TONYA BOLDEN, WINNER OF THE GUILD'S 2016 NONFICTION AWARD
The
Children’s Book Guild will present its annual Nonfiction Award to Tonya Bolden
on Saturday April 9. The award recognizes a body of work that has “contributed
significantly to the quality of nonfiction for children.”
Bolden has
created works of nonfiction that appeal to children and young adults both in
her subjects and in her accessible writing style. Bolden has written 27 books, many
of which present the African American experience. Her subjects include the
Emancipation Proclamation, Muhammad Ali and W. E. B. DuBois, as well as little-known
African-Americans of note, as in Searching
for Sarah Rector and Maritcha: A
Nineteenth-Century American Girl. “What serendipity that her latest book is
set in our own backyard,” said committee chair Joan Kindig about Capital Days: Michael Shiner’s Journal and
the Growth of Our Nation’s Capital. “It was meant to be!”
Date:
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Time:
noon to 3 p.m.
Place:
Clyde’s Restaurant of Gallery Place, 707 Seventh St. NW, Washington,
D.C. 20001
Tickets:
$35 ($36 when paid online)
MAKE YOUR RESERVATION NOW!
SUPPORT YOUR ORGANIZATION IN ITS IMPORTANT WORK! IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND THE APRIL 9 EVENT, PLEASE CONSIDER PURCHASING A TICKET FOR A TEACHER, LIBRARIAN OR FRIEND.
SUPPORT YOUR ORGANIZATION IN ITS IMPORTANT WORK! IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND THE APRIL 9 EVENT, PLEASE CONSIDER PURCHASING A TICKET FOR A TEACHER, LIBRARIAN OR FRIEND.
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Members' Books to Be Displayed at April 9 Award Event
2. Member Nomination: Deborah Bodin Cohen
3. Speakers' Books Now Available for Purchase and Busboys & Poets
4. Community Book Fair Opportunity
5. Cece Bell on the Creation of El Deafo
6. Member News
GUILD MEMBERS: PLEASE BRING YOUR BOOKS TO THE APRIL 25 NONFICTION AWARD LUNCHEON!
MEMBER NOMINATION: DEBORAH BODIN COHEN
Catherine Reef nominates author Deborah Bodin Cohen
for membership in the Children’s Book Guild. Susan Kusel seconds the
nomination.
Deborah Bodin Cohen grew up in Columbia, Md., and
attended the University of Michigan, graduating from the Honors English program
in 1990. After working in Washington, D.C., for various public-interest groups,
Debbie studied at Hebrew Union College and was ordained as a rabbi in 1997. She
has served congregations in North Carolina, New Jersey and Maryland as both a
pulpit rabbi and an educator.
Debbie is the author of seven children’s books and a teen
novel, with an eighth picture book in production. Her books include the four-book Engineer Ari series, about the first train line between Jaffa and Jerusalem,
in 1892. Published by Kar-Ben/Lerner, the Engineer
Ari series has received Sydney Taylor Honor Book designations and was
selected for the Grinspoon Foundation’s PJ Library. Debbie is the author as well of
Nachshon, Who Was Afraid to Swim, a
finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, a Sydney Taylor Honor Book and a PJ
library selection. Nachshon has been
translated into Spanish and Russian. Her children’s books also include Papa Jethro and the Seventh Day.
Debbie’s teen novel, Lilith’s Ark, explores the lives of 10 women in Genesis as
adolescent girls. Published by the
Jewish Publications Society, it received a National Jewish Book Award for
Family Literature.
Debbie is director of congregational learning at
Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac. But after this school year, she will be
leaving this position. She and a friend are planning to open a bookstore for
children and teens called the Story House and an affiliated nonprofit literary
center called the Writer’s Den.
The Story House and Writer’s Den will be located in
Montgomery County, Md., in Rockville or one of the surrounding towns. In
addition to a great selection of books, the Story House and Writer’s Den will
offer creative writing classes, camps, author visits, tot story programs and
birthday parties. Currently, Debbie and her friend are focusing on creating
this hybrid legal entity and raising the funds to make it a reality.
