Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Listen to SCBWI's Newest Podcast: A Conversation with Andrea Davis Pinkney



Andrea Davis Pinkney is vice president, executive editor at Scholastic Books, and is also a New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author. Andrea speaks with Theo about her path to being a reader and an editor, the insights she's gained from her background in journalism, the evolution of diversity in publishing, and much more!


Listen to the episode trailer here.

Current SCBWI members can listen to the full episode here (log in first).

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Thursday, October 25, 2018

It's Thursday Crawl at the SCBWI Book Stop!



Today, Thursday 10/25 only, 25 visitors to BookStop will have for a chance to win a $25 VISA gift card.

All you have to do is visit 25 pages, sign into the guestbook, and email a list of the pages you visited. Send your list to scbwibookstop@scbwi.org with the subject line “Thursday Page Crawl”. Emails must be sent on Thursday 10/25 only before 11:59pm, your local time. Entries sent after that time will not be eligible.

You could be one of 25 winners of the day! Winners will be picked at random on Friday 10/26. Winners' names will be posted on the BookStop incentives page. The more browsing, the more winning!

Good luck, and have a great time checking out the great books by SCBWI members!

You can visit BookStop here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Registration for the 20th Annual SCBWI Winter Conference in New York (#NY19SCBWI) Opens Today, Tuesday October 23, 2018 at 10AM Pacific


February 8-10, 2019, #NY19SCBWI will feature deep dives into art and craft, dynamic keynotes and presentations, networking, and so much more!






Find out all the details and register at the SCBWI website here.

We hope to see you in New York!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Wisdom from Multi-Award Winning Illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky

Paul wrote about receiving the Eric Carle Honor on his website here.


On September 27, 2018, Paul was honored by the Eric Carle Museum for playing "an instrumental role in making picture books a vibrant and influential art and literary form."

In announcing his winning the 2018 "Artist" Honor, the Eric Carle Museum said,

"Paul O. Zelinsky is master of many styles, bringing exceptional artistry and poignant storytelling to the field. He received the 1998 Caldecott Medal for his illustrated retelling of Rapunzel. Three additional books received Caldecott Honors: Hansel and Gretel (1985), Rumpelstiltskin (1987), and Swamp Angel (1995). Zelinsky is regarded as one of the most critically acclaimed artists in the field of children's literature." 

And now more good news: The Society of Illustrators will present Paul with their Lifetime Achievement Award at the opening of the annual Original Art exhibition in November, 2018!

Back in an interview Paul did in 2014 for KidLit411, he was asked,
Q: You have won so many honors, awards and accolades. Does it ever get old?
Here's Paul's very sage response:
A: Does being honored get old? No! It's been exciting and gratifying to be paid all this terrific attention... I'm also aware of the difference between receiving accolades and the real purpose of the whole enterprise, which is children (or anybody) seriously bonding with books-- getting out of my books what I've tried to put in. That is more important by far, and when it happens, this is what makes me happiest.
Congratulations, Paul, from our whole SCBWI community! And thanks for keeping it real.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

5 Writing Tips from the Amazing Barbara Kingsolver


In this wonderful piece in Publishers Weekly, Barbara Kingsolver shares so much wisdom, including these gems:

"Writer’s block is another name for writer’s dread"
To write yourself into a book, you have to think of "pages negative-100 to zero—and you can’t skip them"
and
"Readers come to books for many reasons, but ultimately they’re looking for wisdom. That’s something writers can offer only after we’ve accrued it, like scar tissue, usually by surviving things we didn’t want to deal with—a process otherwise known as aging. This is fantastically good news! Twenty, thirty, or forty years after all the athletes, dancers, models and actors of our cohort have been put out to pasture, we can look forward to doing our greatest work."
It's well-worth reading in its entirety.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Research on the Power of Reading, curated by Donalyn Miller



Donalyn Miller has done a lot of the heavy lifting for us, and for teachers looking to support reading as a good use of time for their students.

A few stand-out quotes:
“A child sitting in a quiet room with a good book isn’t a flashy or marketable teaching method. It just happens to be the only way anyone became a reader.” —Nancie Atwell
and
"Do we really need research proving that kids who read the most outperform kids who don’t read that much? Do we really need research proving that when readers are engaged with what they read they invest more effort in reading? Do we really need research proving that when kids have books in classrooms, libraries, and homes they read more?" —Donalyn Miller
Those last questions may be rhetorical, as Donalyn proceeds to list research and resources that do back up those statements with evidence.

 The part that's really inspiring, for those of us who create books for children and teens?

"when readers are engaged with what they read they invest more effort in reading"

So it's up to us, too. To create books that engage our young readers. Page-turners, fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, poetry, words and images and stories they'll want to read.

Let's do just that.

Here's a link to Donalyn's full post, I’ve Got Research. Yes, I Do. I’ve Got Research. How About You?

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Debbie Ridpath Ohi's Creativity Advice: Make Time To Play

This is very well said.


"No matter how busy I am, I always try to carve out a few minutes every day to do some art and writing purely for the fun of it. No pressure to show anyone or have anything be perfect....just to PLAY." —Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Make time to be creative every day. Even if it's just a few moments. Play with words. Or images. Or story.

