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Save Me a Seat
by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan
Scholastic, May 2016

"Joe and Ravi might be from very different places, but they're both stuck in the same place: SCHOOL. 

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Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl's Courage Changed Music pairs along a musical theme with Trombone Shorty. Drum Dream Girl is inspired by a Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba's taboo against female drummers, while Trombone Shorty tells the story of a New Orleans trombone player who not only made his dream of becoming a musician come true through a lifetime of hard work, but also has begun the Trombone Shorty Foundation to preserve the musical history of New Orleans.






The Case For Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage and Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah both tell stories of holding fast to a dream.






Growing up Pedro: How the Martinez Brothers Made It from the Dominican Republic All the Way to the Major Leagues and (the 2009 title) You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! would make a nice baseball pairing that feature players from the Dominican Republic alongside a Jewish player from Brooklyn.

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Kandace Coston is LEE & LOW’s summer intern. She is one of five recipients of the We Need Diverse Books Internship Program inaugural grant. She graduated from Barnard College where she majored in music and took every creative literature class possible. In her free time, Kandace pursues her other interests, which include American Sign Language, handmade jewelry, and composing cinematic adventures!

Intimate. Calm. Inviting. That’s the atmosphere of the LEE & LOW BOOKS office in New York City. Twelve floors removed from the noisy hustle and heat of the city streets, this diverse books publisher’s office is a small levitating oasis.

I first noticed the Quiet during my interview in late May for the summer internship position in Marketing and Publicity. I stepped off the elevator, opened the door slowly (in compliance with the instructional sign), and instantly noticed the cool and calm. Initially I found the Quiet unnerving like the eerie silence in a horror movie that cues a tragic event. But the inviting display of bright books put my nervously pounding heart at ease. They make children’s books. I thought to myself. They make magic. I gazed at the sunny, shiny titles and was instantly relaxed.

One month later I started my internship excited to be a small part of the magic LEE & LOW BOOKS creates. I was also excited to step over onto the other side of the Quiet. Now that I was an official member of this exclusive team I was sure my ears would tune into the buzz of the office like a radio tuning into a tricky channel. What I found instead was an immense Quiet accompanied only by the hum of a distant printer and the occasional disembodied sneeze. By July I’d surrendered. My ears stopped scanning for transmissions within the white noise that is the office’s Quiet.

As I ceased my mission for sound, I began my mission of getting to know the office. I made appointments with personnel in various departments to learn how the largest publisher of diverse books in the country operates. Everyone I reached out to was more than happy to oblige me which I was grateful for but not surprised by; the office is incredibly friendly and welcoming.

With each interview I learned new facts about children’s books and the publishing industry:

• Children’s books take over a year to create.
• Marketing a book entails intensely creative work.
• The difference between dystopian and post-apocalyptic.
• How to spell apocalyptic.

With each interview I also noticed a recurrence: every person I spoke to is excited about the work they do here. Their faces lit up as they eloquently, passionately, and patiently explained to me how they contribute to the LEE & LOW BOOKS message. Each person brings pride and a distinct expertise to their work that makes them invaluable. Many people in my life are not content with the way they earn a living. It seems the team at LEE & LOW has that life conundrum figured out. I found everyone’s enthusiasm refreshing and encouraging.

Nowadays when I enter the office I’m not caught off guard by the Quiet. Instead I’ve realized that within the Quiet is progress. The diligent staff members of Lee & Low Books are busy bettering the world through children’s literature. In this intimate oasis of an office the Quiet is a sound; the sound of focus and fulfillment.

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Stacy Whitman is Editorial Director and Publisher of Tu Books, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS that publishes diverse science fiction and fantasy for middle grade and young adult readers. In this blog post, she discusses what she is—and is not—looking for from New Visions Award contest submissions.

This year is the second year we’ve held our New Visions Award, a writing contest seeking new writers of color for middle grade and young adult science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Tu Books is a relatively new imprint, and so is our award, which is modeled after the New Voices Award, now in its 15th year of seeking submissions.

Much like the editors who are in charge of the New Voices Award for picture books, for the New Visions Award, I love seeing submissions that follow the submissions guidelines and stories that stand out from a crowd. I look for science fiction, fantasy, and mystery stories that understand the age group they’re targeted at, with strong characters, strong worldbuilding, and if there is a romance, I hope that it avoids cliches.

During the first New Visions Award, our readers made notes on the manuscripts explaining what they enjoyed and what made them stop reading, particularly the things that made them not want to read further than the sample chapters in the initial phase of the contest. For the next few weeks, I’ll delve a little further into those things that made readers stop reading, and then we’ll talk about making your writing have the zing that makes an editor want to read more.