Debbie and her husband, David, are joyfully raising three children: Arianna, Jesse and Ezra.
Debbie and her husband, David, are joyfully raising three children: Arianna, Jesse and Ezra.
LUNCHEON SPEAKERS' BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AT BUSBOYS & POETS
Politics & Prose is now the bookstore at the 5th and K Streets location of Busboys & Poets. Politics & Prose plans to have copies of our featured speakers' books available for purchase at this location on meeting dates whenever possible.
COMMUNITY-WIDE BOOK FAIR TO BENEFIT CHILDREN IN NEED
Everybody Wins! DC, a literacy and mentoring organization in the Washington metropolitan area, invites area authors to read and sell their books at a local Barnes & Noble on Saturday, May 14. In partnership with Barnes & Noble and the Redskins Charitable Foundation, the community-wide book fair will host Redskin celebrities as well as children’s book authors at various Barnes & Noble stores in the D.C. metro area. A percentage of all purchases on the day of the event will go toward providing books to children in need. Guests will be encouraged to purchase a book for themselves as well as one for a student in need. If you are interested in participating, please email Anne Owl at aowl@everybodywinsdc.org for details.
CECE BELL MINED HER CHILDHOOD TO FORGE SOMETHING TRUE
by Catherine Reef
At the March 17 meeting of the Children's Book Guild, Cece Bell began discussing her award-winning 2014 book El Deafo by
promising to reveal how, in its pages, she made her childhood more interesting
than it was. This was a light, humorous way of saying that she was about to
offer insight into the creation of her graphic memoir.
Bell’s career as an author and
illustrator for children was launched in 2003, with the release of Sock Monkey Goes to Hollywood. As other
books followed, Bell approached—indirectly—a significant occurrence in her
childhood: the loss of more than 90 percent of her hearing from meningitis at
age four. Bee-Wigged (2008) was the
first book, she said, that touched on how she felt as a child. Its main
character is a giant bee who feels uncomfortably different, as she did in childhood,
until he finds a wig that he believes makes him look like a human boy. Rabbit and Robot (2012) was
“unconsciously autobiographical,” Bell said. The out-of-control rabbit in this story gets help from his technological friend just as young Cece benefited from
technology in the form of a hearing aid.
An encounter with an insensitive
supermarket clerk in adulthood turned out to be a defining moment for Bell, impelling her to
acknowledge her deafness publicly for the first time. She started a blog about
“the likes and dislikes of a deaf person,” she said. Among the blog’s readers
was Guild member Madelyn Rosenberg. Rosenberg saw potential in Bell’s posts and
encouraged her to shape the material into a book. So Bell shut down the blog
and wrote an outline and sample chapter, which were enough to persuade Abrams
to buy the book. “Madelyn is why I am here today,” Bell said.
The result was El Deafo, which recounts the ups and downs of Bell’s years as the lone deaf child
in her elementary school. Being the only child who needed to wear a Phonic Ear®, a big, awkward
hearing aid strapped to the front of her body, made the naturally timid Cece
uncomfortably self-conscious. Her teacher wore a microphone that transmitted
her voice directly into Cece’s ear, and Cece soon discovered that the
microphone went with the teacher everywhere in the school. With that
realization a secret superhero was born. Just as Bruce Wayne donned a suit and
transformed into Batman, Bell put on her Phonic Ear and became El Deafo, the girl who could hear her
teacher in the bathroom.
The comic-book style that Bell chose for her story allowed her to show graphically what the young Cece experienced.
Words in the speech balloons grow paler as Cece’s hearing fades, for example.
When the balloons are blank, readers see that Cece hears nothing of what is being
said. Cece’s need to observe everything around her in order to understand what
is going on—so well conveyed in illustrations—might have been lost to readers
of descriptive prose, Bell believed.
