One More For Your Awards Season: The 2023 Walter Awards - We Need Diverse Books

The Walter Dean Myers Awards for Outstanding Children's Literature recognize diverse authors whose works feature diverse main characters and address diversity in a meaningful way.

Check out the livestream recording of the 2023 awards, hosted by Jacqueline Woodson, celebrated author and former National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. 

The video starts at 00:11:50, with a Symposium: "Books Save Lives" — Kick off with a conversation with the 2023 Walter Honorees, moderated by Ellen Oh, WNDB founding member, CEO, and award-winning writer! The symposium highlights the recent bans and challenges facing diverse books across the country.

At 01:13:40, the award ceremony and speeches begin.

You can learn more about We Need Diverse Books here.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Ellen Oh on the Power of Representation

Posted over at the Nerdy Book Club, Ellen writes of how:

"When you’re little, you don’t know what you’ve been missing if you’ve never seen it before. I didn’t know that the hole in my heart that had been filled with self-loathing and a wish that I could have been born white, had formed because of a lack of representation. I didn’t know that seeing yourself in the pages of a book would be life transforming. That book was The Joy Luck Club."

The piece is also a celebratory lead-in to telling us about Flying Lessons and Other Stories, the new anthology of short stories from #WeNeedDiverseBooks that Ellen edited.

Ellen's essay is a great reminder of how powerful it can be to see yourself in the pages of a book. And how we, writers and illustrators, can give that gift to our young readers.

Check out the full essay here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

#WeNeedDiverseBooks is "A Call To Arms"

As reported in Publisher's Weekly, YA author Ellen Oh, the #WNDB group’s founder, announced the movement's momentum and plans on May 30, 2014 at BookCon's The World Agrees: We Need Diverse Books panel. (The panel came about because of the uproar over BookCon's initial all-white-and-male lineup.)

There's been a huge outpouring of #WeNeedDiverseBooks messages on twitter - with over 162 million impressions in just the month of May!

New initiatives include:

Lee & Low Books/Tu Books is launching a second New Visions Award for a middle-grade or YA fantasy, science fiction, or mystery novel by a writer of color

The Diversity in the Classroom project of the National Education Association’s Read Across America program and First Book, in collaboration with #WNDB to both promote multicultural books and authors.

First Book's pledge to purchase 10,000 copies of each of the multicultural titles it selects for distribution to children in need from low-income families.

And they also announced plans for the first Children’s Literature Diversity Festival, to be held in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2016. “This will be a celebration of diverse authors and authors who write diversely,” Oh explained, “A festival where every panel, every event will be to celebrate diversity in all of its glory.”

To learn more about the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign (and listen to the audiostream of the panel) visit their website here.


There will also be a spotlight on diversity at the upcoming SCBWI Summer Conference, August 1-4, 2014 with a main-room panel on Diversity the Friday of the conference, featuring Agent Adriana Dominguez, and Authors Sharon Flake, Lamar Giles, Meg Medina and Linda Sue Park, moderated by Suzanne Morgan Williams.

In addition, the conference will once again have the LGBTQ Q&A (which I'll host), a safe space to discuss with conference faculty guests the challenges and opportunities of including LGBTQ characters and themes in our work for children and teens.

You can find out more about the conference and register here.