Have You Been Attending These Free-For-Members Digital Workshops? Next Up: "Creating a Cast of Characters in Your Middle Grade Novel" with Meg Medina

Registration is open now for "Creating a Cast of Characters in Your Middle Grade Novel" with Meg Medina.

The workshop will take place this Thursday June 3, 2021 at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern. Here's the description:

Kids have busy lives - with their families, at school, and with their friends. How do you recreate those relationships authentically without confusing your readers with too many characters? Meg Medina, author of the3 Newbery award-winning novel Merci Suarez Changes Gears and its newly released follow-up Merci Suarez Can't Dance, leads a worskhop on how we build and manage memorable characters in service to the story we're trying to tell. Be prepared to work on exercises pertaining to your own work-in-progress.

Like all the SCBWI digital workshops, the video recording will remain up on the SCBWI Digital Workshops Archive page for four weeks... which means you can still see

Digital Workshop One: Transforming a Picture Book Manuscript Into a Visual Narrative
with Jacqueline Alcántara

Digital Workshop Two: SCBWI #OWNVOICES Celebrating Asian Voices
with Julie Abe, Samira Ahmed, Mike Jung, Emily X.R. Pan, Dow Phumiruk, Paula Yoo; moderated by Alvina Ling

and

Digital Workshop Three: Maximizing Your Social Media Presence and Effectiveness
with Greg Pincus

by logging into the archive.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On!
Lee

Sticks and Stones and the Stories We Tell: Ten BIPOC Creators Discuss Turning Racism Into Art

In this free-to-all panel from SCBWI, sparked from an idea from renowned illustrator, author, and teacher Pat Cummings, ten also renowned children's book creators share their experience with racism and how they've aimed to transform those experiences into art.

In the opening minutes, Lin Oliver also introduces SCBWI's brand new Chief Equity and Inclusion Office, April Powers.

Lin Oliver (top left) introduces April Powers (center), SCBWI's Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, while sign language interpreter 

In her introduction, Pam Cummings said,

“Talking about the problem is one thing, but how do you use it? How do we get constructive with this? How does this turn up in our work?”

Answers and stories and so much more are shared by Crystal Allen, Floyd Cooper, Lamar Giles, Rafael Lopez, Meg Medina, Linda Sue Park, Christian Robinson, Shadra Strickland, and Lisa Yee.

It's well-worth watching.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

#KidLitForMasks - Add YOUR Selfie to Spread Awareness that #MasksSaveLives

It's all over social media. There's a Publishers Weekly article explaining how it started, with Margaret Peterson Haddix wanting to do something positive and constructive. Margaret wrote in a Facebook post to launch the movement, “it’s time for authors to use their clout and influence again en masse to encourage mask-wearing to stop the spread of coronavirus.”

Here's Margaret's launch image of herself wearing a mask:

#KidLitForMasks and #MasksSaveLives

Author Bryan Patrick Avery word-plays off the title of his book "Super Puzzletastic Mysteries," writing "It's no mystery, masks save lives. Please wear one."

"Ninjas are cool. Ninjas wear masks. Be Ninja cool. Wear a Mask." Charlene Chua illustrates it for us!

Author Karol Ruth Silverstein put little masks on every pain-scale face on her cover but one - the one for her main character, Ricky, in her award-winning debut novel "Cursed".

More illustration Mask fun from illustrator Priscilla Alpaugh

And Meg Medina calls it like it is, with this selfie and the words "Be smart."

Search the hashtags online and discover your favorites. And consider joining in as part of #KidLitForMasks to spread the word that #MasksSaveLives

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

Finalists for the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature Include Many Familiar Faces From Our SCBWI Community!

The finalists for the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature are:

・Laurie Halse Anderson
・Eric Gansworth
・Meg Medina
・Linda Sue Park
・Mitali Perkins
・Jason Reynolds
・Cynthia Leitich Smith
・Laurel Snyder
・Alex Wheatle

The finalists were selected by an "international jury of accomplished writers and artists... with their sole criterion being the significant achievement of a writer or illustrator, either over a lifetime or in a single publication, as well as an ongoing, positive impact on children’s literature." The winner will be announced in October. Learn more here.

Congratulations, and good luck to all the finalists!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

P.S. - this does serve as an excellent reading list prompt, as well...

Take Some Creative Advice from Meg Medina - Your Artistic Mission Statement

There's maybe no better way to prepare for the new year ahead than to consider, as writers and/or illustrators,

"what do we want our lives to look like?" 

What's our mission?

And to write that out as our "Artistic Mission Statement."

For inspiration, listen to this under-9 minute podcast, Podcast #30: Meg Medina Talks About Nurturing Your Artistic Voice, from our friends at the Highlights Foundation, where George Brown speaks with Meg Medina about Meg's finding the mission statement she wrote 19 years earlier, before her books and awards, when she was a new mother and trying to figure out how to have time to write. Trying to see the artistic path ahead.

And now she looks back, seeing how far she's come, and thinking about where she wants her artistic career to go next!

So write down (or draw) your artistic mission statement, and have that with you as you head into 2020!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

The 2019 Newbery Medal Speech by Meg Medina

Meg Medina won the 2019 Newbery Medal for her middle grade novel, Merci Suárez Changes Gears.

She received the award and gave her acceptance speech at a gala dinner celebration on Sunday June 23, 2019.

Meg's speech was lovely, and personal, and universal, speaking of her own life (with the stories of her bike history) and sharing what she hoped to accomplish through the creation of this fictional bike, crafting:

“...a novel with a bike as Merci’s first longing, a way to steer herself through the sixth grade and all that awaits her during that wonderful and bewildering year. Merci Suárez and her family are a Cuban clan who live intergenerationally, interconnectedly, in Florida, as my mother dreamed of doing. And they’re a family that sacrifices for each other in large and small ways every day, which is, I think, the most important legacy the elders in my family left me.

And what does Merci find out? Just what I have, I suppose. That life is full of wonderful surprises, like new friends in the sixth grade, and lousy ones; like loneliness and family illnesses. She discovers — as always children will — that happiness and heartbreak coexist in a life well lived. Sometimes all there is to do is to switch to a different gear and push on, always with the hope of a better day.”

It's quite a speech, and you can read the whole thing here, courtesy of the Horn Book.

A moment of emotion captured on the giant screens during the standing ovation after Meg Medina's Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech

Find out more about Meg and her books here.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee