Many authors and editors forge close relationships, but few
have known each other as long as author-illustrator Grace Lin and editor Alvina
Ling. The two were childhood best friends who reconnected soon after college,
just as each was beginning her career in children’s books. A few years later, Ling
acquired and edited Lin’s first novel, The
Year of the Dog, which was inspired by their friendship as children.
Since then, Lin and Ling have published many books together,
including Lin’s 2010 Newbery Honor-winning book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon; her newest novel, When the Sea Turned to Silver; and her
beginning reader series, featuring twins Ling and Ting. Both women are committed
to increasing the range of diverse titles available to today’s readers, and they
work in tandem to create the kinds of books they wish had existed when they
were kids.
Grace Lin is a New
York Times bestselling author and illustrator of picture books, early
readers and middle grade novels. Not only was she awarded a Newbery Honor, but
she received a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor in 2011 for her early reader Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same! Recently,
the cover illustration for When the Sea
Turned Silver (a 2016 National Book Award Finalist) was displayed at the
White House, where Lin was recognized as a Champion of Change for Asian
American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling. Many of Lin’s books are
about the Asian American experience. "Books erase bias,” she has said. “They
make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures
universal."
Alvina Ling is vice president and editor-in-chief at Little,
Brown Books for Young Readers, where she has worked since 1999. She edits
children's books for all ages, from picture books to young adult titles. In addition to Grace Lin, she has worked with such authors and illustrators as Peter Brown, Bryan Collier, Ed
Young, Wendy Mass, Justina Chen, Chris Colfer, Laini Taylor, Libba Bray, Barry
Lyga, Holly Black, Sherman Alexie and Matthew Quick.
She is the co-founder and former chair of the Children's Book Council's
Diversity Committee. She is on Twitter as @planetalvina and on Instagram as
@alvinaling. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Venus.
What is it like to work professionally with someone with whom you have so much personal history? What makes an effective author-editor relationship? On May 18, Lin and Ling will shed light on their shared past and their creative process, explaining how they work together, how they support one another and where they each find inspiration.
What is it like to work professionally with someone with whom you have so much personal history? What makes an effective author-editor relationship? On May 18, Lin and Ling will shed light on their shared past and their creative process, explaining how they work together, how they support one another and where they each find inspiration.
Date: Thursday, May 18
1025 Fifth Street NW (at K Street)
Menu: All choices $25 ($26 when paid online via PayPal)
Menu: All choices $25 ($26 when paid online via PayPal)
:: CHOICE OF SANDWICH (all sandwiches served with a salad of baby greens and house-made kettle chips) ::
• Falafel sandwich (vegetarian/vegan) with house-made hummus, cucumbers, lettuce, tomato and onion on whole-wheat pita, served with tahini sauce (vegan without tahini sauce)
• Honey-roasted turkey sandwich with Havarti cheese, Dijonnaise, lettuce, tomato and onion on wheat bread
• Grilled-chicken panini with chipotle mayo, caramelized onions, pepper jack, lettuce and tomato on ciabatta
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Exhibition of Art from the Mazza Museum
2. Discussion of Loving vs. Virginia at the Library of Congress
3. The Dr. Ernie Bond Curriculum Resource Center
4. Mem Fox Responds to the Guild's Message of Support
5. The Green Earth Book Award Winners
6. Member News
7. Guild Membership Renewal
IGNITING THE IMAGINATION: SELECTIONS FROM THE MAZZA MUSEUM
March 6 through August 7, 2017
National Academy of
Sciences Building, 2101 Constitution Avenue NW
Free; photo ID
required
The Mazza Museum of
International Art from Picture Books was established by Dr. Jerry Mallet in
1982 to promote literacy and enrich the lives of all people through the art of
picture book illustration. Located at the University of Findlay in Ohio, the
museum is home to the world’s first and most diverse collection of original art
from picture books. The Mazza Museum provides more than 47 programs annually
for people of all ages.
