Mitali Perkins's Blog, page 57

Fire Escape Poetry Contest Winner

In honor of Mother's Day, and to remind you that the deadline for submission to the 2009 Fire Escape Short Fiction and Poetry Contests is June 1, here's the second prize winner from the 2008 Poetry Contest:

Mother's Burden

by J. Javier, El Salvador/USA Age 17

Heavy snoring at night after a long day's work,
you soldier on through the quagmires of life.
Cries of children all day, teenage tantrums at night,
you swim your deep dark oceans,
force painful new strokes into the water,
no man to appreciate your

Launch Your Book For Bridget

Beloved librarian and YA author Bridget Zinn is battling cancer, and the kidlitosphere wants to help. Bloggers, illustrators, and authors have donated books, critiques, art, and signed first editions of bestsellers, and bidding on them as well. Now it's my turn to offer something. Organizer Jone MacCulloch and I went back and forth on several options before deciding on this:

Personalized Book Launch Consult by Mitali Perkins

Mitali Perkins is offering a personalized book launch consult using th

Crossed a Border Lately?

"Reading makes immigrants of us all," said Hazel Rochman. "It takes us away from home, but, most importantly, it finds homes for us everywhere."

Check your nightstand. How far are you traveling in your fiction? Here's my border-crossing challenge.

Share the title of a children's or YA novel you've read recently or plan to read featuring a protagonist who (a) wasn't born in your country of origin.

Then tell us about a good book with a main character (b) who is someone most of your an

Evaluating a YA Book

YALSA's Best Books For Young Adults librarians and teens ask questions to decide whether or not the nominated books will make the final cut. I thought they might be helpful for all of us who review and evaluate novels. What do you think of these? Are there any surprises or questions you'd never ask?

Analyze
How well did the author capture your attention? How clear was the author’s theme or message? How vivid were the details? How well did the book build in intensity? How clear was

Kids Books That Pass The Peace

Want your children to develop a passion for social justice? The Jane Addams Children's Book Award is given annually to books that "engage children in thinking about peace, justice, world community, and/or equality of the sexes and all races." This year's winners are a must for families and classrooms who care about peace on the planet (annotations are from the Jane Addams' Book Award Committee's official press release).

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai, written and illust

Not Your Mother's Market

One of my pet peeves is when a gatekeeper doesn't represent, publish, promote, or buy a great teen or tween novel featuring a nonwhite protagonist because "that's such a small slice of the market" or "we just don't have that population in our community."

That's old school, people, for two reasons.

(1) Do YOU read only those books featuring protagonists who share your particular mix of class, ethnicity, and educational status? Oh, so you're reading your autobiography again and again, then? Compelli

Picnic Basket Book Promotion

Want to spread the buzz about your book to teachers and librarians, who in turn will share it with their students? Ask Deborah Sloan (former director of marketing, promotion, advertising and publicity at Candlewick) if she'll feature it in The Picnic Basket. Here's the premise:

We send you free books. You tell us what you think! Welcome to The Picnic Basket, where school and library professionals taste new and forthcoming children's books with first-come, first-serve sample copies of books for ki

Writing Race: A Checklist For Writers

We've been talking a lot about this on the Fire Escape, but I thought it might be helpful to sum up ten questions we writers can ask ourselves once we've completed a story (these were presented during my workshop at the NESCBWI conference last weekend):
How and why did or didn't I define race? Did I use labels like "Black" or "white"? If so, which ones and why?

Did my setting, plot, and characters determine the cultural casting?

Am I aware and in charge of of any non-verbals that are race-specific

Princess Tiana's Accent

Disney's first Black princess is voiced by Anika Noni Rose. Rose grew up outside Hartford, Connecticut in the community of Bloomfield, so she's from New England, but she sustains a Bostwanan accent in HBO's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency as Grace Makutsi. You can get a taste of Rose's New Orleans spin on Princess Tiana's voice in the teaser:



Here's what she sounds like in real life. Interestingly, Disney chose to write Prince Naveen, Tiana's true love, as Middle Eastern/South Asian-ish, and he's

Meet the Fugees

Stopped by the Carter Center in Atlanta last night for the tail end of a presentation by Warren St. John (author of OUTCASTS UNITED: A Refugee Town, An American Dream) and Coach Luma Mufleh, who leads the Fugees Family.
But the highlight of the evening was meeting the Fugees themselves, who sat in the front rows, resplendent in nice shirts and ties, and after the event patiently signed books for dozens of visitors -- and posed for their growing number of fans.

Now I'm about to teach three classes