperate for CCSS info, we’re all desperate for intelligent conversation on the topic.  This blog provides that, as well as amazing curricular tie-ins you might not have otherwise known about.  Read Compare & Contrast for a taste of what I mean.

• Awww.  The Moomin characters are now regular dining companions of lonely Japanese restaurant attendees.  I’d be game for eating with one.  Just don’t seat me with Little My.  I don’t trust that gal.  Thanks to mom for the link.

• Hm. Maybe it’s a good thing I’ll be missing out on this year’s Book Expo.  Granted, it’s exhausting even in the best of times, but I still get a bit of a kick out of it.  Of course, this year there’s been a bit of a brouhaha with BookCon (which I have never even been aware of before).  One of the problems with the internet is the fact that when controversies arise, few are willing to recap the troubles.  Fortunately the Melville House post Wear shades to BookCon, it’ll be blindingly white in there tells you everything you need to know.  And more!

• “When white writers come to me and ask if it’s OK for them to write about people of color, it seems as if they’re asking for my blessing. I can’t give them my blessing because I don’t speak for other people of color. I only speak for myself, and I have personal stakes in specific kinds of narratives.”  Since author Malinda Lo co-founded Diversity in YA she’s been getting a lot of these questions over the years.  Her piece Should white people write about people of color? is your required reading of the day.  Many thanks to Phil Nel for pointing it out to me.

• By the way, in the course of looking at Malinda’s work I discovered the blog Disability in Kidlit which, somehow, I’d never run across before.  Since it’s been around since June 2013 it’s hardly new, but I’m still going to call a New Blog Alert on it, since I’ve only just discovered it myself.  It’s a blog about “Reviews, guest posts, and discussions about the portrayal of disabilities in MG/YA fiction.”  There are a couple books out this year that I’d love their opinion of.

• Oh!  This happened.  So I’ll admit that I’m more of a podcast listener than a radio listener.  And when NYPL’s lovely PR department asked if I’d be interested in talking on the Leonard Lopate show, I confess I didn’t quite know who he was.  Fortunately I learned pretty quickly, and even was lucky enough to meet his replacement Andy Borowitz instead (whom I had heard of since he moderated the National Book Awards the year I got to go).  Our talk is up and it’s called Our Favorite Children’s Stories.  Mostly a lot of talk about classics, but I was able to work in some shout-outs for three more recent books.  The comments section is where the recommendations and memories are really hopping, though.  Good stuff is to be found there.

Take a gander at this article on WWI librarian uniforms and one thing becomes infinitely clear: Librarians during The Great War has it DOWN in terms of clothing, man.  Look at that style. That look!  That form!  Oh, what the heck.  Let’s bring them back!  At the very least I’d love an ALA-issued arm patch.  Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

Actually, this pairs rather well with that last piece.  Sayeth Bookriot, Enough With the “Sexy Library” Thing Already.  Amen.

That they are seriously considering making a film out of A Monster Calls is amazing enough to me as it is.  That it may potentially star Felicity Jones and Liam Neeson?  Having a harder time wrapping my head around that one.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link!

In case you missed it the Américas Award for Children’s & Young Adult Literature was announced recently.  The winners?  Parrots Over Puerto Rico illustrated by Susan Roth and co-authored by Susan Roth and Cindy Trumbore won the award proper while Diego Rivera: An Artist for the People by Susan Goldman Rubin and Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote illustrated and written by Duncan Tonatiuh took home the honors.  Lots of great Honorable Mentions too, so check it out.

Whoo boy.  The term “mansplaining” just seems loaded to the gills.  That said, this piece from Inside Higher Ed tackles the definition itself with a look at the film version of The Wizard of Oz.  I always liked the Scarecrow best too, and assumed that when Dorothy grew up she’d end up with Hunk.  Feel free to pick apart the various ramifications behind that bit of childhood matchmaking, if you will.

I don’t usually quote from the Cynopsis Kids newsletters, and technically neither of these have much to do with children’s books, but there were two recent pieces that concerned children’s entertainment that I thought you might like to know about as much as I did.

Get ready for Hulu‘s first original kids series. Debuting this Friday is Doozers, the Fraggle Rock spinoff produced by the Jim Henson Co. that packs a full 52 episodes and will be available advertiser-free on both Hulu and Hulu Plus. The preschool series revolved around an animated gaggle of kids called The Pod Squad– Spike, Molly Bolt, Flex and Daisy Wheel–who learn to design and build different objects. Other Hulu Kids content includes Fraggle Rock, Pokemon and SpongeBob.

In a move more in line with kids’ bedtimes, beginning Tuesday, April 29, new eps of Syfy‘s original series Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge will air at 9p vs. their current 10p Tuesday slot. The competition series features 10 aspiring creature creators competing to out-imagine one another in challenges where they will build everything from mechanical characters to whimsical beasts. The stakes are high. Winner walks with $100,000 and a contract working at the world-renowned Creature Shop.

• Daily Image:

I think my brother-in-law Steve sent me this one.  Don’t know where it’s from but I sort of adore it. Wouldn’t mind one of my own.

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As has been reported at BookRiot, BookCon -- the Saturday of BookExpo, geared towards readers -- has announced a number of guest authors that have one thing in common: they are all white.

As Rebecca Joines Schinsky writes, "First came the report that one of BookCon’s main features, a panel of the rock stars of kid lit, was comprised entirely of white male writers. . . .Then this morning, after Entertainment Weekly announced that John Green will also speak at BookCon, the people of Twitter went looking for the entire BookCon line-up. Lo and behold, it also has a remarkable diversity problem. As in: there is none."

Why does the make up of the authors at BookCon -- or, for that matter, at any event -- matter?

Here's something I learned early on, when putting together booklists and displays. It's something I think most people who assemble lists or organize events figure out pretty early on: check yourself and your work product. Make sure what you've put together is balanced, a true representation. In other words, if you sit back and see something is all white, or all male, or -- you get the picture -- you need to go back and do it again.

Why does it matter?

It matters because it looks like the message sent here is that the only authors who will get readers to buy tickets are white authors. And I refuse to believe that.

It matters because it looks like the default setting in reading is white. And while I reluctantly acknowledge that is true for some, I think those of us involved in the reading world need to push back against it. And one of those ways is not presenting all white booklists and panelists.

It matters because panels sell books. As someone who has had the good fortune to attend many a book event over the past several years -- from small to big -- I can attest that an author being on a panel makes me want to read their book. So the exposure by being on a panel? It matters.

This isn't asking for popular, well-known authors to step down. This isn't about not having popular authors. It's about everyone being aware and doing what they can. So, yes, it's on the organizers to look at who they are inviting.. And it's on the publishers to look at who they are promoting and sending to events, so that some authors go because their publishers pay and others can only go if they have the money to pay their own expenses. And it's on the authors to ask about who else is on their panels. And yes, it's on readers to be aware and attend those events that reflect the diverse world we live in.

Diversity isn't someone else's problem. It's not pointing fingers at others. It's looking in the mirror and seeing our role in the problem. And doing something about it.

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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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