We're all to all familiar with making New Years Resolutions. I've made many in the past - some lofty and some little in almost every area of my life. Filled with good intentions, I sometimes manage to overwhelm myself into inactivity by the length of my list. This year, I'm going to choose just a couple of resolutions for each important part of my life and accomplish them quarterly. But first things first, the brainstorm: Writer's Resolutions 1. Write more 2. Read more picture books 3. Read more chapter books 4. Finish 2 unfinished manuscripts 5. Join a genre specific critique group 6. Find 2 great critique buddies 7. Attend a writers course or workshop 8. Attend a writers conference 9. Attend a writers retreat 10. Brainstorm a list of story ideas 11. Submit my strongest manuscript to agent X 12. Submit my strongest manuscript to publisher X 13. Re-write my weakest manuscript from a different point-of-view 14. Pause to pay more attention to what kids are saying and doing 15. Visit the library more 16. Visit the kids' section of the book store more My top 2 picks for 2017 happen to be #1 and #7! 1. Write more: Write on Mondays and Wednesdays 9:00am-10:30am beginning January 2nd 7. Attend a writer's course or workshop: By March 31st, here's the course I'm going to attend. It just happens to be one of Mira's, How To Self-Publish With Crowdfunding If I can accomplish these two goals in the first quarter of the year, first I'll celebrate with a slice of chocolate cake! Then, I'll choose two new goals from the list for the second quarter. What are your writer's resolutions for for 2017? Carol Higgins-Lawrence wrote her first story at the age of five. Her father paid her a quarter for it and she's been writing ever since. She's taken a variety of courses in writing for children. Multicultural perspectives are of particular interest to her. Carol is of Jamaican descent and was born and raised in Canada. She has a BA in Communications and Sociology and she has completed coursework towards a MA in TESOL. She has worked as a literacy educator for the past 15 years. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two young children. You can visit her website at carolhl.weebly.com
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Ever since, I was a kid, I got into the habit of designing my own Christmas card. First, I sent out my own to my pals at school(printed in the art room at school), then I designed cards for my family, and before long, I was designing cards for local businesses in my little home town. It is a habit that I have been unable to break. Even if I try to not send out cards, my friends write me scolding letters asking where their Christmas card is. This complicated process involves designing the card, getting it printed, signing the cards, then addressing the envelopes and attaching postage (lately, I have taken to designing my own stamps for the North Pole Post Office) can take up a great deal of time at a very busy time of the year. But I dedicate cozy evenings to the process, putting on Christmas music and burning evergreen candles, that have become a very inspiring and fun time. I have attached several of my cards from over the years. Some of these feature characters from books that have been released in that past year. Enjoy! Once this is posted, I will get back to my desk where a pile of envelopes and cards are waiting for me. The earliest of these date back to 1996 and the most recent is this card inspired by my little red poodle, Ogbert.
