the most wonderful time of the year
Christmas is coming! A week ago I wasn’t feeling very festive, but then I turned on the holiday tunes and started baking my Christmas cookies; a friend gave me a poinsettia—and then it snowed! I’m still writing furiously, trying to finish The Dragon Thief (which has now surpassed 30K words), but I’m deliberately making time for the holiday traditions that make me happy. Then yesterday I went online and discovered that my books made two year-end lists! It can be difficult to see lists of the “best” books of the year; if they aren’t lily-white, they often only include traditionally published books. But when Prof. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas at Penn GSE puts together her annual list, she includes indie titles and uses a specific set of considerations:
In selecting the top books of 2017 for young readers, Thomas highlights authors and illustrators whose work deals with issues like gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and socioeconomic class in ways that are real and empathetic.
“When a children’s publisher decides to release a book, or a teacher assigns a novel, they are making a choice that will resonate for decades,” Thomas said. “That’s because stories help kids understand who they are and who they can be. These stories matter not only for the members of the groups they portray. They also show members of other groups a view of life they might not otherwise see.”
You can watch a video from the Penn GSE team here. The banner image above accompanies the year-end list from M Is for Movement, a blog founded by four activist/authors. They explained the reasoning behind their list:
…the Trump campaign, election, and the racism, sexism, xenophobia and hate it has unleashed has highlighted the need to address social justice issues with our children. But a movement was already in the making, as many of these books were in the works even before Trump becoming president seemed a real threat. And of course many of the authors and illustrators who launched their books this year are people who have been tilling this ground for years. In either case, our folks have been hard at work, and we didn’t want to even try to make a comprehensive list of all the great social justice themed books that came out this year*. So instead, we asked M is for Movement editorial board members, other authors, illustrators, librarians, educators, and scholars “what were your favorite social justice and activist themed children’s books to come out this year?”
I don’t have kids and I don’t review books on this blog, so I drew a blank when “the M team” asked for my 2017 picks. I recommended Deborah Menkart of Teaching for Change and Social Justice Books, and was honored to find that one of her picks was Milo’s Museum! Two other books of mine were included, Mother of the Sea and Benny Doesn’t Like to Be Hugged, which is astonishing—and humbling, and heartening. These same author/activists participated in a social justice children’s book fair last weekend and over a thousand people came out! I’m not sure we could replicate that here on the east coast, but there is DEMAND for books like ours, and I love that these radical kid lit creators aren’t waiting for bookstores or publishers or mainstream review outlets to get on board.
Okay—time to get back to writing! I keep thinking the novel is almost done, and then it just keeps going…I stocked up on soup this week, which is good because we’re expecting more snow. Time to hunker down, write, bake, and assemble my own year-end list of African American YA/MG novels!
