BBC NEWS

Why have Nigeria's main parties both chosen septuagenarian presidential candidates?

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BBC NEWS

The president wants to end the right of people born in the US to be citizens but does he have the power?

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BBC NEWS

So extensive is the spread of English, a group of lecturers warns of a looming "linguicide".

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Jason Reynolds at Temple Kehillath Israel

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Photo: Cindy Ritter

Photo: Shoshana Flax

Photo: Cindy Ritter

Photo: Cindy Ritter

Hearing Jason Reynolds speak is a bit like listening to spoken-word poetry, as Cindy and I discovered at last Wednesday’s event at Temple Kehillath Israel*, sponsored by Brookline Booksmith. The hugely prolific, award-winning middle-grade and YA author said he would tell us the story of how he got where he is today, and did so with lots of vivid details (his childhood featured oversugared Kool-Aid and cans of government-surplus peanut butter) and plenty of humor. But he also told us about the more serious side of his early years, recalling the “mass hysteria” of the AIDS crisis and a hazmat sign in front of a neighbor’s house.

And then, his teachers said, “we want you to read this book called Moby-Dick,” and he’d “never met a whale,” never even seen a boat. In the same vein, he’d never met an Atticus Finch but knew lots of Boo Radleys, and felt he’d lived the situation in Lord of the Flies and didn’t trust the author to get it right. The books he encountered didn’t know he existed, he said, so he didn’t read a book until he was eighteen.

Rap music saved his life. He acknowledged that rap can be problematic and “complicated,” but added that the genre — which at the time adults expected to be gone in five years, and which didn’t have a category at the Grammy Awards — saved a generation of kids by giving them a voice and forcing others to acknowledge their existence. He recalled going to the music store with five dollars, coming out with a Queen Latifah album, and listening while he followed along with the liner notes — and deciding he was going to grow up to be Queen Latifah. He began writing his own “Queen Latifah poems,” and over the next few years, as he told us, he went through very difficult times (including deaths of friends as well as addiction, illness, and depression in his family) — “but it’s okay, because I got these Queen Latifah poems.”

He told us about college, and how he “still hadn’t read any books” until a professor gave him Richard Wright’s Black Boy to read; about getting his first publishing contract at twenty-one but giving up on writing soon afterward because of the recession; and about the advice he received to try telling his own stories. Since then, his characters have generally been inspired by real people he knows, often with their real names. “The greatest gift I could give myself is myself,” Jason said. He encouraged the young people present to write their own stories: “I want you to love my stories, but it’s more important to love your own.”

The Q&A portion went more deeply into specific books (including a tantalizing hint that we may see the Track series onscreen!). Jason took questions seriously from young people as well as adults, many of whom were educators. What to do when someone says something hurtful to you? His favorite “disarming tool” is to pretend not to have heard and ask them to repeat it. Has he thought about writing Coach’s story? It would be hard because Coach is an adult, and a prequel about his childhood wouldn’t include the other beloved Track characters — but their stories include elements of Coach’s story. The questions brought up thoughts about reluctant readers and meeting them where they are — with books about Fortnite or whatever else interests them. They also brought up honest observations about biases: he’s been stopped and frisked often in New York (“I write books for kids!” “Well, you fit the description”) and believes it’s much more to do with his race than with his tattoos or clothing.

Stay prolific, Jason Reynolds. We need to hear from you.

Read Jason Reynolds’s 2018 Lesley University commencement speech.

---

*As this event took place last week, the fact that the venue was a synagogue didn’t seem noteworthy, but now it feels strange to type these words without lingering on them. Like Jason Reynolds’s work and words, this weekend’s tragedy brings up a theme that is dear to my heart: that the opportunities we provide for people from different groups to see each other have a real impact. In short, representation matters.

For more on the Pittsburgh tragedy and on processing it in its aftermath, see Kitty’s Family Reading Post and look to resources from the Association of Jewish Libraries and others.

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Review of Give the Dark My Love

Give the Dark My Love
by Beth Revis
Middle School, High School    Razorbill/Penguin    451 pp.    g
9/18    978-1-595-14717-2    $17.99

When Nedra leaves home for Yûgen Academy to study medical alchemy, she’s most focused on curing the Wasting Death, a plague that begins with blackened necrotic extremities, only sometimes responding to the amputation of the affected limb. Her teacher Master Ostrum encourages her interest, and she throws herself into work at the quarantine hospital, drawing patients’ pain into rats using her golden crucible, but she’s no closer to finding answers until Master Ostrum suggests she look into the Fourth Alchemy: necromancy. Necromancy is taboo, but when Yûgen Academy shuts down and Nedra goes home to find her family dying, the strictures against her trying the Fourth Alchemy seem suddenly irrelevant. Horror fans will appreciate the gruesome appeal of disease, amputations, and death, and when Revis (Across the Universe, rev. 3/11, and sequels) starts to crank up the pressure, Nedra’s forbidden choices become more and more resonant. The mangled revenants that Nedra ends up creating have an originality that steers the tale clear of tired tropes, but it is Nedra’s connection with her twin sister, and the frightening transformations she works on her, that will bring the true pit-of-the-stomach queasiness of the situation home to Revis’s appalled and fascinated readers.