Bell drew her characters as rabbits
for reasons symbolic and practical. “Rabbit” Cece has large, beautiful ears
that look like everyone else’s, but hers don’t work. And placing her ears above
her head enabled Bell to show Cece’s hearing aids in place.
Memoir writing, Bell said, amounts to “smooshing around the real stuff into something interesting.” To create a compelling narrative she altered the actual timeline of events and invented composite characters. She left out parts of her story, such as going to speech therapy and lying to classmates when they asked about the bulge caused by the Phonic Ear hidden beneath her clothes. (“I’m pregnant” seemed like a plausible explanation at age eight.) Bell counseled anyone writing a memoir not to worry about capturing every detail. “You’re looking for the truth with a capital T,” she said.
Memoir writing, Bell said, amounts to “smooshing around the real stuff into something interesting.” To create a compelling narrative she altered the actual timeline of events and invented composite characters. She left out parts of her story, such as going to speech therapy and lying to classmates when they asked about the bulge caused by the Phonic Ear hidden beneath her clothes. (“I’m pregnant” seemed like a plausible explanation at age eight.) Bell counseled anyone writing a memoir not to worry about capturing every detail. “You’re looking for the truth with a capital T,” she said.
MEMBER NEWS
MOIRA ROSE DONOHUE announces the spring release of her latest book, The Civil Rights Movement through the Eyes of Lyndon B. Johnson. The book is one in a series called Presidential Perspectives from ABDO Publishing.
BARBARA BROOKS WALLACE's memoir, Small Footsteps in the Land of the Dragon: Growing Up in China (which may be the only one of its kind ever written through the eyes of an American kid who grew up in China) is soon coming from a lovely (says Bobbie) new publisher with a smashing and amazing new cover. When it’s finally out, Bobbie says, she will be sharing the cover with us to see if we don’t agree with her!
Lulu is also thrilled by how the window display she designed for Politics and Prose Bookstore turned out. Says Lulu, "It was a dream of mine to one day create a window display—maybe influenced by Sendak’s beginnings at FAO Shwarz? Of course it features the olinguito habitat."
TERRY JENNINGS will be presenting a workshop on using creative nonfiction in the classroom at the National Science Teachers Association National Conference in Nashville on March 31. Terry will be at the Annapolis Book Festival on April 16, and she will speak at the Fauquier County Title I Literacy Night on April 25.
SUSAN STOCKDALE reports that Spectacular Spots was named a 2015 Maryland Blue Crab Young Reader Award Honor Book in the Beginning Nonfiction category. She looks forward to presenting programs at the Annapolis Book Festival in Annapolis, Md., on April 16; the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum in Winchester, Va., on April 21; and Gala Artisans Jewelry and Gifts in conjunction with the Kensington Day of the Book Festival in Kensington, Md., on April 24.
Sofia Martinez: My Family Adventure, by JACQUELINE JULES, and Sounds of the Savannah, by TERRY CATASUS JENNINGS, were named to the 2016 Bank Street College Best Books of the Year list.
JACQUELINE JULES is excited to announce the publication of Feathers for Peacock by Wisdom Tales Press. How did Peacock end up with such a beautiful array of tail feathers? Was it magic or a community effort? Feathers for Peacock is an original just-so story blending bird myths from around the world. Kirkus Reviews called it “a charming tale of generosity." To see the book trailer created by Jacqueline’s talented husband, Alan, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOcWPxXlFB8.
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NOTE ABOUT THE CHILDREN'S BOOK GUILD NEWS: Would you rather print your newsletter than read it online? Current and past issues are now available for printing on the Guild's website at http://www.childrensbookguild.org/guild-newsletters. Look for the "Newsletter" tab on the left side of the Guild website. There is also a "Printer Friendly Version" link on the top left-hand side of this blog.
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LITERARY EVENTS SPONSORED BY POLITICS AND PROSE: The literary calendar at Politics and Prose lists many upcoming programs that may be of interest to Children's Book Guild members: http://www.politics-prose.com/events. April's speakers include Kwame Alexander, Henry Cole and Lulu Delacre.
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