Celebrate Stories on World Read Aloud Day, March 4

I am participating in World Read Aloud Day, coming up March 4, 2015.

Sponsored by Lit World, a nonprofit organization that combats illiteracy around the world, World Read Aloud Day draws attention to the need for more literacy efforts for young people – helping them gain access to books, encouraging them to engage with books and stories (including their own), and fostering a community that values the role of books and learning.

To help boost the message, authors and publishers are joining in with Lit World to promote World Read Aloud Day and #ReadingInColor.

A few tidbits about this movement:

• LitWorld was founded in 2007 by Pam Allyn, an American literacy educator and author, after visiting a Kenyan community and seeing how passionately the kids there wanted to read, write, and share their stories.
• World Read Aloud Day is now celebrated by over a million people in more than 80 countries and reaches over 31 million people online. 
• The growth of the movement can be attributed in large part to a network of partner organizations and “WRADvocates” – reading advocates and supporters taking action in their communities and on social media.

This year's WRAD project will showcase young people's perceptions of color in literature. Using Instagram, participants will share photos of their interpretations of #ReadingInColor. Tagging the post in this way enters them into a random drawing to win a book by chosen authors whose works represent diversity in the middle-grade and young adult genres.

WRAD offers an exciting opportunity to work with students, teachers, parents and social media to stress the importance of reading out loud, reading to and with each other, reading diverse materials, and ultimately sharing those experiences with the global community.

Inviting a Variety of Voices and Cultures to the Bookshelf

Today marks an effort by book lovers and bloggers to celebrate Multicultural Children's Book Day. It's an opportunity to introduce readers young and old to new characters and voices, to step inside worlds we're not familiar with and meet families that are new to us. I think of it like those early years of school, when we piled together on the reading rug and were transported to new places.

This past Friday at the cozy 57th Street Books on Chicago's South Side, the Chicago writing community gathered to hear four authors talk about their books and to call for more variety in publishing through the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign. Their stories are worth checking out.

Photo by Betsy Rubin
From left: Crystal Chan, Ami Polonsky, Claudia Guadalupe Martinez, and Natasha Tarpley.

Claudia Guadalupe Martinez is the author of two middle-grade novels, the award-winning The Smell of Old Lady Perfume and Pig Park (both from Cinco Puntos). Claudia calls Chicago home now, but she grew up in El Paso, Texas. The Smell of Old Lady Perfume is set along the border, both literally and figuratively, as the main character, Chela, is on the cusp of adolescence. It's a heartfelt portrayal of a family in turmoil and the pain of growing up.

Her more recent book, Pig Park, tells the story of Masi, who fears what's ahead as her neighborhood becomes like a ghost town since the biggest business, a lard company, has moved out. She begins to build a giant pyramid in the nearby park in the hopes of attracting visitors. From the jacketflap: "Pig Park is a contemporary Faustian tale that forces us to look at the desperate lengths people will go to in the name of community–and maybe love."

Natasha Tarpley's I Love My Hair and Bippity-Bop Barbershop are celebrations of African American identity as well as universal rites of passage all children can identify with. As noted at the panel discussion: "We all have hair! We all get haircuts! We all brush our hair!" These are beautifully written and adorably illustrated books that will resonate with readers of all stripes. Natasha is also the founder of Voonderbar productions, an independent publishing company that produces multicultural books for children.

Ami Polonsky's debut novel, Gracefully Grayson, poses the question, What if who you are on the outside doesn't match who you are on the inside? It tells the story of sixth-grade Grayson who is a girl on the inside, stuck in the wrong gender's body. Kirkus Reviews calls it "A kind and earnest look at a young transgender adolescent’s experience."

Crystal Chan's Bird (Atheneum) is about a girl who belongs to the only mixed-race family in her town and the tragedy that haunts them. Crystal tapped into her experiences growing up in Wisconsin as one of the few mixed-race kids in her community. School Library Journal calls Bird a "powerful story about loss and moving on."

Looking for more multicultural titles to explore? PragmaticMom has some great lists, as does School Library Journal.

Standing room only for the Jan. 23 SCBWI South Chicago panel discussion on diversity in children's literature, part of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign.

48 Hour Book Challenge Meets #WeNeedDiverseBooks

 

Hey, did you know the ninth annual 48 Hour Book Challenge is going on this very minute? The clock is ticking as you read this, so grab a stack o' books and get at it.

