An Unhappy Birthday for the President
President’s Day falls this year, as always, in the midst of Black History Month. With educators, parents and citizens across race striving to make African American history and culture much, much more than a 28 Day celebration, what role does black history have in the study of our founding fathers? A recent controversy in the children’s literature world shows that George Washington, a slaveholder, can no longer escape our scrutiny. In January, Scholastic Press canceled the publication of A Birthday Cake for George Washington by Ramin Ganeshram and illustrated...
Read MoreReaping Frustration: YA Novels & Diversity in Awards Season
A children’s book award season that began in November with a racist joke by National Book Award host Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events) minutes after Jacqueline Woodson accepted her National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming ended with resounding support for diverse books at the 2015 ALA Youth Media Awards on February 2nd. Daniel Handler’s tasteless remarks were followed by a tasteful donation of $10,000 to We Need Diverse books and a pledge to match donations up to $100,000. Before the 24 hours were out, close to 1/4 million dollars...
Read MoreBooks of Power, Power to Offend
With Halloween approaching, we could consider the connection between fear and KitLit. No, not spooky books, but people who have been spooked by books and have sought to challenge or ban them. “I suggest that parents read these challenging (and challenged) books and use them for opportunities to talk about difficult subjects with their child. We need to remind ourselves that any book that has power also has the power to offend.” —Children’s Book Author, Katherine Paterson You can listen to our conversation about Banned Books with Chris Lenois on Green Mountain Mornings...
Read More20,000 Librarians Walk Into Vegas…
20,000 Librarians walk into a Vegas casino… It sounds like the set up to a bad joke. Even my Ethiopian American cab driver got the joke. Dropping me off at the Convention Center for the week-long ALA Annual Convention, he said, “Here it is party, party all day and all night. But you women are quiet and thinking. How can you be here? It is almost funny.” 20,000 librarians, publishers, and other book professionals walk into a Las Vegas casino bombarded with cigarette smoke, slot machine clangs, loud music, and scantily-clad women. With the dawning realization that this casino has...
Read MoreJustice, Equality, Rights…Forever
As Women’s History Month opens, I was curious to open the document The Declaration of the Rights of Women signed on the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I was quite taken with the last line: We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. —The Declaration of the Rights of Women How do we pass on the concepts of justice, equality, and civil and political rights to our daughters, sons, and students? (Is not children’s literature (always)...
Read MoreWhy YA?
Curious City spoke with Chris Lenois on WKVT’s Live & Local about “Why YA?” Why is YA (or Young Adult Literature) on the rise amongst non-teen readers and filling movie screens? Listen to the podcast here. In the discussion I touched on the rise of Dystopian fiction and the harrowing fictional issues of war and destruction in these novels being a “first world problem.” I wrote about this topic for the Vermont College of Fine Arts journal Hunger Mountain in an article entitled, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”...
Read More