This exhibition
features 29 illustrations from the museum’s
collection relating to science, engineering and medicine, spanning the 1950s to the present. Illustrators featured
include Lynne Avril, Robin Brickman, Christopher Canyon and D.C. area-based Patrick O'Brien. In an era of software and computer screens, the exhibit
transports viewers back to the place where they first learned to dream: the
pages of their favorite picture books.
 |
| Illustration by Lynne Avril from The Pirate of Kindergarten, text by George Ella Lyon (Atheneun, 2010), p. 34. |
The idea for the exhibition originated with Jay Labov, senior adviser for education and medicine at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, who visited the Mazza Museum. Labov stated, "I realized that much of the artwork exhibited there has enthralled so many generations of children and it teaches invaluable insights and understanding about the world of science and engineering. I was eager to bring this gem of a museum to the attention of the director of the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and am thrilled that children and adults alike in the Washington area will be able to partake of some of that museum's vast collection."
PATRICIA HRUBY POWELL AND SHADRA STRICKLAND AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
DEDICATION OF THE DR. ERNIE BOND CURRICULUM RESOURCE CENTER
by Karen Leggett
 |
| Bryan Collier's portrait of Dr. Ernie Bond |
The Dr. Ernie Bond Curriculum Resource Center at Salisbury University was rededicated in Ernie Bond’s name during this year’s Children’s and Young Adult Literature Festival, on April 21 and 22 in Salisbury, Md. Ernie was a Guild member and friend to authors and illustrators all over the world before his untimely death last year.
The Resource Center includes everything a budding teacher
could use or enjoy: shelves of books (mostly donated), original art from
children’s book illustrators, puppets, games and study nooks. One student called it his “room of
requirement,” a Harry Potter reference to a room that only appears when a
person really needs it and is always equipped for the seeker’s needs. It is a
place of fun, enrichment and study that symbolizes Ernie Bond’s ebullient love
of children’s books and all the people who create and enjoy them.
Bryan Collier, a longtime friend of the Salisbury Festival
and Ernie Bond, painted a portrait that will hang in the new center along with
a photo of Ernie reading to children (including his two sons). “All that enthusiasm and energy,” said Collier. “I always see his eyes smiling at me.”
Ernie Bond helped initiate the Green Earth Book Awards,
announced at the Festival this year by Guild member Jenny Schmidt of the Nature
Generation www.natgen.org/. He also
collaborated on the brand-new Sonia Lynn Sadler Award, honoring a new diverse
illustrator of a children’s book about social justice. Sadler illustrated an
earlier Green Earth Honor Award book, Seeds
of Change: Wangari’s Gift to the World, written by Jen Cullerton Johnson,
who worked with Ernie to create the award after Sadler died of cancer in 2013. The
first award was given to Shabazz Larkin http://studioshabazz.com/will-allen-the-growing-table
for Will Allen and the Growing Table. The
families of both Larkin and Sadler attended the joyous but emotional
celebration.
To become a Friend of the Children’s and Young Adult
Literature Festival at Salisbury, contact PKDean@salisbury.edu. Next year’s festival will be held on April
18.
MEM FOX "OVERWHELMED BY KINDNESS..."
by Karen Leggett
Australian children’s author Mem Fox, detained by U.S. immigration
authorities as she tried to head home after speaking at a literacy conference
earlier this year, wrote of her unfortunate experience in The Guardian newspaper: “Everything was yelled, and everything was public, and this
was the most awful thing, I heard things happening in that room happening to
other people that made me ashamed to be human.” http://bit.ly/2pX5Jbm
Members of the Children’s Book Guild sent an
encouraging and supportive note to Fox, illustrated by Susan L. Roth, and Fox
responded with a handwritten note of “gratitude for the wonderful card!” She
wrote, “I loved it, and its warm, encouraging messages. I have been completely
overwhelmed by kindness since the ghastly event at immigration. Please, please
please, via Facebook listservs, etc., could you convey my deepest thanks to
everyone? I have received 150 handwritten messages. Incredible.”
