Celebrate We Need Diverse Books Day on Thursday April 3, 2025

SCBWI's friends at We Need Diverse Books just announced "We Need Diverse Books Day," happening this Thursday April 3, 2025!

A screenshot from WNDB's Instagram about We Need Diverse Books Day

Here's some of what they shared:

We Need Diverse Books Day was created to commemorate a decade of WNDB’s efforts to diversify the publishing industry. This holiday is intended to highlight the importance of reading books that reflect our beautifully diverse world.

WNDB is committing to donate 10,000 diverse titles in 2025 to schools and libraries. We believe that diverse books ought to be read and celebrated, especially as book bans disproportionately target them.

To celebrate We Need Diverse Books Day, we invite you to read and share a diverse book on social media. Tell us what book you’re reading and why you picked it!

There's lots more suggestions of ways to celebrate We Need Diverse Books Day on WNDB's website here.

Illustrate, Translate, Write, and Read On,
Lee

 

Using Picture Books to Mitigate Climate Anxiety

     I wrote a picture book manuscript as LA burned.  When the fire broke out on January 7, it had been a wonderfully blustery day due to the Santa Ana winds.  I spent the morning with my kindergarten students, flying kites.  Children chasing and laughing.  Pure joy.  

Then, on a dime it changed.  By lunchtime, the principal called us all back into our classrooms.  As it turned out we were 3.7 miles from the evacuation line.  We watched helplessly as the smoke plumes rose from the nearby mountains, then continued to burn for days.                          

To watch video click here

                                                            https://youtu.be/CqMYP6uoiWA

                                                             

      Our community experienced trauma.  After the fires were extinguished, students from an affected school began enrolling in our school.  The students arrived in my classroom and school confused, unstable, and affected.  Their entire school community had been torn apart. We welcomed them into our community paying special attention to the fact that they were most likely experiencing trauma and most importantly needed a community and sense of belonging.       As a class, we gave them a place to belong.

      I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who lost their home in one of the two fires that burned simultaneously. Both UCLA and Yale University have noted that climate change contributed to the conditions that fueled the fires.  And yet, we don’t talk about it.  I suspect climate anxiety plays a big part.  And so, as a kindergarten teacher and kidlit author, I believe that we must be the ones to start the conversation.  This last post from me explores Using Picture Books to Mitigate Climate Anxiety. 

     I have the deepest respect for children and believe that they are capable, curious, and creative thinkers.  I worry that as adults, our own climate anxiety prevents us from having open and honest conversations with them about this growing existential threat.  Not having these conversations will not make the problem go away.  So, how can we push through our own anxiety to engage our young people in discourse that can mitigate their anxiety and support their capacity to engage in climate activism.  How can we lead by example?  I believe picture books are a valid portal to enter past our own resistance. As kidlit authors, we can write stories that lead children past the fear of the adults around them and into discourse that can leads them to be changemakers. 

I like to read stories to my kindergarten students to provoke discourse.  I don’t care what their conclusions are.  I just want them to connect and engage. I find that stories, rather than affirmation books or books where adults tell children how and what to think keep my students riveted.  

     Stories and experiences in nature help students build relationships with the outdoors which I believe builds the conditions for conservation to emerge.  We can’t expect children to want to push beyond climate anxiety through to climate activism if they have no reason to. 

     I often begin with picture books like Sea Bear written and illustrated by Lindsay Moore about a lone polar bear’s journey across sea ice in the Arctic, The Octopus Escapes written by Maile Meloy and illustrated by Felicita Sala about an octopus who escapes from an aquarium and returns back to its natural home, and my picture book Hello, Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story illustrated by Fiona Halliday about a fictional intergenerational friendship between a monarch caterpillar and a monarch butterfly.