What is the 48 Hour Book Challenge, you ask? Here's how it works: chose your starting time within the weekend and read as much of the time as you want. The books are anything from middle-grade to YA to adult. And you can blog about it during that time too. Some people go without sleep and read the entire 48 hours. Others challenge themselves to be part of the 20 Hour Club. Just 12 hours makes you a participant and eligible for prizes – PRIZES! – so there's a pace for everyone. Visit the force behind this effort, MotherReader, for a clear rundown of the system.

And in solidarity of the cause of #WeNeedDiverseBooks, this year's challenge is dedicated to reading, sharing, and reviewing books that show diversity. So included here in this post are a few diverse children's books to add to the list.

Grace Lin said it best in a recent Publisher's Weekly article when she noted that multicultural books aren’t just for minorities. “If non-minority kids don’t get diverse books, they will grow up with only stereotypes” of people of color.

My debut middle-grade, Cupcake Cousins, is an attempt at bridging that gap. It features almost-10-year-old cousins who don't necessarily look the same – one African American, the other freckled – but share the same love of cooking. And the same desire to avoid the hideous pink flower-girl dresses their moms want them to wear for the aunt's upcoming wedding. It's a humorous cooking caper with plenty of kitchen disasters and wacky relatives, and the kids just happen to have a mixed race family.

Fellow Chicagoan and all-around good egg Crystal Chan has a terrific book that features a multicultural storyline. Titled Bird (Atheneum, 2014), it explores family secrets hidden from a mixed-race race girl named Jewel and her grieving family. Jewel's brother, Bird, died the day she was born. And all her life, she has been living in his shadow. Her parents say that it's Grandpa's fault, that he drew a malevolent spirit—a duppy—into their home.

Skila Brown's Caminar (Candlewick, 2014) is set in 1981 Guatemala. It tells the powerful story of a boy who must decide for himself what it means to be a man during a turbulent time of war. It's a novel in verse, and it was inspired by actual events during Guatemala’s civil war.

N.H. Senzai's Saving Kabul Corner (Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books, 2014) tells the story of 12-year-old Ariana, whose comfortable life hits the skids when her cousin Laila arrives from Afghanistan. Laila is charming, with perfect manners, and before Ariana knows it, she's taken her best friend too. School Library Journal writes: "It is refreshing to see such a vastly multicultural cast in children's literature, and no character is portrayed as stereotypical or overly generalized. The glossary of terms in the back is also a nice touch. Recommended for any fan of multicultural literature or realistic fiction."

These are just a few books that feature diverse characters and authors. And that is the message behind the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, which is rocking the children's book publishing industry. For those who need a bit of background, it burst onto the scene in late April when BookCon announced an all-white, all-male line-up of authors. In response, a group of children's authors joined forces with the shared mission to "promote or amplify diversification efforts and increase visibility for diverse books and authors, with a goal of empowering a wide range of readers in the process."

As an NPR article reports, a University of Wisconsin study revealed that less than 8 percent of children's books in 2013 were written by or about people of color at a time when almost half of American children come from a minority background. Walter Dean Myers wrote a powerful essay in The New York Times, asking "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?" And his son Christopher Myers wrote about "The Apartheid of Children's Literature" in the same issue.

From author Grace Lin's blog 

I believe a lot of good will come of this campaign. Already some initiatives are emerging.

• Lee & Low Books/Tu Books is launching a second New Visions Award for a middle-grade or YA fantasy, science fiction, or mystery novel by a writer of color. The award winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000 and a book contract with Lee & Low’s Tu Books imprint.
  
• First Book has launched a $1 million campaign called The Stories for All Project. It's an initiative to provide books that "better reflect the rich and growing diversity of the population, including minorities, LGBT and special needs populations." They hope to promote multicultural books and authors, pledging to purchase 10,000 copies of multicultural titles to distribute to young readers from low-income families.
  
• And according to author Ellen Oh, founder of #WeNeedDiverseBooks, a first-ever Children’s Literature Diversity Festival is in the works. Plans are for it to be held in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2016. Festival details are still to come, but read more in the PW article: “This will be a celebration of diverse authors and authors who write diversely. A festival where every panel, every event will be to celebrate diversity in all of its glory.”