From the September/October 2018 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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Why Sensitivity Readers Matter: (And Why We Should Call Them Something Else)

Last year, one of the controversies that hit the headlines was the use of sensitivity readers in publishing. The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune covered the topic but chose to feature clickbait headlines that included words like outrage and censorship. This led to the usual cacophony of opposing views.

Lee & Low Books editors have consulted with outside readers for decades. We don’t call them sensitivity readers, however; we prefer the term targeted expert readers. The reason we use this term is that it shifts the attention away from cultures and sensitivities and focuses on the true function of what these readers do for us: they are experts in a particular subject area. These readers are tasked with the job of verifying the accuracy of information that appears in books. The facts can be related to a character’s ethnicity or culture, but they can just as easily involve how a certain machine works, or the terminology related to a particular medical procedure. Editors of children’s books are knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects and are experts when it comes to editing. They cannot be expected to be experts in everything, and the use of targeted expert readers is a crucial tool in an editor’s toolbox that enables us to make better books.

Here are some examples of recent Lee & Low books for which we used targeted expert readers. Author Supriya Kelkar’s 2017 middle-grade novel Ahimsa takes place in India in 1942, during Gandhi’s independence movement. The story’s protagonist, Anjali, looks at the protests with fresh eyes and wonders why the rights of Dalits (the so-called “untouchables” of the Hindu caste system) are not included in the fight for freedom. A Dalit reader noticed in an early draft of the manuscript that the author included superstitions about and examples of the treatment of Dalit people from a variety of times and places. Because Dalit experiences vary depending not only on caste but also on socioeconomic status, location within the large country, and other factors, the targeted expert reader’s feedback compelled us as a team to home in on what would have been the specific experience of a Dalit person in the 1940s in that particular area of India.

A targeted expert reader also helped us better understand how events could have happened in the 2018 picture-book biography Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School by Janet Halfmann (illustrated by London Ladd). According to Mississippi law in the 1850s, teaching an enslaved person how to read or write was strictly prohibited. However, the subject of Halfmann’s book is an enslaved woman of that period named Lilly Ann Granderson who taught other enslaved people how to read and write but, although caught, was never punished for it. Halfmann could not find any historical records explaining why the authorities decided not to punish Granderson. We needed assistance from an expert. Since the majority of the story takes place on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, we consulted Justin J. Behrend, a professor of history who had written an essay titled “Black Political Mobilization and the Spatial Transformation of Natchez.” Dr. Behrend answered several of our questions within the context of the story and said that, at the end of the day, it would have been the plantation owner who decided Granderson’s fate. And it seems as if, since we have no records or testimonials of a punishment, that plantation owner decided not to punish her. Dr. Behrend’s insights helped us better understand this complex story and why it ended the way it did. The information also proved useful in allowing the author to go into greater depth in the afterword, providing more nuance and meaning.

As a final example, Benji, the Bad Day, and Me is a new picture book by Sally J. Pla (illustrated by Ken Min) that focuses on a boy named Sammy and his little brother Benji, who is on the autism spectrum. While the book’s author has a son with autism, and the story is based on her family’s daily life, we consulted a targeted expert reader who is also on the autism spectrum because we wanted to try to be respectful of a plurality of experiences. Books about marginalized people can be hard to come by, so we try to make our books both as personal and as universal as we possibly can. The targeted expert reader pointed out that the text did not specify whether or not the little brother, Benji, attended school, and that in the current political climate, with an administration seeking to roll back the educational rights of children with disabilities, it is important to hear about neurodiverse children participating in school. The reader suggested an addition: “When Sammy comes home after his bad day at school, maybe Mom can mention that Benji [also] had a bad day at kindergarten or preschool.” The editor and author found this perspective illuminating, and while it may seem like a small change — to add a mention of preschool — the acknowledgment of that school experience would speak volumes to a person on the autism spectrum.