     As I’ve written in my previous blog it’s important that stories are not only told through the lens of the white dominant culture (which often include animal stories) but rather offer multiple perspectives from diverse protagonists. I include Fatima’s Great Outdoors about a family's first camping trip written by Ambreen Tariq illustrated by Stevie Lewis and We Are Water Protectors about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests written by Carole Lindstrom illustrated by Michaela Goade.  I lean heaviest on No World Too Big edited by Lindsay H. Metcalf, Keila V. Dawson and Jeanette Bradley illustrated by Jeanette Bradley with non-fiction stories about youth climate activists.

     As picture book authors, we are tasked with the opportunity to move beyond our own climate anxiety and support our youth with the picture books we write.  Our children need your books as they make their way in a world where climate change is impacting where we live in different ways.  Our books can help children make sense of their world and move beyond their  anxiety to better cope with our changing world. Our books can make a difference. We owe it to this next generation.

By Zeena M. Pliska

     Zeena M. Pliska spends her days immersed in the joy of 5-year-olds.  She is a public school kindergarten teacher by day and a children’s book author by night in Los Angeles, California.  A progressive public-school educator, she believes that the most important aspect of teaching is listening to children. A social justice activist and organizer for over 30 years, she brings race, class, and gender analysis to everything she does.  She is half Egyptian and half Filipino.  A lifetime storyteller, she has facilitated stories as a theater director, visual artist, photographer and journalist and most recently as a short film screenwriter/producer/director.   Her debut picture book, Hello, Little One:  A Monarch Butterfly Story from Page Street Kids came out May 12, 2020.  Her second picture book Egyptian Lullaby from Roaring Brook Press came out April 18, 2023. Two board books in the Chicken Soup for Babies series from Charlesbridge came out in the fall and winter of 2023.  Egyptian Lullaby was awarded the 2024 CABA award from Howard University.

     Her blog posts can be found at  www.teachingauthors.com and on social media, Instagram @zeenamar, X (formerly Twitter) @zeenamar1013, Bluesky @zeenamar, and on Facebook @Zeena M. Pliska or Zeena Mar.  For more information you can go to www.zeenamar.

 

 

  

Were Your Books Stolen in Meta’s "Massive AI Training Book Heist"?

So instead of asking authors and paying for the rights to use our books to train their AI system, Meta evidently just used books and articles held in Library Genesis -- a "pirate" site.

Here's an exercise, courtesy of Alex Reisner at The Atlantic: Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta used to Train AI

When I ran the search on my own name, three of my published books came up (one of them twice.)

Run your own name, and see if your works -- without permission, without compensation -- were used to train Meta's AI.

The Authors Guild is calling it a "massive heist," and explains some of the things authors can do, including the information that "Class Action Lawsuits Cover All Writers Whose Books Were Used." They also say, in Meta’s Massive AI Training Book Heist: What Authors Need to Know:

"Meta and other AI companies knew exactly what they were doing but they did it anyway. Why? Because they needed books for their quality writing, style, expression, and long-form narration and would rather steal them than ask and pay for them as they do for all of the other necessary components of their AI, such as electricity and programming."

When I've used words like "Stolen" to describe the action of taking something without permission and without compensation and using it to create something else that is then sold, I've heard the response that I'm exaggerating.

I've also heard some folks say that the AI companies couldn't possibly afford to do it any other way. Except, for 2024 Meta reported, as Yahoo Finance explained, revenue of $164.5 billion -- and a profit of $62.4 billion. 

Billion.

And there are companies who are licensing works for AI training (in fact, the Authors Guild is working with one.) Note: Consent of the creators is key.

Bydonmartin at Instagram (ironically enough, as it is a Meta-owned platform) summed up their creator perspective here. It's well-worth watching.

It's all pretty upsetting, but helpful to stay informed. And maybe, as the Authors Guild suggests in their list of five things authors can do right now, taking some action can help. Here's their first suggestion:

Send a formal notice: If your books are in the LibGen dataset, send a letter to Meta and other AI companies stating they do not have the right to use your books. Here is a template you can use. 

