Monica Edinger's Blog, page 31
September 15, 2015
New Blog Alert
Today, a group of thoughtful white librarian allieslaunch theblog, Reading While White. Their mission statement:
We are White librarians organizing to confront racism in the field of children’s and young adult literature. We are allies in the ongoing struggle for authenticity and visibility in books; for opportunities for people of color and First/Native Nations people in all aspects of the children’s and young adult book world; and for accountability among publishers, book creators, reviewer...
September 13, 2015
MILDRED D. TAYLOR’S ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY CELEBRATES 40th ANNIVERSARY IN 2016
(New York, NY – September 8, 2015) — Penguin Young Readers is thrilled to announce a 40th anniversary edition of the Newbery Award-winning ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY by Mildred D. Taylor. With more than 6.5 million copies in print, this masterpiece will have all new covers from Caldecott Winning illustrator Kadir Nelson. The 10 book deal includes covers for Ms. Taylor’s entire backlist and a future hardcover due from Viking in 2017. World rights, all languages were negotiated by Eileen Kre...
September 11, 2015
Remembering September 11
The farther September 11th recedes into the past the better. I’m glad it is vague history to my new 4th graders.
Ten days earlier had been our first day of school. At 8am I had opened my classroom door to a bunch of energetic nine-year-olds who quickly discovered the chocolate ladybugs I’d placed on each of their desks for good luck. By mid-morning, I’d led a discussion on classroom rules, helped them stow away school supplies, and taken them on a tour to see where the all-important bathrooms...
September 7, 2015
Who Tells the Story
A couple of complicated, painful, and challengingconversationsarose the last couple of days online related to who tells what story:
Debbie Reese’s description of adinnerraisingwhite privilege issues aroundstorytelling. Questionshere and here aboutMaggie Stiefvater’sparticipation on a “Writing the Other” panel and her response.
September 1, 2015
The Chinese Children’s Book World
My friend Roxanne Feldman (originally from Taiwan)recently visited China to attend theBeijing International Book Fair and explore the children’s book offerings from Chinese publishers. She did a delightful series of posts here about her visit withNotes from Beijing: Children’s Book Authors &Companiesspecifically featuring some of what she discovered. Announcing this on the childlit list serve, Roxanne wrote:
From August 21st to 30th, I was in Beijing, as an invited guest by a
Chinese publishe...
August 27, 2015
Remembering Katrina
Katrina is burned into my brain. It is burned into many of our brains. And now for this tenth anniversary there are many considerations of what happened then, after, and is still happening. For children, there have been books. Quite a few works of fiction and some nonfiction.One of the best I’ve seen is Don Brown’s graphic novelDrowned City: Katrina and New Orleans. Simply outstanding in a heart-wrenching way.
Here’s what I wrote on the third anniversary:
In my experience as the daughter of H...
August 26, 2015
An IBBY Wonderland
If you are interested in international children’s books (hopefully you all are!) and able to make it to New York this October, I urge you to consider attending the 11th Annual IBBY Regional Conference, “Through the Looking Glass: Exploring the Wonderland of International Children’s Literature,” October 16-18, 2015. Several years ago I was able to attend the IBBY Congress in London (it is every two years in different parts of the world — next summer it is in New Zealand) and it was fabulous. (...
August 22, 2015
A New Online Annotated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
I’m a fan of annotating books.Marginalia fascinates me. For decades I’ve introduced my 4th graders to the joy of close reading and annotating by way of Charlotte’s Web. And for my Alice in Wonderland unit I’ve depended very much on Gardner’s annotated edition. In fact, oneyear I had the kids do their own annotations for the book — they enjoyed doing that tremendously. And so I was delighted to see The Public Domain Review and Medium‘s cool project,an online annotated Alice. They describe it t...
August 19, 2015
The Martian, Book and Movie
Ilistened to Andy Weir’s The Martian last fall and, at first, wondered what it was all about, writing in a goodreadsupdate:
Just as I thought “this is getting claustrophobic” the other side’s story kicked in.
And once that happened, I was completely absorbed. My final brief review:
This was fun. Pretty much a roller-coaster. Almost predicable in that as soon as things seemed okay something else terrible happened, but somehow super-smart Whatley figured them out each time.
Now I’m evidently th...
August 16, 2015
In the Classroom: Africa and Animals
Right now I’m listening to the NPR show On Being where they are talking withKaty Payne, “a renowned acoustic biologist with a Quaker sensibility.” Her comments about elephants in particular are so moving and made me think about the recent complicated responses to the killing of Cecil the lion.
I was completelydisgusted and disturbed when first learning of Cecil’s death as trophy hunting seems a completely horrible activity to me. But as the media juggernaut continuedit struck me that here aga...