At Lee & Low we are committed to using targeted expert readers. Think about it. If an author gets something factually wrong, it’s distracting — it takes the reader out of the story. It makes people ask questions like, “Where was the editor on this?” or exclaim, “This writer didn’t do his or her homework!” Why risk it? If using targeted expert readers increases the chance of keeping readers engaged and in awe of good writing and craft, isn’t it worth it?

From the November/December 2018 Horn Book Magazine. Read Roger’s 2013 interview with Jason Low and Holiday House’s Mary Cash.

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Water Land: Land and Water Forms Around the World

I saw the cover and a single preview page of Christy Hale’s Water Land online and thought gleefully (and a little smugly) to myself that Hale probably had no idea she’d put together a perfect Montessori picture book. It’s just like our Water and Land Forms! Simple! Elegant! Clean! If only she knew! Once I finally pored over a physical copy and read the back cover — which explains that Hale did, in fact, have a pretty good idea — I was all the more thrilled to see what it held inside.

For some context: the Water and Land Forms for the Montessori primary classroom are designed to offer children a concrete experience with the topographical features of their world. With them, a child pours water into one of the forms and can watch it spill into the negative space, touch it with her fingers, and acquaint herself with the ridges, depths, and curves of a particular form and its matching inverse form.

Water Land capitalizes on the sensorial experience of these forms and translates it into both a sensorial and visual experience in the codex, all the while adding what Roger Sutton calls “funny little human dramas” that animate the places where land and water meet. Hale’s tactfully placed die-cuts do cleverly demonstrate the inverse relationships of the land/water pairs with each page-turn, but the most exciting part of the page-turns lies in the clever transformations that occur with every flip. I began reading Water Land with a child, and we had to stop after the first two spreads: lake and island. He was captivated by the tiny, fallen red leaf next to the lake that had somehow become a small fire puffing out an SOS from the island on the next page. Taking charge, he flipped back and forth between those two spreads, creating scenarios for the children in the images, and deciding that maybe, after all, it had been a fire the whole time. In one of my very favorite reflections on the book form, Remy Charlip says that a “thrilling picture book not only makes beautiful single images or sequential images, but also allows us to become aware of a book’s unique physical structure, by bringing our attention, once again, to that momentous moment: the turning of the page.” If there was ever a book that capitalized on such a “momentous moment,” one that delights in turning both forward and backward,  it is Hale’s Water Land.

The book’s success as a concept book hinges on the clear delineation of, well, water and land; and every element of the illustrations — and the entire book design — work in its favor. As already mentioned, the die-cuts create obvious separation between the two, but the consistency and boldness in a limited color palette also punctuate the conceptual unity. Land and the corresponding descriptive text appear each time as a buttery, mottled yellow, translating beautifully into sweeping sandy beaches and coastlines; water, with the same textured effect and matching labels, glimmers and froths beneath swimmers, sailors, and the single (and, quite honestly, alarming) shark fin.

Human and animal life on each page add color and playfulness to the largely two-toned illustrations, splashing the pages with pinks and greens and softened reds and browns. The illustrations have the minimalism and appeal of Art Deco travel posters, effectively seducing the reader into wanting to explore each land mass and body of water on their own. Visit Isthmus! Fly to Archipelago! Consider the double-page spread for cape, for example. An exuberant windsurfer seemingly splashes the reader in her skim across the water, while on land a candy-striped lighthouse stands at attention over the small, sea oats–lined beach and a single sunbather. The word cape stands at the bottom of the page in the stout serif typeface used throughout the book. The playful and simple scene, like all the others, is at once inviting and invigorating — practically begging us to go a cape, too. (Twist my arm, really.)

Beyond the “narrative” proper, Hale maintains this consistency of color and shape on a closing spread that defines each of the named land and water forms, but the most glorious moment lies just one more manipulation-of-the-page away. The next page-turn, in fact, is instead an unfolding, and the book becomes a map of the world — but one still holding to the blue (for water) and yellow (for land) we’ve seen all along. Hale makes the absolute most of what a book can do, not only offering a visual experience within the book itself but inviting the child to look beyond it.

But what will the Caldecott committee think? Water Land’s efficacy as a concept book does not necessarily equate Caldecott contention, though the criteria do ask that the honored “picture book has a collective unity of story-line, theme, or concept, developed through the series of pictures of which the book is comprised.” As Lolly Robinson noted before Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Green (another work of die-cut magic) earned itself a Caldecott Honor, concept books do not seem to fare well with the committee. Until then, this book will remain proudly displayed next to the Water and Land Forms in our Montessori classroom, and our children will continue to marvel at every tiny leaf-turned-flame, each tent-abiding bear, and all the other small details found in every momentous moment of the turning of these pages.