Today, let’s cover the most obvious reasons a New Visions Award reader might stop reading immediately.

• Main character isn’t a person of color
• Unclear if main character is a person of color (& not made clear in any supporting materials)
• Basic formatting rules ignored: single-spaced, no tabs, no paragraph breaks, rules of punctuation ignored to the point it was impossible to read the text
• Chapters at times seemed to be combined to ensure more text would be read, which made them super long and terribly paced
• Duplicate submission from the author (stopped reading the duplicate—of course we read the original!)
• Already read as a regular submission and didn’t see any significant changes
• Author not eligible (published previously in YA or MG, not a person of color, not based in the US)
• Book was a picture book (this would be a New Voices submission, not a New Visions submission) or a short story (not long enough to be a novel)

The obvious solution to making sure your submission is right for this contest is to make sure to read the contest submission guidelines before sending your submission. If you are not a writer of color, or if you live in a country outside the US, we do want to read your manuscript, but not for this contest. Watch our regular submission guidelines for when we’ll open again to unsolicited submissions.

Make sure you format your manuscript in a way that it can be read. If you’re new to writing, be sure to have someone check it over for typos, correct grammar and spelling, correct punctuation, etc. We won’t reject your manuscript for a typo or two, but there is a point at which the story is no longer being communicated because the reader gets tripped up by the errors. Make sure your manuscript is as clean as you can make it.

Next time, we’ll talk about hooking the reader with your story. Happy writing!

Filed under: New Voices/New Visions Award, Publishing 101, Tu Books, Writer Resources Tagged: formatting manuscripts, weneeddiversebooks, writing award, writing contest, writing tips

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Another year, another fantastic ALA Annual, this time in Las Vegas! While “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” we thought it would be OK to break that code, just this one time, in order to share our experiences with you.

Even though the weather was hot (hello triple digits!), attendance was high and spirits were up! We teamed up with the folks of the #weneeddiversebooks campaign to hand out buttons, which were a huge hit! In fact, School Library Journal reported that, “If you ran into a youth services librarian at the American Library Association (ALA) Conference in Las Vegas, odds were good that they were sporting a colorful ‘We Need Diverse Books’ button.”

We kept a white board in our booth, and got some great answers from librarians on why we need diverse books:

Quite a few of our authors and illustrators made it out to Las Vegas and our schedule was packed with signings! Don Tate, Glenda Armand, Frank Morrison, René Colato Lainez, Karen Sandler, Mira Reisberg, John Parra, Susan L. Roth, Cindy Trumbore, and Emily Jiang all stopped by the booth to sign books. In true Vegas style, we kept the party going at the LEE & LOW table!

We were also pleased to host our second Book Buzz panel, “Moving the Needle: Diversity in Children’s Books and How to Make a Difference.” It’s been one year since our successful Book Buzz with Cinco Puntos Press last year, so we wanted to check in again with librarians about what has changed, what hasn’t, and how to keep moving forward.

During the panel, publisher Jason Low talked about some highlights from the diversity movement over the past year. He emphasized that Lee & Low has stuck to its original mission by continuing to make an effort to publish debut authors/illustrators as well as authors/illustrators of color. “Of our 2014 titles, three out of seven are by debut authors and five out of seven are by authors or illustrators of color,” Jason said.

He pointed out some some great milestones from the past year, including the success of the #weneeddiversebooks movement, Lee & Low’s infographics on diversity going viral, the First Book Stories for All project, and more diversity in the Marvel Universe.

Jason also announced that Kirkus Reviews will be seeking to diversify their reviewer pool, and said that several other major review publications have expressed an interest in doing the same. Diverse reviewer pools mean that books can be evaluated for cultural accuracy and that reviewers bring a wide range of perspectives to the table.

In the end, Jason said, we need to get from Diversity 101 stories—stories focused simply on the lack of diversity in children’s books, in very basic terms—to Diversity 102 stories, which address both the complexity of the problem and the range of possible solutions. He encouraged librarians to keep moving the conversation forward within their own communities, and to help parents and teachers build inclusive book collections by creating inclusive, diverse summer reading lists and other recommendations.

Two more big highlights this ALA were award ceremonies for a couple of our books! Cindy Trumbore and Susan L. Roth, the dynamic author/illustrator team of Parrots Over Puerto Rico, were honored at the Sibert Award Ceremony and we couldn’t have been prouder!

Additionally, Killer of Enemies was honored at the American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Awards (AIYLA) ceremony. Tu Books publisher Stacy Whitman attended and shared these photos of children and teens from a local tribe who came to dance at the ceremony:

While we won’t miss the 110-degree heat, we had a great time meeting so many wonderful people and we can’t wait for next year.

If you were at ALA, what were your highlights?

Filed under: Activities and Events, Dear Readers, Fairs/Conventions Tagged: ALA, ALA annual conference, american library association, diversity, las vegas, librarians, weneeddiversebooks

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Thank you, Mandy, for the picture!

Yesterday started with a blogger breakfast/bookstore fest and ended on the couch, burning through the last chapters of Shannon Hale's Dangerous



Without setting out to read a book for the WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, I realized that this book is a perfect fit. Hale's main character was born without her right forearm, but this is not a book about a girl with a disability. It's about a girl who saves the world from an alien invasion.

The last time I checked in with Shannon Hale, she was writing about princesses (who were also all strong girl characters, regardless of their royalty), so this switch to seriously science fiction was quite a shift. But a good storyteller is a good storyteller, and strong characters are strong, whether or not they are missing limbs.

There's too much teen romance for this to be a book I would put in my 5th grade classroom library, but I would definitely recommend it to all of my students (especially the girls) who have read The Hunger Games.

One of my favorite things about this book was the literary references. In the acknowledgements, Hale credits her high school English teachers, and notes that she has quoted Poe, Shakespeare, Keats, Yeats, and Frost.

On page 56, Maisie goes to space for the first time and tries to describe  what it's like to look back at the Earth.

"I wish I could explain better. NASA's next urgent mission should be to send good poets into space so they can describe what it's really like." 

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Like many causes of equality, the issue of diversity in children's literature is nothing new, though I am hopeful that the rising voices across multiple platforms can affect change. But it's also a great time to acknowledge some of the heroes of the cause along the way... or at least those that somehow are connected to the 48 Hour Book Challenge.

Thank you to Reading is Fundamental, who will contribute their Multicultural STEAM Book Collections sponsored by Macy's to be donated by winner to a school or other child serving organization where they will be used. These wonderful collections have been part of the RIF initiative for a while, bringing diverse books to kids who need them. I will award one collection to a random selected winner from all 48 Hour Book Challenge finishers who complete twelve hours or more during the weekend. Thanks again to RIF for their support.

Thank you to A Year of Reading who made me teary-eyed with this:
In honor of all of the reading Pam has inspired over the years with her blog and with 48HBC, and especially because of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks focus this year, we are making a donation in her honor to First Book, a non-profit organization that provides access to new books for children in need.
I am not only touched by the gesture of Franki and Mary Lee, but am so excited that they would donate to another hero of the cause, as First Book stepped up with a commitment to purchase 10,000 copies of diverse books it selects to distribute. And that's just another step for an organization already devoted to the cause of Stories for All.

Another note of appreciation goes to Lee & Low Books, who've continued to send me review copies even as I've been less than great about getting reviews published. But for me, they've exposed me to a world of titles that I've been able to ask my public library to acquire. For you, they've now contributed a collection of books that I'll be giving out as prizes to 48 Hour Book Challenge winners. I'd also like to thank them for just being there, publishing books that are so very needed. I suspect it is not the most profitable business model that could be conceived in an industry that always seems to be chasing the next Harry Potter or Wimpy Kid or Twilight series, but it's honorable and admirable. Thank you Lee & Low Books, for being a leader in diversity.

Thanks go out to my KidLitosphere buddies who have been promoting the 48HBC through blogs, tweets, and listservs so that we can have a weekend reading and sharing titles for all kids. Thanks to #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a movement and website, which invigorated me to take my weekend off work and give it back to books.

An official 48 Hour Book Challenge sign-in goes up tomorrow morning, but I'd love to see your comments or book lists on the original post or here. Thanks!

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With this year's 48 Hour Book Challenge devoted to the cause of diverse books, I started pulling together my own reading pile for this weekend. It's been more than a little sad. I haven't been requesting review books for a while, so I turned to my public library to find something current. I could only find two middle-grade titles.

Now, I know that it takes months for titles to show up at the library, and these just happened to be on the shelf. So I searched the catalog and eyeballed covers finding a total of four recent books in a large public library system that serves a broad and very diverse community. Granted, this was in no way a detailed examination of our collection, but it gives me another reason to ask for your participation in the 48 Hour Book Challenge. I need your book reviews so that I can make collection requests to my library.

You know what, you need book reviews so that you can make requests to your public library.

Many kid lit folk are working hard to promote titles, and that excites me. Our writers and illustrators can create them, and we can continue to put pressure on publishers to acquire them. But at the heart of it all, bookstores and libraries need to buy these books. We can help with that too by asking our public and school libraries to add these titles to their collections.

