Some of you may have already heard about the CCBC’s expanded effort in our work documenting the number of books by and about people of color and First/Native Nations. This past April at a CCBC staff meeting we came up with the idea of taking a closer look at what is getting published.
On Books and Publishing
Occasional thoughts from CCBC librarians on children’s and young adult literature, publishing, and our work documenting diversity in books we receive.
Observations on Publishing in 2015
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.
More on Race-Neutral Characters
Don’t miss Linda Sue Park’s thought-provoking response to the notion of a “race neutral” character.
This issue first came up for us at the CCBC back in July of 2001 when we discussed Virginia Euwer Wolff’s Make Lemonade and True Believer on CCBC-Net. We hosted quite a lively discussion about the race of the main characters — it’s never specified in the books but many readers assumed that LaVaughn was African-American, and argued the point quite assertively.
Asian American Writers Take on Race
It’s something we’ve been wondering about here at the CCBC for the past year or so, ever since we noted that our statistics reveal that fewer Asian American book creators write and illustrate books about Asian characters than they do about white (or animal) characters. With such a dearth of books with Asian main characters, why don’t more Asian authors and illustrators create them?
Role Models
Shannon Hale recently commented on a school visit experience she had in which boys were not invited to the event. She rightly decries sexism in our thinking about youth literature and in our role as gatekeepers.
Hale is commenting specifically about the assumption that boys don’t want to read books with girls as main characters: what I think of as the “genderizing” of literature.
But the issue she describes is not unlike adults—from parents to professionals in the fields of libraries and education—who assume white kids don’t want to read about kids of color. Who assume that readers are only interested in characters who look or talk or behave like them.
Visibility as Cultural Diversity….A Continuum
What do Karen Lynn Williams’s A Beach Tail and Lauren Child’s The New Small Person have in common? They are both picture books offering visibility for characters of color without specific cultural substance in the narrative.
Observations on Publishing in 2014
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.
The Numbers Are In 2014 edition
Every year around this time for the past 30 years, the CCBC has published the number of books by and about people of color. We started doing this in 1985 when our Director, Ginny Moore Kruse, was on the Coretta Scott King Award Committee and knew that there were only 18 books eligible for the award that year. We were so shocked at that number that we decided to document it in our annual publication, CCBC Choices.
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.