[Read the Horn Book Magazine review of Water Land here.]

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Bearing witness

“It is amazing that art could come from such unimaginable atrocity, that writers have found so many different forms — fiction, memoir, poetry, history, even comic strip — to bear witness. These authors have found a form to give voice to the unspeakable.” — Hazel Rochman

I was planning to post a response to last week’s coldly calculated threat from the White House to erase transgender identities across federal agencies (post to come). But then Saturday’s massacre in Pittsburgh happened. Jewish congregants in the Tree of Life Synagogue slaughtered as they worshipped — I don’t even know how to describe that kind of hate and darkness.

Below are some resources — about Jewish life, about the Holocaust, about hate and gun violence — from the Horn Book’s archives to shed light in the midst of darkness and make sense of the incomprehensible.

• Hazel Rochman’s 2006 article from our What Makes a Good… series: “Beyond Oral History: What Makes a Good Holocaust Book?” The article highlights books that put the Nazis’ WWII atrocities in context for children and young adults (and grownups). As Hazel observes: “The best Holocaust accounts make young readers think about their own lives. The question, ‘What would I have done?’ is central… Extreme as the Nazi genocide was, it was not a thing apart; it was human experience. Camp survivor Bruno Bettelheim said it was what ordinary people did to ordinary people.”
• A Holocaust booklist, compiled for Holocaust Remembrance Day, updated in April 2018.
• A booklist featuring picture books that celebrate the accomplishments of Jewish women.
• Emily Schneider’s recent appreciation of the work of Jewish publishers, “Jewish Books, Jewish Families.”
• Look to the lunchroom, in which Elissa shares librarian Danielle Winter’s Facebook post: “Don’t underestimate the actions or knowledge of our children. They know a lot more than us. Our children are the resistance.”
• Christopher Myers’s powerful essay, “Orlando,” written in the wake of another hate-fueled mass shooting. Commenter Carol said, “Nothing makes the loss better, but this essay and the art accompanying it are helping me to process both the loss and how the work I do could possibly have an impact.”

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Review of Samurai Scarecrow: A Very Ninja Halloween

Samurai Scarecrow: A Very Ninja Halloween
by Rubin Pingk; illus. by the author
Primary    Simon    48 pp.
7/18    978-1-4814-3059-3    $17.99
e-book ed.  978-1-4814-3060-9    $10.99

In his second holiday-themed adventure (Samurai Santa, rev. 11/15), young ninja Yukio faces a familiar Halloween-night dilemma: how to handle a tagalong sibling. Doting little sis Kashi emulates all of Yukio’s careful preparations and trick-or-treating plans. “It was starting to get on Yukio’s NERVES.” When Kashi unveils her copycat costume to laughs from Yukio’s fellow ninjas, it’s the final straw. “You’re not a real ninja! And you NEVER will be.” (“Arg. That be harsh,” comments a pirate-costumed ninja.) But it’s lucky for Kashi that she has been paying such close attention to her big bro; she cleverly invokes Yukio’s spooky story about the Samurai Scarecrow who prowls the night (“Show me the birds no longer afraid / the feathered fools who won’t flee. / Find me the birds who think I’m decayed… / I’ll teach them to be scared of ME”) to get some payback — and some well-deserved respect from the bigger kids. Thoughtful text design enhances Pingk’s spare, funny narrative. Digital illustrations in a limited palette of muted oranges and purples have the adorable-but-also-a-little–creepy aesthetic of a Miyazaki movie, perfectly befitting both the siblings’ relatable range of emotions and the delicious childhood experience of scaring each other silly with an urban legend. Although, how did Kashi pull off that Samurai Scarecrow ensemble? I guess it’ll have to be her secret.

From the September/October 2018 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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By K.K. REBECCA LAI, DENISE LU, LISA LERER and TROY GRIGGS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2ACgWpO

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Resting Place

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Thomas Campbell, Ex-Director of the Met, Is Hired to Lead San Francisco Museums

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The Faces of Change in the Midterm Elections

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On Politics: Trump Wants to End Birthright Citizenship With Executive Order

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Word + Quiz: jamboree

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Hartman Scores Twice as Predators Beat Golden Knights 4-1

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Rescue Workers Search for Missing After Typhoon Strikes Philippines

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Amid Scrutiny, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Shaped Trump’s Pittsburgh Response

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In California, the Search for a Missing 800-Pound Hammer Continues

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Quotation of the Day: Move Would Have Widespread Ramifications for Many American Families

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Review: Remembering What Was and Wasn’t in ‘Good Grief’

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Samsung Reaps Record Profit, but Tougher Times Could Come

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