PICTURE BOOKS TO A HELP KIDS WEATHER OUR AGE OF ANXIETY
This is Jessica Love’s debut picture book, and every choice she makes — the spare text, a color palette both muted and lively, full-bleed pages that make even subway cars and apartment rooms feel as expansive as the ocean — imbues the story with charm, tenderness and humor.
Alongside Julián, readers learn that anyone can be a mermaid: All it takes is love and acceptance, a little imagination and a big swishy tail.
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2019 JANE ADDAMS CHILDREN’S BOOK HONOR BOOK FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN
TO SEE ALL 2019 WINNING AND HONOR TITLES…
‘TO BE IT, THEY HAVE TO SEE IT’: BOOK FAIR SPOTLIGHTS AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Husband and wife Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis-Hudson from New Jersey have been running their own publishing company for 30 years. They got started after being told by other publishers there was no market for the kinds of books they wanted to produce.
“Mainstream publishing is default white,” Hudson said.
And while some progress has been made on diversity and self-publishing is opening new doors, he said, “we still have a long way to go.”
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2019 JANE ADDAMS CHILDREN’S BOOK HONOR BOOK FOR OLDER CHILDREN
TO SEE ALL 2019 WINNING AND HONOR TITLES…
ELIZABETH ACEVEDO’S WORK IS A WELCOME RARITY IN YOUNG-ADULT FICTION
Acevedo’s variety of work remains a statistical rarity in her genre. And she is careful to note that even the perceived groundswell is not entirely new: the window from 2012 to 2014 brought a notable push for diversity in children’s literature. Five years ago, the late author Walter Dean Myers wrote an essay for the New York Times decrying the glaring discrepancy in the number of stories with white protagonists and those with protagonists of color. Myers’s Times piece led with a jarring statistic: “Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people.”
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7 HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BOOKS FOR SUMMER READING
“Everything Inside: Stories,” Edwidge Danticat (Aug. 27): A new book by Danticat, the Haitian American author of “Breath, Eyes, Memory” and”Krik? Krak!,” is always a publishing event. Her latest is a collection of short stories that explore the human condition through themes such as divorce, family, love and death.
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NEW BOOKS BY YOUR FAVORITE AUTHORS COMING OUT THIS YEAR
The Newbery Award-winning author of Piecing Me Together and Betty Before X(along with Ilyasah Shabazz) is back with a middle-grade novel about family, identity, and history.
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ON TOUR WITH KWAME ALEXANDER
Jacqueline Woodson moderated a conversation among Versify authors at the new Center for Fiction space in Brooklyn.
Last month, Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander wrapped up a national bus tour celebrating the launch of his Versify imprint with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers, as well as the newly released paperback editions of The Crossover and Booked. For the first leg of the tour, Alexander was joined by the authors and illustrators whose books appear on the debut Versify list: Lamar Giles (The Last Last-Day-of-Summer), Kadir Nelson (The Undefeated), Raúl the Third (¡Vamos! Let’s Go to the Market!), and Kip Wilson (White Rose).
