Robbie Robertson’s rise to fame as a founding member of The Band, and writer of some of the iconic songs of the late 1960s and early 1970s, is chronicled by his son Sebastian in a substantial and engaging picture book biography. From the time he was a young child visiting his Mohawk relatives on the Six Nations Reservation in Canada, Robertson was immersed in “rhythm, melodies, and storytelling.” And from the time he got his first guitar, he spent hours practicing. “On the reservation, eleven-year-old Robbie had surpassed the adults as the best guitarist.”
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The Baby Tree
A young boy wonders where his family will get the new baby he’s been told will be coming. His neighbor Olive tells him a seed will grow into a baby tree; his teacher says the baby will come from the hospital; Grandpa says a stork will bring the baby; the mailman thinks it has something to do with eggs. Back at home in the evening, he asks his parents, who tell him about the seed from his dad and the egg from his mom, and the baby that will grow inside her until it’s ready to be born, “sometimes at home, but usually at the hospital.”
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future
Glory O’Brien is directionless as high school graduation approaches. She’s most comfortable looking at the world through a camera lens, and she views her own life with a certain dispassion, the way she views the people she photographs. But everything changes after she and her best friend, Ellie, drink the remains of a petrified bat. Glory can now see the history and the future of everyone she looks at. And the future Glory sees is far more unsettling than wondering if she will commit suicide in the not-too-distant future, like her photographer mother did when Glory was four. The visions Glory has over and over are of a second U.S. Civil War that erupts around a charismatic, misogynistic leader who strips women of their civil rights.
More Than Numbers
Last week KT Horning tweeted that it would be a great year to be on the Coretta Scott King Award Committee because of all the outstanding novels by African American authors that have been published so far in 2014. At the time, I’d just finished novelist Teresa E. Harris’s terrific debut book, The Perfect Place (Clarion), and had also been thinking about what a great year it’s been for longer books in general by African American authors.
Culturally Generic/Neutral?
Several years ago, a Korean American colleague of ours was in the CCBC reading the latest picture book by Yumi Heo. She was laughing aloud with nearly every page turn. “Oh, these pictures!” she said. “They’re so Korean and so funny!” We loved the book ourselves but hadn’t found the illustrations to be particularly funny. Or, for that matter, particularly Korean.
Kids Choose Diversity
We don’t normally have groups of first graders at the CCBC (most of our student groups are in college) but this week we made an exception for thirty children from Sugar Creek Elementary School in Verona, Wisconsin.
Same Old Story: Multicultural Literature Statistics
It seems every 3-5 years, someone in the press discovers the statistics the CCBC keeps on multicultural literature, and publishes an article about it. This first happened back in 1989 when USA Today did a story on how difficult it was for African-American parents to find books for their children with characters who looked like them.
Observations on Publishing in 2013
Everything we do at the CCBC begins and ends with the books themselves. We examine every one of the hundreds of titles that come into the library each year, and subsequently read a number of them.
Ambassador Myers on Multicultural Publishing
With the ever-growing call for #OwnVoices books in youth publishing, we delved deeper into the CCBC’s 2017 diversity stats, with a particular focus on 2017 #OwnVoices books.
By and About Numbers
Last week I posted mid-year statistics about the multicultural landscape in children’s book publishing so far in 2013. Using the review copies in our Current Collection I counted the number of books we’ve received to date (1509) with human characters (1103) as opposed to animal characters or about non-human topics (326), and found that 78.3% are about human beings. Of the 1103 books about people, 124 (or 10.4%) of these were about people of color.