But we can't do that if we don't know what they are. So let's keep up the steps that created outrage at BEA and yet also featured strongly at the same setting with an excellent BookCon panel. Something that started as a hashtag and moved to an online home at WeNeedDiverseBooks. Let's show each other and anyone else who will see all the great titles that are out there. I hope you'll participate in the 48 Hour Book Challenge - even if you can't commit the weekend, or even much of it, to read and promote books. We need you and We Need Diverse Books.

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Summer is rapidly approaching and that means our New Voices Award Writing Contest is now open for submissions! Now in its fourteenth year, the New Voices Award was one of the first (and remains one of the only) writing contests specifically designed to help authors of color break into publishing, an industry in which they are still dramatically underrepresented.

Change requires more than just goodwill; it requires concrete action. We were heartened by First Book’s recent commitment to purchasing 10,000 copies of select books from “new and underrepresented voices.” Likewise, the New Voices Award is a concrete step towards evening the playing field by seeking out talented new authors of color who might otherwise remain under the radar of mainstream publishing.

Past New Voices titles include the award-winning picture books It Jes’ Happened, Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story, and Bird. Many winners of the New Voices Award have gone on to long, successful careers in publishing.

The contest is open to writers of color who are residents of the United States and who have not previously had a children’s picture book published. The Award winner receives a cash prize of $1000 and our standard publication contract, including the basic advance and royalties for a first time author. An Honor Award winner will receive a cash prize of $500.

Manuscripts must be postmarked by September 30, 2014 to be eligible for this year’s award.

For more eligibility and submissions details, visit the New Voices Award page and read these FAQs. Spread the word to any authors you know who may be interested. Happy writing to you all and best of luck!

Further reading:

 

Filed under: Awards, Giveaways and Contests, New Voices/New Visions Award, Publishing 101 Tagged: diversity, diversity in publishing, weneeddiversebooks, writing, writing contest

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Oh my! What a fun Weekend Links this will be! I don’t know if it’s because Spring is in the air and the flowers are a bloomin’ here in TN, but this week has been chocked full of amazing information concerning summer reading, multicultural books and great reading lists for kids. So exciting!

As always, I’ve combed through the hundreds of amazing articles out there and brought you the best of the best (in my opinion). So grab a cup of coffee and settle in for some great kidlit-inspired reading ideas for kids!

 

The Multiracial Population Is Growing, But Kid Lit Isn’t Keeping Up: School Library Journal

2014 Books from Caldecott Winners: 100ScopeNotes

 

 

Middle Reader Summer Reading List from PrettyOpinionated

22 Awesome Submissions From The #WeNeedDiverseBooks Campaign

 

@KCEdventures 15 Amazing Vintage Summer Reads for Kids -Encourage Learning with Kids

From My Backyard Summer Reading List: Reading Rockets

 

Needs some summer reading ideas?  10 to Note: Summer Preview 2014 from 100 ScopeNotes

What great kid-reading inspired links did YOU find this week?

**Don’t Forget! Children’s Book Week starts May 12th!

 

The post Weekend Links: Tons of Wonderful Children’s Reading Links! appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

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Yesterday, in the We Need Diverse Books campaign:

Taking a photo of a sign, "we need diverse books...." and submitting it to the tumblr.

Here, my contribution to the We Need Diverse Books tumblr:

I also shared it at my tumblr, which I'm still playing around with.

Go check out the We Need Diverse Books for more photos and signs.

As a reminder about today: "On May 2nd, the second part of our campaign will roll out with a Twitter chat scheduled for 2pm (EST) using the same hashtag." (I'll be at work, so I'll be taking a super late lunch to participate from 2 to 2:30).

Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

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

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It’s no secret that here at Lee & Low Books we value diversity – it is literally why we are in business. But we don’t always get down to the basics. Sharing the low numbers of books by/about people of color is not the same as convincing people we need more of them. Just dip your toes into the comments section of any major article about diversity in children’s books and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

When you don’t convince people that the lack of diversity matters, what you get is more of the same. And in publishing, more of the same pretty much looks like this: BookCon, a major one-day event for readers in New York City, releases a lineup of 31 participating authors…and all of them are white.

BookCon is the latest example and certainly a frustrating one, but it is by no means an isolated incident. It’s heartening to see so many recent articles covering the lack of diversity in children’s books, but the question is how that discussion can be turned into action on a large scale to change things. The status quo – massive underrepresentation of people of color – is like a huge, heavy boulder that needs to be moved. Awareness alone will not move it an inch. What’s required is a lot of people to give it a push.

