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.
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.
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.
I See White People
There has been a lively discussion going on over at Read Roger, prompted by Lee & Low asking why the number of multicultural books has stagnated for the past 18 years.
Observations on Publishing in 2012
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.
Observations on Publishing in 2011
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.
Thoughts on Publishing in 2010
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.