Category Archives: Awards

New Voices Award FAQs

Note: The New Voices and New Visions writing contests are currently on a temporary hiatus. A follow-up announcement will come in 2024.

The New Voices Award is open to all authors of color and Native nations who have not previously had a children’s picture book published. The winner receives a cash prize of $2000 and our standard publication contract, including our basic advance and royalties for a first-time author. An Honor winner will receive a cash prize of $1000.

We periodically get some questions about the Award, so I’d like to answer a few of them if I can:

What does it mean to be a person of color?

Well, that can be a pretty complicated question, but for purposes of our New Voices Award specifically, we accept contest entries from people who self-identify as African, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latinx, Middle Eastern, or Native American/Indigenous descent.

Why is the New Voices Award only open to people of color?

The New Voices Award was founded to encourage and support authors of color in a market where they’ve been traditionally excluded and underrepresented. That was true in 2000 when the award was started and it’s still true today (see these stats for some surprising figures about the number of books published by/for people of color). The New Voices Award is one of the ways in which we’re trying to close the gap.

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Announcing Tu Books!

We have some very exciting news to share: we have acquired Tu Publishing, an independent press focusing on diverse fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults! Founded by Stacy Whitman last fall to address the need for more books featuring diverse characters and inspired by non-Western cultures, Tu is becoming Tu Books, an imprint of LEE & LOW. Several manuscripts are already in the works, with hopes of releasing the first books under the new imprint next year.

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Happy 100th Birthday, Bank Street Children’s Book Committee!

This morning, we went up to the Bank Street College of Education for the announcement of their Best Children’s Books of the year list—and to celebrate, with cake, the centennial of the Children’s Book Committee.

Every year for the last one hundred years, The Children’s Book Committee—then of Child Study Association of America, now of the Bank Street College of Education—has recommended books that are good for children. They read thousands of books, they share books with children and ask for their opinions, and then they make recommendations to cakeandpresentsteachers, librarians, and parents. They have good taste—they included Alicia Afterimage, Bird, Honda, Horse Song, No Mush Today, and Seven Miles to Freedom on their list of the best books published in 2008—and they love books.

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What a Starred Review looks like from my desk

We have a bell on the wall in the office. It’s the good-news bell; whenever we get a starred review, an award, or a really big order, the bell is rung, the staff gathers around it, and the news is announced to the office.

Jason, as publisher, is the first to know when we get starred reviews: the relevant journal emails him the news. My first inkling comes when Jason sidles up to Hannah’s desk—right next to mine—and mutters something along the lines of, “Check your email. I forwarded something from Booklist.” After a pause long enough for the email to download and open, Hannah says, “oooh!” She then gets up and walks in the direction of the bell, Jason following surreptitiously two steps behind. That’s the point at which I know I’d better slip my feet into my shoes—I tend to kick them off under my desk—and get ready to gather around the bell for the good news.

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¡Gracias por la estrella! Thanks for the starred review!

Woot! GRACIAS • THANKS by Pat Mora is our second book this fall to get a starred review from Kirkus (a review journal certainly not known for dishing them out freely). Since it’s running later than our other fall titles, this is the first review we’ve gotten in, so we were all pretty excited this morning to read this:

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Seeing Stars

Just got word that The East-West House, Christy Hale’s biography of Isamu Noguchi, earned a star from the not-easily-impressed Kirkus Reviews! Thanks, Kirkus!

The review says, “Hale’s striking illustrations and the book’s elegant look are an homage to the Japanese landscape.”  Can’t resist posting two of my favorites:

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June’s Top 10 Bestsellers

You know you’re jealous of all the people who bought these awesome books — and you know what to do about that, don’t you?

June’s Top 10 Books on leeandlow.com

  1. I and I
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