Some of you may be familiar with Diversity in YA (DiYA), a lovely project started last year by authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo to bring more attention to diversity in children’s literature. During the year-long DiYA project, Cindy and Malinda were kind enough to do a roundup each month of new titles coming out that featured diversity, and they defined diversity in the following way: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
Since DiYA is on hiatus, Cindy and Malinda gave us their blessing to continue their monthly roundup. We all felt that it was important to keep the spotlight on diverse books, and we hope you’ll join us in that mission!
It’s Black History Month, and that means another giveaway from Lee & Low Books! We’re giving away three sets of three books featuring African Americans, and the contest will run through February 29, 2012.
You may have noticed that the winners won’t get their books until after Black History Month. We think Black History Month is important, but black history is part of American History, and shouldn’t get relegated to one month out of the year. So enter below to win three great books to enjoy all year long!
Here’s how it works:
Author Glenda Armand (Love Twelve Miles Long) gave us food for thought in her BookTalk when we asked her if she thought her book could only be used during Black History Month. Here is her response:
“I think it can be read at any time of year: it is a story about mother-child relationships, about slavery, about American history, and about a great statesman. It is a story about family and tradition. And it’s a bedtime story.
Under the Mesquite author Guadalupe Garcia McCall thanks the William C. Morris and Pura Belpre award committees that honored her book, along with readers:
We’ve got some exciting news to share: LEE & LOW BOOKS has acquired multicultural children’s book publisher Children’s Book Press.
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.
In our December e-news, we took a look at how 2011 has played out in terms of diversity with a few events of note:
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.
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:
Quotes are inspirational because they usually come from people who have done great things. The operative word here is done, since words hold more weight if they reflect actual accomplishments. Quotes often represent the principles people stand for or stood for.
“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.
There’s been quite a firestorm on twitter today after a certain publisher sent a letter with a new set of requirements to book bloggers about how to request and review books. Many book bloggers felt that the letter did not respect them or what they do, and were pretty angry about it. I’m not going to name that publisher or go into detail about what was in the letter, but I do think that this is a good opportunity for all of us who work together promoting reading in various ways to reflect a little on where the publisher/blogger relationship is at and what can be done to improve it.
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.
So. Tomorrow a few of us from the Lee & Low office will be doing something kind of crazy: walking 12 miles around Manhattan.
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.