Writing the letter took me two minutes (just added my info and my stolen book info) -- I've copied the text of my letter below. Did it make me feel a bit better? Yeah, a little. And if enough of us do it, maybe it will have an impact. You can draft your own letter here.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

--

To: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Subject: You Do Not Have the Right to Use My Work

My Message:

I am writing to you as an author who is extremely concerned about your misuse of my creative work. It has come to my attention that you have used my books, Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill, A Different Kind of Brave, and No Way, They Were Gay? Hidden Lives and Secret Loves, in the training of your generative AI models without permission from me, and in violation of my rights under copyright.

This letter is to put you on notice that you do not have the right to use my work to train your AI models. You must obtain express permission and provide reasonable licensing terms for authors’ works.

I hope you will set an example of responsible, legal, ethical AI use by obtaining permission before using authors’ and journalists’ works going forward and compensating us for the use you have already made. 

Lee Wind

Using Picture Books to Help Children Understand Our Diverse World

 

In this exploration of Using Picture Books to Help Children Understand Our Diverse World, let me begin with a quote that many of us are familiar with:

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books. (1990, p. ix)” Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emerita of Education at Ohio State University and a pioneer in multicultural children’s literature research.

My picture book Egyptian Lullaby was released in April 2023. I wrote Egyptian Lullaby to normalize Arab culture because Hollywood and the media had done such a bang-up job of demonizing Arabs.

I often present at teacher’s conferences on Using Picture Books to Decenter White Culture and Re-center Diversity. When I present, I ask teachers to evaluate their classroom libraries. I invite them to:

Identify their 10 favorite picture books that they read to their class every year. Who are the protagonists? What percentage of the picture books have non-white or Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) protagonists? What percentage have animal protagonists that tell their story through a white/dominant culture lens? What percentage have white protagonists?

After we explore teacher’s choices, we look specifically at context so I ask:

Of the picture books that they read to their class each year, featuring BIPOC protagonists…What percentage highlight universal themes i.e. human experiences, friendship or family relationships? What percentage focus on the struggle, trauma, resistance, or resilience of BIPOC people?  What percentage are about culture as expressed through food, holidays, traditions or rituals?

The hope is that their libraries become more balanced, showing BIPOC people as whole people living rich and full lives.

I know that my fellow teachers as well as myself, come to our classes with internal biases. It is impossible to not. When we examine the picture books we read to young students, we have a better chance of not reinforcing stereotypes and assumptions which are transferred subtly. If we consciously shift the way we center marginalized cultures and not reinforce the dominant culture, we have the power to normalize true diversity and create a lens through which children see a world where many different peoples and cultures live equitably.  In addition to racial equity, we must value all stories that include LGBTQIA protagonists, main characters with disabilities, stories that honor gender in all its forms and non-binary characters, as well as stories that look at the patriarchal system, etc.

It is imperative that children not in the dominant culture, see themselves in books.  If they don’t, they develop without understanding their value.  They miss the opportunity to connect with their true, authentic selves. They grow lacking the understanding of who they are and who they will become in the world.  And they move through a world where they don’t belong. Because preschool and primary school teachers use picture books to introduce and teach content to our younger students, access to children’s books that center currently marginalized voices make a profound difference. It creates an awareness where young students belonging to communities experiencing marginalization can now see themselves as valued in the same way young students belonging to the white community do.

With diverse picture books, students identifying as white can see themselves as part of a community without the limitations, that devaluing others brings.  Providing a balanced view of the world for young children is imperative to promoting equity. Afterall, if we keep reinforcing that Eurocentric cultures have more value to our young children through the literature we read, we cannot be surprised when adults who are in the dominant culture are unable to recognize their privilege. Ultimately this is a disservice to children in the dominant culture because it puts undue expectations on them and creates an unbalanced world for them to navigate. They lose the opportunity to learn and grow with others not like them.  In short, nobody wins.