It's excellent advice.

Thanks, Debbie!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Thursday, October 4, 2018

The Children's Book Council Announces the 2019 CBC Diversity Outstanding Achievement Awards



In it's inaugural year, the CBC Diversity Outstanding Achievement Awards were given “to professionals or organizations in the children’s publishing industry who have made a significant impact on the publishing and marketing of diverse books, diversity in hiring and mentoring, and efforts that create greater awareness with the public about the importance of diverse voices.”

 “The winners were announced at the CBC Annual Meeting in New York City on September 27, and an official ceremony and conversation with the winners will take place on October 24 at a CBC Forum event. The winners will each select an organization to receive one thousand dollars’ worth of children’s books in their name.”

This year's winners were:
Saraciea J. Fennell, Publicist, Tor
Jennifer Loja, President & Publisher, Penguin Books for Young Readers
Jason Low, Publisher, Lee and Low Books
Beth Phelan, Literary Agent, Gallt & Zacker Literary
Phoebe Yeh, VP & Co-Publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers/Random House Children’s Books
and
We Need Diverse Books

Read the full announcement here!

 Congratulations to all the winners!

 Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

On Men in Translation: A Guest Post by Avery Udagawa

#WorldKidLit Month image (c) Elina Braslina 


A #WorldKidLit Month and International Translation Day post. 

Earlier this year, I published a post called On Women in Translation, which showed that

• Prominent translations for US children feature women authors, from western cultures; and
• Translations for US children are vanishingly few.

To find out about prominent translations for US children, I had looked at winners of the ALSC Batchelder Award, which for fifty years has garlanded translations for children published in the US.

In today’s post, I would like to share findings about a group I could not introduce fully in that post: male authors of prominent translations for US children. Here is what I found.

Prominent Translations for US Children by Male Authors Also Tend to Come from Western Cultures

Using exactly fifty years’ worth of Batchelder data, I found (click to enlarge):

Authors of Batchelder Award Winners by Gender


Languages of Male Authors of Batchelder Award Winners, by Region



Over fifty years, 1968-2018, 46% of Batchelder Award titles were authored by men. Of these, 83% were written in European languages.

Note: Language can belie culture of origin. Rafik Schami, author in German of A Hand Full of Stars, 1991 Batchelder winner, grew up in Syria and set his story in Damascus.

Looking at Batchelder Honor Books:

Authors of Batchelder Honor Winners by Gender


Languages of Male Authors of Batchelder Honor Winners, by Region


Over twenty-eight years (1991-2018), 38% of Batchelder Honor titles were authored by men. Of these, 67% were written in European languages.

What I learned: as with women, men writing in languages of cultures that contrast highly with the US were under-represented.

As I noted in my last post, most of the world’s languages have been absent entirely from the Batchelder lists, including Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (China), Croatian, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean, Malay, Nepali, Persian, Polish, Punjabi, Swahili, Thai, Ukrainian, and Urdu. These are all languages of countries with national sections of IBBY, suggesting that children’s literary scenes exist.

Translations likely to be accessed by US children that have male authors, were also predominantly authored in European languages.

Will New Batchelder Award Criteria Change this Picture?

When I combined all genders of authors of Batchelder Award and Honor books over time, I found:

Languages of All Authors of Batchelder Award and Honor Winners, by Region


In the next fifty years, will the balance among the bars in this graph change?

One factor that may affect the answer is a change in Batchelder Award critera. Recently, an award evolution committee determined that books originally published in a language other than English, published in English translation overseas, and then subsequently published in English in the US, will be eligible for the award. (Previously, books published in English translation abroad and subsequently published in the US were ineligible.)

This could conceivably bring greater prominence in the US for books written by authors in non-western cultures. Books written in non-European languages are often a risk to publish Stateside due to the work needed to translate, edit and market them for US readers. If a book from, say, Asia, gets published with success in the UK, a US publisher could find it easier to risk publishing it, since it now has a sales record in an English-reading country and is translated. The fact that such a book could now win a Batchelder might mean that more such books attain prominence in the US—because Batchelder books are likely to be stocked in school libraries.

In the last Batchelder Award cycle, the novel Bronze and Sunflower by Chinese male author Cao Wenxuan, translated by SCBWI member translator Helen Wang, was ineligible due to having been published first in the UK. Now a work like this could win the award.

Read more about Bronze and Sunflower and the author here.


Will the new criteria bring about a change in where our children’s books are written? Time will tell. Meanwhile, it’s up to US consumers and publishers to notice how translations—all translations—remain a tiny sliver of our children’s publishing output.



Data source: Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) Translated Book Logs and overall book counts

What Three Percent Looks Like


To promote world literature, SCBWI welcomes not only international writers and illustrators, but also translators, who in 2014 became the third professional category of members. Translators are now part of 60 SCBWI regions, including 38 US regions. Reach out to translators to learn more about the world of world literature. Info: itc@scbwi.org


Avery Fischer Udagawa serves as SCBWI International Translator Coordinator.