From the press release: January 26, 2012—Continuing to expand despite a difficult economy, LEE & LOW BOOKS, an independent publisher of high quality books for children that focuses on diversity, announced today that it has acquired the assets of Children’s Book Press. Founded in 1975, Children’s Book Press, based in San Francisco, was the first specialty publisher of multicultural children’s books in the United States. With this addition LEE & LOW BOOKS becomes one of the largest independent multicultural children’s publishers in the country with over 650-titles in print. “This is a tremendous honor for us to keep the prestigious collection of Children’s Book Press alive, and have the opportunity to build on its 36-year history,” said Jason Low, Publisher of LEE & LOW BOOKS.

Children’s Book Press and LEE & LOW BOOKS share similar missions of promoting diversity through the publication of books for young readers. In 2010, LEE & LOW BOOKS, founded in 1991 with a focus on illustrated books for the K-6 market, expanded its range to the young adult market through the launch of Tu Books, an imprint for science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels. Children’s Book Press will maintain its own identity as a separate imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS, joining Tu Books and its firmly established educational arm, Bebop Books.

“Creating continuity for the mission of Children’s Book Press is important to us, since its commitment to diversity was so groundbreaking,” notes Jason Low. “Children’s Book Press started the trend of featuring people of color in the pages of books—before this, the reading experience was exclusively white.”

So, there you have it, folks. We’re excited to keep growing, and thankful for you, our readers, who have allowed us to do so.

Good: We started Tu Books! Which means more diversity in science fiction, fantasy, and mystery.

Authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo organized the Diversity in YA tour and website to highlight diverse books and authors, and got a terrific response from readers.

This year’s KidLit Con conference for children’s book bloggers included a panel on diversity. It’s a topic both readers and authors are giving real thought to.

Also, three out of this year’s four National Book Award winners are authors of color. Which means authors of color are being recognized more…

Bad: …but not necessarily published more. In an informal survey, bloggers could come up with just 84 middle grade and YA authors of color published this year.

And just plain ugly: The casting of the movie version of The Hunger Games brought out the worst in some fans, who were surprised by the inclusion of black cast members.

So, what are your highs and lows of 2011?

Never listen to a cat.

You don’t have the luxury of eight more lives when the kitty litter hits the fan.

Today we’re excited to share the cover of Cat Girl’s Day Off by the oh-so-hilarious Kimberly Pauley (author of Sucks to Be Me), out this April from our Tu Books imprint:

Natalie “Cat Girl” Ng comes from a family of the super-Talented: levitation, lie-detecting, and just plain genius. In comparison, her own Talent of talking to cats doesn’t seem so great, until the desperate pleas of a cat on a viral YouTube video catapult Nat to the forefront of a celebrity kidnapping scandal. While trying to keep her secret Talent hidden from her secret crush, Nat and her friends Oscar and Melly race through Ferris Bueller’s Chicago trying to rescue the lives—human and feline—that are on the line.

Let us know what you think, and be sure to hop over to part I of our cover reveal to check out Vodník, also out from Tu Books this spring!

“If we don’t fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don’t really stand for them.” —Paul Wellstone, United States Senator, 1944–2002

I am a big keeper of quotes—from books I have read, songs I have heard, films I have seen, and conversations I have had with people. I even save fortunes from the fortune cookies I have eaten at lunch.

“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” —Fortune from a fortune cookie, now in my wallet

You never know when a good quote will be staring back at you, stopping you dead in your tracks. On an earlier version of our website we had a javascript that each day randomly selected a quote to highlight from a list of quotes from our books. This simple home page feature was a cool way to cherry pick from our authors’ words and catch people’s attention with something meaningful. Many of our books are about important people, with incredible things to say.

“When Dr. King said segregation was wrong, John felt as though Dr. King were speaking directly to him, telling him it was time to get in the way. It was time to turn things upside down in order to set them right side up.” —From John Lewis in the Lead

quote of the week in our office

In the office we have a dry erase board (pictured above) that my co-worker Lucy periodically freshens up with quotes about books and reading. Good quotes capture a time and place when someone’s conviction resulted in something groundbreaking. Bad quotes also stick in people’s memories like crazy glue. History can be especially unkind to people who were on the wrong or unpopular side of big issues. But people will always say what they think; they will say what is on their minds for all that it is worth.

“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.”—Grover Cleveland, United States President, 1905

Do you have any favorite quotes? I’d love to hear them!

Here are some lessons I think publicists like me can learn by what happened today:

1. Book bloggers are not employees. Reviewing books is not their full-time job. Receiving a free review copy does not OBLIGATE them to review something, or to review something in a particular time frame.

2. Many book bloggers schedule out their reviews months in advance. If you want something to run at a certain time, be sure to give bloggers a few months of notice. And even then, bloggers have lives in which Other Things are going on. So asking for reviews to run at a certain date should always be done with the understanding that sometimes it just may not happen.

3. Reviews that are not posted during the first week of release can still be good publicity! No one wants to read 14 reviews of the same book on the same day. A new review of a book that’s already been out for a while can still pique readers’ interests – and is still a valuable contribution from the reviewing blogger.

4. Not every book is for every person. Sometimes there’s no way to know when you request a book for review that it’s just not your thing. If a blogger chooses to refrain from writing a negative review about a book, that should be respected by us as publishers.

And here are a few things that book bloggers can take away:

1. Be mindful with your requests. Review copies cost a lot of $$ and ARCs cost even more (strange, but true) so try to stick to asking for books you want to read, and have time to read. If you don’t think you’ll be able to read a book by its release date but still want to read it, borrowing a copy later from the library may be a better option. And pretty please, if you accept e-galleys but we’re still sending you hard copies, let us know! It makes a big difference for us cost-wise.