As a community of authors, we must make space for the diversity of books.  I am not suggesting that we stop creating stories.  I am suggesting that we be mindful and understand the context in which we are creating. I am suggesting that we create a culture of abundance rather than a culture of scarcity. If teachers and librarians, can choose from a greater variety of books, we can consciously shift the way we center marginalized cultures and not reinforce the dominant culture, only.  We can create a lens through which children see a world where many different peoples and cultures live equitably.  A world where we can address the unequal power dynamics.  A world where we demonstrate valuing all people and most importantly bring marginalized people out of the margins. Valuing stories about many different and diverse protagonists, helps motivate the publishing industry to create and value the stories of currently marginalized peoples. It creates opportunities for writers and artists to tell their stories that may not otherwise get told. And it influences what book stores choose to carry and market. It helps motivate the publishing industry to create and value the stories of people not in the dominant paradigm.

Of particular concern, is the current political climate that encourages book banning. Banning books discourages books that act as what Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop refers to as "mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors." Encouraging the simple, doable act of thoughtfully choosing a wide variety of books that decenters dominant culture leads to change.  Banning books blocks this change.  And perhaps this is the purpose.  I think most authors understand that this is what makes this movement nefarious and dangerous.

Sometimes, a small subtle change, a slight shift in our awareness away from the dominant culture, a small choice can make a world of difference and open a whole new way of being for children, families, and ultimately communities. While authors, teachers, and librarians can't completely change the world, we can help shape and contextualize the world our children experience through the literature we provide for them, thus creating equity and justice for both the entitled and unentitled. We can help our students reimagine our world and see it as the diverse place it is, especially in the United States. We can all deconstruct the dominant paradigm.  

By Zeena M. Pliska

More Blog Posts Here

Zeena M. Pliska spends her days immersed in the joy of 5-year-olds.  She is a public school kindergarten teacher by day and a children’s book author by night in Los Angeles, California.  A progressive public-school educator, she believes that the most important aspect of teaching is listening to children. A social justice activist and organizer for over 30 years, she brings race, class, and gender analysis to everything she does.  She is half Egyptian and half Filipino.  A lifetime storyteller, she has facilitated stories as a theater director, visual artist, photographer and journalist and most recently as a short film screenwriter/producer/director.   Her debut picture book, Hello, Little One:  A Monarch Butterfly Story from Page Street Kids came out May 12, 2020.  Her second picture book Egyptian Lullaby from Roaring Brook Press came out April 18, 2023. Two board books in the Chicken Soup for Babies series from Charlesbridge came out in the fall and winter of 2023.  Egyptian Lullaby was awarded the 2024 CABA award from Howard University.

Her blog posts can be found at  www.teachingauthors.com and on social media, Instagram @zeenamar, X (formerly Twitter) @zeenamar1013, Bluesky @zeenamar, and on Facebook @Zeena M. Pliska or Zeena Mar.  For more information you can go to www.zeenamar.

Should parents be allowed to opt their children out of seeing books that include people who are different than themselves?

At Issue:

In this poignant essay in TIME, Our Books Help Teach LGBTQ Themes in Schools. Should SCOTUS Allow Parents to Opt Out?, children's book authors Sarah and Ian Hoffman explain their perspective on being both the parents of a child who doesn't fit the gender binary's strict two-and-only-two boxes of behavior and the authors of one of the books being challenged in a case about to go the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

They write,

Jacob’s Room to Choose is one of nine children’s picture books named in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a lawsuit filed in Montgomery County, Md., by parents who are upset that their children saw books like ours in their classrooms—books that teach self-acceptance and kindness.

Speaking of the power of representation – how meaningful it is when you have it, how devastating when you don't, Sarah and Ian share:

Allowing families to opt their children out of reading our books hurts the children whose lives and families are reflected in those books. “Opt-out” policies starkly communicate to classrooms of children that behaving decently to all human beings is optional and tells kids who are different that they and their families don’t merit the respect of all their classmates.

Some Thoughts on Creating In the Midst of This:

I'm a Gay man who writes books to empower kids and teens. Many of my books are inspired by Queer history and social justice.

