Double Dose: Weekly Roundup: June 16 - June 29, 2013

• Openly YA Tour Hits the Road at Publisher's Weekly

• Resources for Parents of Gender Variant Children  at Express Milwaukee

• As Demographics Shift, Kids' Books Stay Stubbornly White  at NPR's Code Switch

• Why Hasn't the Number of Multicultural Books Increased in Eighteen Years?  at Lee & Low's blog

• Shaikha Bodour Emphasises Importance of Providing More Books to Visually Impaired  at Gulf News

• How Young Adult Literature Challenges Gender Norms  at Thought Catalog

• Degrees of Difficulty: Writing the Other at Rich in Color

• When Every Culture Is a Foreign Culture: Writing on the Autism Spectrum  at Rich in Color

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!

Weekly Roundup: June 9 - June 15, 2013

• Beyond 'Game of Thrones': Exploring Diversity in Speculative Fiction at the L.A. Times Hero Complex

• The Grey of Gender: Intersex and Gender Variant/Non-Binary Characters in YA  at Gay YA

• Book Shares Insights of Filipino Children  at Times of Oman

• Diversity in Literature and a Giveaway!  at Go Teen Writers

•  CGI Chicago: First Books Commits to Diversity in Children's Literature at allvoices

• YA Is Too Late: Gay Characters in Middle Grade Fiction  at Vikki VanSickle

• A New Definition of Fatherhood  at Colorlines

• Once Upon a Time  at Business Standard

• YA Books About Transgender Characters  at Diversity in YA

Weekly Roundup: May 26 - June 1, 2013

• Coverflip: What Now? at the HuffPost

• Searching for Our Jeremy Lin at CBC Diversity

• Five Wrong-Headed Reasons For Not Writing Diverse Characters in Science Fiction at Rich in Color

• World Should Help Children with Disabilites Unlock Their Potential  at Thomas Reuters Foundation

• Scene in the Background: Disability in Children's Books at Youtube

• Do You Want to Talk About Children's Books?  event in London

Weekly Roundup: May 5 - May 11, 2013

• The Gender Coverup at the HuffPost

• YA Books Need to Reflect Our Diverse Society at The Telegraph

• Fredrick McKissack, Half of Award-Winning Writing Team, Dies at 73  at SLJ

•  Judging Covers at CBC Diversity

Girls of Color in Dystopia Blog Series at bitchmedia

Over at bitchmedia, Victoria Law is guest blogging a two-month series about race and gender in YA dystopian lit called Girls of Color in Dystopia.

In Do Girls of Color Survive Dystopia?, Law talks about the difficulty she has had finding dystopian YA that features a girl of color protagonist for her 12-year old daughter. She mentions Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson and the short story collection Diverse Energies as two exceptions in a sea of dystopia featuring white female protagonists.

 

Take The Birthday Party Pledge!

 

We recently came across something amazing that we wholeheartedly support called The Birthday Party Pledge! When you take The Birthday Pledge you are committing to these three things:

• To give multicultural books to kids in your life as birthday presents for a year.

• To encourage the kids in your life to read about and appreciate diversity in all its forms.

• To help build a new generation of readers!

We love that the pledge not only encourages kids to read (which is great), but encourages adults to intentionally help kids become more aware of diversity through books (even better!). You can read more about The Birthday Pledge (and find lots of book recommendation lists) by following this link. We hope you'll take the challenge and actively help to promote diversity and reading!

NYPL Panel Discusses Diversity and Children's Books

Earlier this month, the New York Public Library's (NYPL) Children's Literary Salon hosted a panel called Diversity and the State of Children's Books. Moderated by Betsy Bird, the panel consisted of Zetta Elliott (author), Connie Hsu (editor at Little, Brown), and Sofia Quintero (author). Unfortunately, none of the Ink & Penners were able to attend, but here are some of the topics we've learned were covered at the panel.

Zetta Elliot examined:

• The difference between diversity and equity.

• What she sees as a direct correlation between the lack of diversity in people working in the children's publishing industry and the lack of diverse books published for young people.

• The importance of children being taught to be critical readers.

Racebending.com Interview with Holly Black and Sarah Brennan

The wonderful people over at Racebending.com recently interviewed YA authors Holly Black and Sarah Brennan about their fantasy books that feature characters who are non-white or bi/multiracial, non-straight, or have a disability. The fact that they write such characters into their fantasy novels is especially noteworthy as the fantasy genre is known for having a disturbing lack of diversity (and if there is any racial/ethnic diversity, those characters are almost certainly antagonists).

 "It's important for publishers to keep publishing diverse fiction, and to try and promote more. It's important for readers to support diverse fiction: because publishing is not dedicated to a Course of Racism Against All Odds. Publishing is full of allies--and people who mean well--and yet we are all tripped up at every turn by the idea that diverse books are less commercial, and so a) publishing them at all is a bad idea, b) if you do publish them, hide what they are and c) don't waste any more money on bookstore placement or advertising them. Everyone needs to work together to solve this problem: it's too huge for writers to be able to solve on our own."

--Sarah Brennan, from the interview

Another Online Resource about Diversity in YA Books

In 2011, YA authors Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon launched Diversity in YA which was both a website and a national book tour. The site was shuttered at the end of 2011 (as it was only intended to last a year), but yesterday the duo announced they've reopened the blog, this time on Tumblr. So, if you're looking for another resource on diversity (specifically concerning YA books) this one is worth checking out! 

http://diversityinya.tumblr.com/

All the Colors of the Rainbow: 2012 YA Book Covers That Display Racial Diversity

As a follow-up to the last post, we thought something positive was in order. So, here are all the YA covers from 2012 we could find that prominently feature POC. Enjoy and be encouraged--things are changing, even if it is not as quickly as we might hope.