THE NATURE GENERATION ANNOUNCES THE GREEN EARTH BOOK AWARD WINNERS
Modern-Day Storytellers Shed Light on Complicated Environmental Issues
The Nature Generation, an environmental nonprofit, has announced the winners of its 2017 Green Earth Book Award. This national award recognizes books that best convey the message of environmental stewardship and inspire youth to grow deeper appreciation, respect and responsibility for their natural environment.
This year’s winners shed light on complicated issues surrounding human impact on the planet, including coal mining, endangered coral and sea turtle habitats, and the loss of our seed diversity.
“Green Earth Book Award winners offer hope to people who feel frustrated about how the new administration is ignoring the science and the gravity of the declining health of our planet,” said Amy Marasco, founder and president of The Nature Generation. “These books are tools that we can use to educate our next generation and inspire them to play a role in reversing the dangerous effects of climate change.”
Picture Book
Follow the Moon Home - Acclaimed activist Philippe Cousteau, renowned author Deborah Hopkinson and illustrator Meilo So show the powerful difference young people can make as Viv brings together a community to save the sea turtles of the South Carolina coast. Ages 5-8 (Chronicle Books)
Honor Winners:
Be the Change: A Grandfather Gandhi Story - written by Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus and illustrated by Evan Turk. Ages 4-8 (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Green City - written and illustrated by Allan Drummond. Ages 5-8 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group)
Children’s Nonfiction
Science Comics: Coral Reefs: Cities of the Ocean - Maris Wicks’s combination of hardcore cuteness with in-depth science provides an absorbing look at the biology of coral reefs and their ecological importance. Ages 9-13 (First Second/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group)
Honor Winner:
Pocket Change: Pitching in for a Better World - written by Michelle Mulder. Ages 8-12 (Orca Book Publishers)
Children’s Fiction
Saving Wonder – In Mary
Knight’s transporting debut, about the power of words and friendship, Curly must
decide whether to fight Big Coal to save the mountain he calls home. Ages 8-12
(Scholastic Press)
Young Adult Fiction
Dig Too Deep - Amy Allgeyer tells the story of how Liberty, who blames the mine for her grandmother’s sickness, is plunged into a world of secrets, lies, threats and danger. Ages 13-18 (Albert Whitman & Co)
Honor Winner:
Rescued - written by Eliot Schrefer. Ages 12 and up (Scholastic Press)
YA Nonfiction
The Story of Seeds - Nancy Castaldo details how worldwide seed supply is endangered and offers ideas on how to preserve the variety of one of our most valuable food sources through simple everyday actions. Ages 12-18 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Honor Winner:
Inside an Osprey's Nest - written by Teena Ruark Gorrow and Craig A. Koppie. Ages 12-21 (Schiffer Publishing)
The Nature Generation has bestowed the Green Earth Book Awards for the past 13 years to bring national recognition to important works and their authors with its highly qualified “seal of approval” for environmental literature. The winners are chosen by a panel of literary, environmental and educational professionals.
MEMBER NEWS
MARFE FERGUSON DELANO'S latest picture book, Explore My World: Ducklings, came out in March 2017, published by National Geographic.
SUSAN STOCKDALE will present and sign her new picture book, Fantastic Flowers, at Soapstone Market in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, May 7, at 11 a.m.; at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Md., on Saturday, May 20, at 2:15 p.m.; and at The Children’s Bookstore in Baltimore on Wednesday, May 24, at 3:30 p.m..
PHYLLIS NAYLOR delivered the deGrummond lecture at the University of Southern Mississippi on April 5. Their largest crowd ever came to celebrate the 50th annual Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival. Among the other speakers present were Kate DiCamillo, Pat Mora, Pete Hautman, Andrea Davis Pinkney, and KWAME ALEXANDER.
MICHELLE GREEN writes: "For those of you following my kidney-transplant saga, there's good news. It seems through diet and yoga that my kidney is regenerating and is now at 30 percent of capacity! The transplant has been taken off the operating table. As to my recent surgery, I continue to recuperate at home and will do so until mid-May. Cards and well wishes are welcome.