The precedent if SCOTUS allows parents to opt-out of seeing and knowing diverse books exists would be wide-ranging. It's not much of a stretch to envision the subsequent groups whose representation in schools would be denied next... 

But diverse readers who need to see themselves reflected in books will still need that representation. 

And readers from the dominant culture will still need to have empathy and understand that they share so much with people who on the outside may seem really different from themselves.

And maybe most of all, living in community doesn't mean everyone is the same. Rather than seeing that as something to deny, or tolerate, or even accept, shouldn't we be working toward a world where our differences are celebrated?

That's the world I want my kiddo to live in. It's the world I want to help create. And that's a big part of what drives me creatively.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Using Picture Books to Explore Uncomfortable Topics

 In this post, I’d like to have a look at Using Picture Books to Explore Uncomfortable Topics. As a teacher, I believe that uncomfortable topics surface organically when students feel heard.  

Deep topics come up often without warning and at random times.  For 5-year-olds, they can range from what might seem like mundane issues for adults to problems that are recognized as trauma.

Young children are just beginning to explore and make sense of a larger world.  It can be joyful, wonder-filled, and scary.  Relationships are new.  Friendships are complicated.  Control and power are tools that young children are just starting to experiment with.  Questions emerge like:  Who has power? How do I get power? What do I do with it when I get it? 

Moving through relationships with limited tools can be confusing.  What happens when my best friend wants to play with someone else? What happens to my best friend when I want to make a new friend? Simple goodbyes can be excruciating. Transitions can upset.  Fairness is an ongoing theme.  What is fairness? It doesn’t feel fair when others don’t want to play the game I want to play in the way I want them to play it. I want the toy that the other child has.  It’s not fair that they won’t give it to me. What does it mean to share?  

When uncomfortable topics emerge, I lean into picture books with stories where students can see themselves for support.  Stories can provoke discourse and inquiry, which can be expanded by introducing more picture books.  I look for stories with protagonists who are going through similar experiences, situations, or feelings that allow students to find a relevant relationship.  Stories help us connect with others.  They help students navigate difficult events, trauma, or topics that are uncomfortable.  They help students know they are not alone, alienated or marginalized.  They help connect students with each other who might have the same concerns so that they can support each other.  It helps build community. I find that one picture book leads to another.  Picture books soothe.  Picture books comfort.  Picture books can gently and safely acknowledge the wounds to help begin the healing.

When you’re five, the world is beginning to change.  Many go to formal school for the first time.  Topics that are difficult for children include moving, divorce, bullying, inclusion, exclusion, social cues, making friends, keeping friends, fairness, power, grief, loss, pet loss, losing friendships, different forms of families, domestic violence, gun violence, police violence, alcohol/drug abuse of family members, cognitively declining grandparents, death, racism, disability rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, losing your home, immigration, and natural disasters. 

In addition to using picture books to help students explore subjects that are challenging and difficult for them, parents and teachers can also use these stories to make palatable, topics that are uncomfortable for adults.

Children are honest and raw.  They say what they want to say often without filters.  They speak from the heart and often don’t mask their true feelings. This can be uncomfortable for the adults in their lives.  Parents and Teachers may struggle to support topics like LGBTQIA+ questions, grief, racism, disability rights, etc. Picture books can help scaffold and support adults.   Picture books can give the words and context.  Stories can help adults find access points for children.  They may even provide multiple points of access for extremely challenging topics, creating many different conversations.  Picture books can help adults gain new insight as well, possibly leading to more empathy for young children who are trying to make sense of their world. 

