Jacqueline Woodson

Diversity will get an extra push at this week's BookCon and BookExpo America.

Last year, a virtually all-white lineup of speakers at publishing's annual national conventions highlighted the whiteness of the industry itself. BookCon's selection of four white, male authors for a discussion of children's books helped lead to the formation of the grassroots advocacy group We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) and the hasty assembly of the panel "The World Agrees: We Need Diverse Books."

In 2015, WNDB was helping out from the start.

Lois Lowry is the author of more than 45 books, including "Number the Stars" and "The Giver," both of which won the Newbery Medal. She told me she's seen a gradual decline in attention span among young readers. "Forty years ago there was not this speeded-up entertainment culture that kids have fallen victim to now," she said. "It was easier to get kids reading because there weren't so many diverting factors."

Given these headwinds, Ms. Lowry said, she believes in meeting children where they are.

Daniel Handler, as already reported, has made public penitence for his racist gaffe at the National Book Awards presentation ceremony. Jacqueline Woodson. subject of the gaffe, has now gone on record in the New York Times Opinion column to give her account of “The Pain of the Watermelon Joke.” Her statements on her friendship with Daniel Handler […]

The post Jacqueline Woodson answers the Daniel Handler watermelon gaffe appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket, turned what should have been a respectful, respectable, but otherwise fairly routine presentation ceremony for the National Book Awards into a social media tempest through a more-than-off-color inadvertent quip about watermelons and Jacqueline Woodson. The National Book Foundation has already posted its own response, stating that “at the National […]

The post Daniel Handler pledges his pentinence after National Book Awards racist gaffe appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.