"In other news, I have formed Greentree, LLC, a writing and editorial business. This is the reincarnation of The Greentree Group, Inc., a graphic design and editorial firm I headed in the 80s.
"The Tuskegee Airman Legacy Project is going great guns. It recently was featured on a national blog, and I had the pleasure of meeting Representative Curtis Brown of Maryland and the head of Veterans Affairs. The now five-year project seeks to find, authenticate and document the black pilots, navigators, bombardiers and support personnel from World War II and beyond. Visit www.highflight.academy. My book proposal for High Flight: The Story of Eddie L. Young is out the door. This YA novel is about my dad, one of only two triple-rated pilots, navigators and bombardiers. He also flew in Korea and was in Special Ops in Vietnam.
"The movie deal for A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson is still underway, with scripts in third rewrites (sigh). There are angels in the works for production."
Mo Co Lit Camp 2017 will feature 12 Guild authors: MOIRA ROSE DONOHUE, SUE FLIESS, AMY HANSEN, CAROLINE HICKEY, JACQUELINE JULES, KATY KELLY, HENA KHAN, JENNIFER O'CONNELL, ERICA PERL, MARY QUATTLEBAUM, CATHERINE REEF and SUSAN STOCKDALE. They will be among the authors presenting their work to teachers and other professionals from the Washington, D.C., region at this free event to be held at Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., on Saturday, May 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
CATHERINE REEF will also be the featured speaker at the CATS (Children and Teen Services) Title Talk organized by book distributor Baker & Taylor in Ellicott City, Md., on May 4.
SUE FLIESS's book How to Trap a Leprechaun is now in its third printing. School Library Journal noted that Sue's "catchy verse...begs to be part of a St. Patrick's Day read-aloud." Also, Sue's book A Fairy Friend, with Henry Holt and illustrated by Claire Keane, will be published in Chinese.
In addition to Mo Co Lit Camp, Sue's schedule includes a book signing at the Superhero 5K/Walk and Kids Fun Run on April 30, from 8:30 to 10 a.m., at the Village at Leesburg, Leesburg, Va. Sue will also appear at the Chesapeake Children's Book Festival, at the Talbot County Free Library in Easton, Md.,June 17, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Sue recently recorded a new song parody about books and invites you to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
SHOUT MOUSE PRESS, in partnership with Beacon House, is thrilled
to announce the launch of The Day Tajon Got Shot, a novel by teen
girls, on Tuesday, May 30, at 6 p.m., at the Brookland Busboys
and Poets, 625 Monroe Street NE, Washington, D.C.
In March 2015, during the rise of the Black Lives Matter
movement, 10 teen girls from Beacon House, a nonprofit organization offering services to at-risk youth in northeast Washington, started writing
a novel. They began with one central question: what really happens in a
community when a black youth is the victim of violence by police? How are lives
affected? Each writer took on a different perspective–that of the victim, the
police officer, the witness, the parent, the friend or the officer's kids.
Together they examined how it feels to be a human being from every side of this
event. Their stories thoughtfully explore issues of race, violence, loyalty and
justice in a community torn apart but seeking connection.
The book launch will be an opportunity to meet the authors, hear
dramatic readings by professional actors, discuss the role of teen voices in
the new civil rights movement and celebrate.
JACQUELINE JULES is happy to
announce that the first three books in the award-winning Zapato Power series are all boxed up. In this imaginative chapter
book series, an ordinary city boy learns how to use his super speed for good.
The boxed set includes: Freddie Ramos
Takes Off, Freddy Ramos Springs into Action, Freddie Ramos Zooms to the Rescue
and a limited-edition sticker sheet.
TIME TO RENEW YOUR GUILD MEMBERSHIP!
Spring is here, and it is time to renew your membership in the Children’s Book Guild. Please respond to the e-mail reminders and renew your membership before June 30, 2017. Dues can be paid online at http://childrensbookguild.org/payments/608-dues-and-fees-payments . If you have any questions please contact our membership chair, Jacqueline Jules at jjulesATjacquelinejules.com. Thank you!
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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. May's speakers include Marc Tyler Nobleman.
And remember, 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.
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