2. Be communicative. Don’t assume publishers will find your review on their own – as anyone who’s used google alerts knows, it’s far from 100% accurate. Publishers TRULY appreciate when you send a link to your review (or submit it via Netgalley, if you got your galley that way) so we know we haven’t been sending books into a big black hole. Also, if you decide to take a vacation from blogging, send us an email so we don’t keep mailing you books.

3. If you don’t like a book, be honest. If a publisher checks in about a review and you didn’t like the book, just tell us so. It may help us to match you with better books in the future, and we’ll understand why you asked for it but never reviewed it.

4. No blogger is obligated to review a book in a certain time frame, but there’s a reason publicists sometimes prefer for reviews to run around publication date. Often books only stay on the shelves of stores like B&N for a few weeks before copies are shipped back to publishers, so those first few weeks are crucial to determining if and how long a book will stay on the shelf. If you really LOVE a book and want to support it, reviewing it around the time it’s released can help make sure it gets noticed during that crucial window. Think of it sort of like a window of time in which your review becomes extra-influential.

So, that’s what I’ve got. Bottom line: Publishers, be respectful of bloggers’ time and energy. Bloggers, be respectful of publishers’ limited resources. Everyone: just be respectful of each other. We are all book people at heart.

Why?

Well, some of you might know that we’ve just released a book called Love Twelve Miles Long about Frederick Douglass and his mother, Harriet. When Frederick was very young, Harriet lived on a plantation 12 miles away, and every once and a while when she’d could, she’d walk the twelve miles by night to visit her son.

We were all amazed by this story, but when discussing the book we realized that the measurement “twelve miles” was hard for us to really imagine. What did it feel like to walk that distance?

Well, tomorrow we’re going to find out.

We’ll be starting down at Wall Street and walking up to Frederick Douglass Circle in Harlem, then back down the other side of Central Park and ending at the New York Public Library. We’ll be posting a map of the route and photos soon, and you can also follow along with us on twitter tomorrow as we walk with hashtag #12miles. We’re excited to literally put ourselves in someone else’s shoes- wish us luck!

Short version: Slovakian fairy tales! Roma characters! CASTLES!!

Long version: Vodník is a YA contemporary fantasy about Tomas, a Roma teen who moves with his family from the US back to Slovakia and discovers that the folk tale creatures he befriended as a young boy are more dangerous than he knew, especially a vodník who has begun drowning local townspeople (deaths for which Roma like Tomas are blamed). When he learns that his own cousin’s life is in danger, Tomas makes a deal with Death to save her – but can anyone cheat death forever?

And here, dear friends, is the cover in all its glory:

Extra points if you can see the vodník’s face in the background.

Stay tuned for part II, where we reveal the cover of Kimberly Pauley’s Cat Girl’s Day Off, also out this spring from Tu Books. And meanwhile, let us know what you think!

There were so many things out of the ordinary about this incident. The man who called me a gook was with his girlfriend and didn’t appear to be drunk. In the past, racist insults usually have come from groups of young men, late at night, after consuming 6+ beers each. It wasn’t late; it was around seven o’clock in the evening. And the part about the guy being with his girlfriend is significant because usually a person tries to conceal the less than desirable parts of his or her personality, like being racist, at least until after the third date.

What eats me up about this incident is that after all these years of being immersed in the diverse books we publish, all the self education I have undergone to become more culturally aware was completely useless. I was caught utterly flat-footed when it happened, with not one snappy comeback to show for myself. I stood there frozen in indecision. I did nothing. My lack of verbal Jujitsu kind of ruined my night.

I went back home with my take-out order and ate dinner with my family. I told them about the incident and we had a lively conversation consisting of woulda, coulda, shoulda scenarios and comebacks that made us all laugh. The reality is I haven’t been subjected to a racist insult in many years, which may be why this experience was so jarring and caught me off guard. The fact that the frequency of events like this has decreased so much is most likely a testament to the teaching of acceptance in our schools. I also hope that maybe the kind of books we publish are part of the solution.

You know what they say about sticks and stones. Well as an adult and parent, name calling still hurts.

Has anyone had a racist experience in the last year? If so, how did you handle it? Did you manage to fire off any memorable retorts? I need some verbal ammunition for my next trip into town.

Some of you may have seen this new anti-racism poster campaign coming out of Ohio State University, put together by one of their student organizations:

The campaign quickly went viral and has drawn national attention (along with a number of parodies). What’s good about these posters is the extensive discussions they’ve sparked around the country. Are costumes based on a stereotype inherently racist? Where is the line drawn between racism and a casual joke—and is there ever such a thing as a casual joke about race? Who gets to decide if something has crossed the line?

Some have dismissed the posters as being too sensitive and taking the fun out of Halloween. But Cherokee blogger Adrienne asks the key follow-up question: “Why does your fun have to come at the expense of my well-being?”

Meanwhile, take a look at this amazing pumpkin YA author and blogger Kate Hart carved with the cover image of Under the Mesquite:

Gorgeous!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Tashi hopes that the healing power of community will bring Popola out of his illness as it did in Tibet. She gathers her neighbors and friends in the local flower garden and surrounds Popola with love and support. Do you have a home remedy that you use? Is it inspired from a cultural tie or a family tradition? Tell us about it!

Write in the comments below and the author, Naomi C. Rose, will pick her favorite remedy. The winner will receive a copy of Tashi and the Tibetan Flower Cure. Hurry- the contest closes on October 28, 2011. Only open to entrants with US addresses.