That’s why I love the new #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign happening this week. Here’s your chance to share with the world why diversity in books matters to you and why you want more of it:

Now is the time to raise our voices into a roar that can’t be ignored. Here’s how:

On May 1st at 1pm (EST), there will be a public call for action that will spread over 3 days. We’re starting with a visual social media campaign using the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. We want people to tweet, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, blog, and post anywhere they can to help make the hashtag go viral.

For the visual part of the campaign: 

• Take a photo holding a sign that says “We need diverse books because ___________________________.” Fill in the blank with an important, poignant, funny, and/or personal reason why this campaign is important to you. 
• The photo can be of you or a friend or anyone who wants to support diversity in kids’ lit. It can be a photo of the sign without you if you would prefer not to be in a picture. Be as creative as you want! Pose the sign with your favorite stuffed animal or at your favorite library. Get a bunch of friends to hold a bunch of signs. 
• However you want to do it, we want to share it! There will be a Tumblr at http://weneeddiversebooks.tumblr.com/ that will host all of the photos and messages for the campaign. Please submit your visual component by May 1st to [email protected] with the subject line “photo” or submit it right on our Tumblr page here and it will be posted throughout the first day. 
• Starting at 1:00PM (EST) the Tumblr will start posting and it will be your job to reblog, tweet, Facebook, or share wherever you think will help get the word out. 
• The intent is that from 1pm EST to 3pm EST, there will be a nonstop hashtag party to spread the word. We hope that we’ll get enough people to participate to make the hashtag trend and grab the notice of more media outlets.
• The Tumblr will continue to be active throughout the length of the campaign, and for however long we need to keep this discussion going, so we welcome everyone to keep emailing or sending in submissions even after May 1st.

On May 2nd, the second part of our campaign will roll out with a Twitter chat scheduled for 2pm (EST) using the same hashtag. Please use #WeNeedDiverseBooks at 2pm on May 2nd and share your thoughts on the issues with diversity in literature and why diversity matters to you.

On May 3rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them. Diversify Your Shelves is all about actively seeking out diverse literature in bookstores and libraries, and there will be some fantastic giveaways for people who participate in the campaign! More details to come!

We hope that you will take part in this in any way you can. We need to spread the word far and wide so that it will trend on Twitter. So that media outlets will pick it up as a news item. So that the organizers of BEA and every big conference and festival out there gets the message that diversity is important to everyone. We hope you will help us by being a part of this movement.

We’re excited to participate in this campaign and hope you will too, beginning with this question:

Why do you need diverse books?

Filed under: Publishing 101, The Diversity Gap Tagged: diversity, diversity gap, teaching about race, weneeddiversebooks

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Yesterday, I wrote Why It Matters: BookCon.

I want to highlight the We Need Diverse Books Campaign (which I didn't see yesterday until after I had posted.)



Click through to read the entire post.

A quick recap of what is explained fully in that post:

"On May 1st at 1pm (EST), there will be a public call for action that will spread over 3 days. We’re starting with a visual social media campaign using the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. . . .  We want people to tweet, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, blog, and post anywhere they can to help make the hashtag go viral. For the visual part of the campaign: Take a photo holding a sign that says “We need diverse books because ___________________________.”" I am trying to decide what my sign will say.

"On May 2nd, the second part of our campaign will roll out with a Twitter chat scheduled for 2pm (EST) using the same hashtag." (I'll be at work, so I'll be taking a super late lunch to participate from 2 to 2:30).

"On May 3rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them."

My approach to diverse books is, needless to say, formed by who I am (white, cisgender, late 40s, female) and what I do (librarian, reader, reviewer.) I know I need to listen. But, I also need to know when, and how, to speak up.

So, here's part of my reality. I don't think readers should be shamed or shoulded into reading books they don't want to read. For me, the prime reason a reader reads is because they want to read that book. The reasons for that want vary.

How do diverse books figure into this? Including diverse books in the suggestions and recommendations that meet that "want." Because, frankly, I am over the belief some people hold that diverse books will always be "other" and not meet their "want." That belief? It's not shaming or shoulding to point out how troubling that belief is; and to do so in a constructive way by saying, here are the books that meet your reading needs.

Part of that belief springs from something I wrote about yesterday: the myth that white is the default that everyone can identify with, but that the opposite is not true. That someone who is white cannot identify with a main character who is not white. Which is bull. And it's a belief that needs to be countered, loudly, and fought, loudly.

And that is why I find this campaign exciting. Because diverse books are something we need to keep on talking about and to keep on promoting, and this campaign can be part of what brings about needed changes.


Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

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

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