By the way, happy holidays and I hope that 2017 is a terrific year for each of you! The power of identification: Latinos in picture books Almost 25% of American children are Latino, but books that depict Latinos comprise fewer than 3% of total books published for children. And out of that 3%, what images are we seeing? And who is creating these images? Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner (Dutton Children’s Books, 2003) has been the focus of many heated debates; he's a cat who fantasizes about being a Chihuahua and speaks in a made-up pidgin Spanish that could be described as mocking Mexican people in the tradition of characters such as Speedy Gonzalez, the Frito Bandito, and the Taco Bell Chihuahua. "Oh, my name is Skippito Friskito (clap-clap) / And I hunt for the dinosaur-ito (clap-clap) / With gigantico ears / That’s been buried for years / Under layers of sediment-ito.” (clap-clap)" Speaking English in an accent borrowed directly from Charo, Skippyjon sings about banditos, rice and beans, fiestas and siestas. This is what the white world of publishing has to offer? Books that depict Latino culture with stereotypical images and tell us that Mexican accents are hilarious?We can do better. Jalapeno Bagels by Natasha Wing, illustrated by Robert Casilla (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1996) does a nice job of depicting a mixed-race (Latino/Jewish) child who is not tortured by his ethnic background. Many books about racially mixed children show the child as teased by others, not fitting into either group, wishing he were one race or the other. Pablo is doing just fine, speaking Spanish and Yiddish and baking breads and pastries from both the Mexican and Jewish cultures that his parents bring to the family. Jalapeno Bagels has real recipes from the Los Bagels Bakery & Cafe in Arcata, California in the back and a wonderful glossary for all of the Spanish and Yiddish words used in the book. The illustrations are a bit staid for my taste, indicating to the reader that this is a serious topic. I would prefer something lighter and more celebratory, as the text is not about conflict, but about happily embracing the richness of the two cultures Pablo comes from. A much more joyful and celebratory book is Tito Puente: Mambo King by Monica Brown, illustrated by Rafael Lopez (Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2013). A gorgeous bilingual story about musician Tito Puente, Tito Puente: Mambo King truly exemplifies the mirror and window that a thoughtfully created Latino picture book can be. No one is being mocked or belittled, it's just a pure and beautiful story about a talented musician who followed his dream of leading his own band. Dream Drum Girl by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Rafael Lopez (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) is another incredibly beautiful book about a little Cuban girl who challenged the gender roles in 1930s Cuba and became the first female drummer in Cuba's first all-girl dance band. Stunning illustrations in acrylic paint on wood board show us the beauty of Cuba and the beauty of having a dream. Books like Dream Drum Girl show us that Latino stories are strong and beautiful and valuable and that we all have dreams. Mocking a race and a language dehumanizes and firmly places Latinos in the category of "other," while celebrating the dreams that all people have shows us that we share so much in common with each other. For next month's post and moving forward, please send me questions and topics that you would like to discuss that involve libraries, books, diversity, and the children's literature community. fifiabuillustration@gmail.com
Fifi Abu spends her days surrounded by books that have already been created and the rest of her time writing and illustrating books yet to be born. She looks forward to a day when all children can see themselves reflected in the books they read. Ms. Abu holds a master's degree in children's literature and a master's degree in library science, is an active member of SCBWI and a Children's Book Academy graduate. www.fifiabu.com As writers, we have to look for inspiration wherever we can find it. Sometimes it’s in what we see, hear or feel, and sometimes it’s floating in the air. The seasons are changing and pumpkin spice, apple cinnamon, and firewood are some of my favorite scents in fall. They conjure up feelings of coziness and warmth. When I close my eyes and smell cinnamon, I immediately see plaid blankets, and forests of fall leaves. My daughter was coming down with a cold this week and I used the tried and true remedy of rubbing Vicks Vapo Rub on her chest and back before bed. She hates the smell. I, love it! It’s one of the most comforting scents I’ve ever smelled in my life. That’s because the smell instantly transports me to my childhood bedroom. My father is rubbing Vicks on my back, and tucking my bed sheets tight. Then he’s turning on the humidifier on the nightstand and I’m watching the steam rise like a genie’s lantern. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” he says. He wipes my runny nose before kissing my forehead. Another scent that transports me is the smell of ripe nectarines. When I smell them, I’m instantly 7 years old on summer break running into the kitchen to get a glass of Kool-Aid. There’s a basket filled with juicy fruits on the counter. My mother is washing the dishes in our kitchen. She’s craning her neck to see out the window to check out what neighborhood kids my brother, sister, and I are playing with. She’s wearing an apron, one of many that she’s sewn. My daughter always comments on the way her friend’s house smells. “It’s a combination of incense and cookies baking,” she tells me. She’s totally right. I’ve been there many times over the years and couldn’t quite put my finger on the scent. It’s a family and a home that we love and is filled with happiness and ease. If you’re searching for inspiration, look no further than your nose. The scents you love or the scents you hate may lead you on a journey. There maybe a story, setting, character, adjective or verb there that leads you to write something magical. Check out Kenard Park's new picture book Goodbye Summer Hello Autumn for even more sensory inspiration! Carol Higgins-Lawrence wrote her first story at the age of five. Her father paid her a quarter for it and she's been writing ever since. She's taken a variety of courses in writing for children. Multicultural perspectives are of particular interest to her. Carol is of Jamaican descent and was born and raised in Canada. She has a BA in Communications and Sociology and she has completed coursework towards a MA in TESOL. She has worked as a literacy educator for the past 15 years. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two young children. You can visit her website at carolhl.weebly.com
Righting the Wrongs: Can Little Black Sambo be fixed? Butter. Pancakes. Purple shoes with crimson linings. What's not to like? Quite a bit, actually in Helen Bannerman's 1899 picture book about a little boy who uses his fabulous wardrobe to turn a dangerous situation into a delicious feast. Little Black Sambo is a book that has been seen as so desirable that it was illegally reprinted all over the world and yet so incredibly offensive that it has been removed from libraries and then recreated and republished in a more sensitive manner several times. Why not just leave it in the past? What about this story has impacted us as a culture that we feel the need to reclaim it and make it into something else that doesn't hurt us? The story is culturally inaccurate and the early editions rely on highly offensive images of Sambo and his family. While clearly set in India (the locale for tigers and ghee), Sambo is an ugly caricature of someone of African descent. Is the narrative itself offensive? No, it's a story about a child who is able to outsmart dangerous tigers and eats a ton of pancakes with his family in celebration. Early criticisms of the book that surprisingly did not object to Sambo's appearance included commentary from two prominent African-American librarians; Charlemae Rollins from the Chicago Public Library and Augusta Baker, soon to become head of children's services at the New York Public Library objected to "unsanitary use of butter taken from the ground" (pancakes were cooked in this butter, created from the tigers chasing one another in a circle until they melted into butter). The depiction of brightly colored clothing was also a sore spot, the implication being that blacks have a "primitive love for bright colored clothes." A third issue was the enormous number of pancakes consumed (Black Mumbo ate 27, Black Jumbo ate 55, and Little Black Sambo ate 169), which intimated that blacks had huge appetites. Some of the reclaimed versions, like Fred Marcellino's 1996 version (HarperCollins) change the setting and race of the characters to make the story line up with an Indian backdrop. The Story of Little Babaji was well-received and made a break with the past associations by dropping Sambo's name in favor of an Indian identity. Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney did a beautiful job with Sam and the Tigers in 1996 (Dial), but opted to make Sam African-American in their version. The setting is an imaginary place called Sam-sam-sa-mara, where animals and people "lived and worked together like they didn't know they weren't supposed to." In Jerry Pinkney's forward, he says that Little Black Sambo was the only picture book with a black child that he remember seeing when he was a kid. When he discovered that there were as many as fifty versions of the book, he felt the urge to "right the wrongs." Pinkney found his research to be "liberating." The idea that instead of walking away from the images that cause us so much pain and damage, we can take control of them and create something beautiful is indeed liberating. Painful images are still being published in books, as we have seen with A Fine Dessert (2015, Schwartz & Wade) and A Birthday Cake for George Washington (2016, Scholastic). Because of social media, immediate discourse occurs and all voices have the opportunity to be heard. Opinions are far from unanimous on these topics, but the fact that the white white world of publishing can be called out by those who take issue with racial depictions in children's literature is significantly more gratifying than waiting the nearly 100 years it took for Little Black Sambo to be righted. For next month's post and moving forward, please send me questions and topics that you would like to discuss that involve libraries, books, diversity, and the children's literature community. fifiabuillustration@gmail.com Fifi Abu spends her days surrounded by books that have already been created and the rest of her time writing and illustrating books yet to be born. She looks forward to a day when all children can see themselves reflected in the books they read. Ms. Abu holds a master's degree in children's literature and a master's degree in library science, is an active member of SCBWI and a Children's Book Academy graduate. www.fifiabu.com 1 Comment |
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