By Zeena M. Pliska

Zeena M. Pliska spends her days immersed in the joy of 5-year-olds.  She is a public school kindergarten teacher by day and a children’s book author by night in Los Angeles, California.  A progressive public-school educator, she believes that the most important aspect of teaching is listening to children. A social justice activist and organizer for over 30 years, she brings race, class, and gender analysis to everything she does.  She is half Egyptian and half Filipino.  A lifetime storyteller, she has facilitated stories as a theater director, visual artist, photographer and journalist and most recently as a short film screenwriter/producer/director.   Her debut picture book, Hello, Little One:  A Monarch Butterfly Story from Page Street Kids came out May 12, 2020.  Her second picture book Egyptian Lullaby from Roaring Brook Press came out April 18, 2023. Two board books in the Chicken Soup for Babies series from Charlesbridge came out in the fall and winter of 2023.  Egyptian Lullaby was awarded the 2024 CABA award from Howard University.

Her blog posts can be found at  www.teachingauthors.com and on social media, Instagram @zeenamar, X (formerly Twitter) @zeenamar1013, Bluesky @zeenamar, and on Facebook @Zeena M. Pliska or Zeena Mar.  For more information you can go to www.zeenamar.

What words do you repeat? Are you doing it for effect, or by default?

The robot's words I still remember from a show I watched maybe three times when I was a little kid: "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"
Photo: A full-size replica of the B-9, Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, who was featured in the television series Lost in Space, at the Robot Hall of Fame in Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, PA. From Wikimedia, Public Domain

Repetition can be powerful. Humans, including readers, are wired to look for patterns.

But if not done intentionally, too much or unintentional repetition can also hold your writing back from being the best it can be.

I was thinking about this when reading "30+ Ways to Avoid Repetition of 'I' in First-Person Writing" by Kathy Steinemann. As Kathy put it, 

"Prose or poetry with an overabundance of the same words or structures will seem off. Readers might not be able to tell you what’s wrong, but they know they’re unsettled by something.”

Do you have three (or more) paragraphs in a row that start with the same character's name? 

--> Best tool for figuring this one out for me? I print out my manuscript and sit somewhere different then where I normally write. The trick when reviewing is to not get stuck in the sentences and also to not get swept away by the plot. 

Does your paragraph have the exact same sentence structure for all the sentences? 

--> I catch this by reading the manuscript out loud. Sometimes I record myself reading it, and then play it back, reading along with my voice. I catch a ton of things to smooth out this way.

Are you defaulting to characters smiling or nodding too much? This last one is something I'm always on the lookout for in my own manuscripts, and I do a pass when I revise, searching for every use of "smil" (to get all the variations of smile/smiled/smiling) and "nod" (to get all the variations of nodding.) Sometimes I ration these, only allowing certain characters the actions that are my regular go-tos.

--> Working in word on a mac, command-F opens up the "find" window. The three dots next to that let you open "List Matches in Sidebar" and that's the tool I use the most for this. It tells you how many times you've used a word, and lets you jump from one to the next. 

I hope these thoughts and techniques are helpful!

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Using Picture Books to Facilitate Student-Centered Discussions Around Social Emotional Learning

I’m a kindergarten teacher by day and a picture book writer by night.  I thought it might be useful to share my insights as both a veteran teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and an agented, traditionally published kidlit author.  At the core are two different processes that often intersect and ultimately inform each other for me.

This post, the first of 4, focuses on Using Picture Books to Facilitate Student-Centered Discussions Around Social Emotional Learning.

I spend my days with 5-year-olds so I read no less than 15 picture books a week. I believe that my job as a teacher is primarily to listen to children and surface what is alive for them. Building the conditions for emotional intelligence to develop has been a passion for over 30 years. To my delight, Social Emotional Learning or SEL has become a hot topic especially in elementary education for the past decade.  This is reflected in the publishing world as well.  Picture books that reflect Social Emotional Learning are plentiful. And manuscripts on this topic always seem to be in demand.

Picture books are a great way to elicit student-led discourse around social emotional learning.  As authors, we specifically write them for young children.  We take great pains to create developmentally appropriate manuscripts using accessible language. We create characters that children relate to. As a teacher, I tend to use books that address social emotional learning through stories.  Stories help my students make sense of their world.  They recognize and form their identities, and experiences.  Stories shape their interactions and connections.  Stories help them connect to others. Children can step into stories and transform into the characters.  They can experience their feelings as well as those of others in an authentic and safe way. They  develop empathy and compassion through these reading experiences. I especially like to read stories with SEL themes and wait for students to ask questions or lead discussions that are relevant to their social emotional growth.  Often I find books that push the discourse or themes further to provoke deeper thinking.

 I have to be honest, I steer away from picture books that blatantly try and teach my students “lessons.”  Adults who impose their morality onto unsuspecting 5-year-olds usually don’t hold the student’s interest.  I am particularly sensitive about books that aren’t respectful of young children, seeing them as blank slates and not the interesting, thinking humans that they are. Children want to hear stories.  They don’t want to be preached to and believe me, they know.  

But find a good story where universal themes are woven into the characters and their relationships, and you will hold the rapt attention of an entire class.  I’m always on the hunt for these great stories that leave us hankering for a good discussion or leave us with a feel-good moment.  Lately they feel like they’re few and far between.

Don’t get me wrong.  The books my fellow picture book authors are writing and that publishing companies are buying are beautifully written.  But compared to the literature from earlier decades, many feel like they are leaning out of storytelling as we knew it and are more no-nonsense books with sparse wording or non-fiction subjects.  All have their merits and are well produced.  They just lack the storytelling of years gone by when the wordcount hovered well above and over the current 500-word norm and were not influenced by the Common Core Standards.  Books like Stella Luna and Chrysanthemum come to mind in contrast to current books with blatant “you’re beautiful,” “be you,” “be brave,” messaging. 

In 2010, the Common Core Standards were adopted for education across the country.  It’s my understanding they were not developed by educators but rather came out of the business and political community.  Technically they came from The National Governor’s Association (a political organization founded in 1908) and The Council of Chief State School Officers.  At the time, I remember noticing a huge shift away from reading and writing fiction and a move toward non-fiction literature only. This was a shift in language arts instruction in the standards and the standards dictate what teachers teach. They moved us from fiction and fantasy to non-fiction and informational text, even in the primary grades.

As a kindergarten teacher, it didn’t make sense.  It was completely out of balance.  Literary learning shifted away from a focus on imagination and pushed us toward nuts and bolts, cut and dry, no-nonsense reading and writing.  I worried about how it would affect young children and their desire to read and write.  I worried that storytelling would be devalued.  I worried that the publishing industry would shift their product to meet the new demand.  I think I was onto something fifteen years ago.

As authors, we write books that serve the current market.  If we ignore the trends and requests, we run the risk of creating books that are irrelevant. We run the risk of writing books that don’t sell.  But I have faith that complex stories will return despite the education trends.  I believe that children will eventually demand them and we will all have to listen, especially if we are writing books that address Social Emotional Learning.

Tools to use when writing stories that address SEL

By Zeena M. Pliska

 Zeena M. Pliska spends her days immersed in the joy of 5-year-olds.  She is a public school kindergarten teacher by day and a children’s book author by night in Los Angeles, California.  A progressive public-school educator, she believes that the most important aspect of teaching is listening to children. A social justice activist and organizer for over 30 years, she brings race, class, and gender analysis to everything she does.  She is half Egyptian and half Filipino.  A lifetime storyteller, she has facilitated stories as a theater director, visual artist, photographer and journalist and most recently as a short film screenwriter/producer/director.   Her debut picture book, Hello, Little One:  A Monarch Butterfly Story from Page Street Kids came out May 12, 2020.  Her second picture book Egyptian Lullaby from Roaring Brook Press came out April 18, 2023. Two board books in the Chicken Soup for Babies series from Charlesbridge came out in the fall and winter of 2023.

Her blog posts can be found at  www.teachingauthors.com and on social media, Instagram @zeenamar, X (formerlyTwitter) @zeenamar1013, Bluesky @zeenamar, and on Facebook @Zeena M. Pliska or Zeena Mar.For more information you can go to www.zeenamar.com