Everytime I hear more drama in Kid Lit...

Sloths

Too cute!

Sloths Are So Talkative!
Did you know #Sloths made this adorable sound? It's like they're calling out for us to hug them, too cute! What animals do you think they sound like? Tell us below and share the video if you want to see more #SlothSundays.
Posted by Animalist on Sunday, May 17, 2015

Gaithersburg Book Festival

I'm really excited to let you all know that I'm going to be at the Gaithersburg Book Festival this Saturday, May 16 from 11 to 12. It will be a We Need Diverse Books panel and it will be with an amazing line up!! Gene Luen Yang, Tracey Baptiste and Aisha Saeed!!! My youngest is beside herself with joy because she has read and loved both Gene's The Shadow Hero and Tracey's The Jumbies! And I can tell you that Aisha's Written in the Stars is an incredibly moving, emotional novel that will send you on a roller coaster ride of emotions. So yeah, I'm part of this amazing panel and I couldn't be more excited!

So if you are in the area, please come to the Gaithersburg Book FEstival, this is one of the BEST festivals out there so don't miss it!!

KING is officially out today!!

It is the finale!! I am very proud of it. Very proud of finishing the series. And sad to leave it behind. I did a post for Diversity in YA here on Taekkyon and finishing the series. Please go check it out. And if you haven't read the first in the series, please take advantage of the fact that Prophecy is only $1.99 on all ebook platforms right now!!

YA Scavenger Hunt 2015

Hello Everyone! I'm part of the Spring 2015 YA Scavenger Hunt! There are eight outstanding teams this season. I am going to be a part of #TeamTeal! The Scavenger Hunt runs from April 2nd through April 5th beginning and ending at noon Pacific time on those days. If you've never been a part of the hunt before you should give it a try. It runs like a giant blog hop, introducing you to new YA authors and books along the way. There are tons of prizes including a grand prize for each team. If you win one of the grand prizes you will get a book from each author on that team! For more information and to make sure you get hunt updates, sign up for news on the #YASH website.  You don't want to miss out on this fabulous and fun event, but play fast because the hunt is only live for three days. So come back on April 2nd!!

tumblr tumblr bumblr

yeah that title was on purpose but to be honest I'm pretty much only on tumblr and twitter these days. So if you want to find me, please check me out there.

I'll link you to my latest tumblr blog post titled "A Message to the Gatekeepers."

Hope you like it!

King Release Date delayed

Hi everyone!
Well I was surprised to find out that the release date everyone else had online was actually right and I was wrong. I was originally told that King would be released on December 31, 2014. But marketing feels it would be better for us to wait so King won't be out until March 31, 2015. Other than the fact that I have a huge box of bookmarks that say December 31, 2014, I'm actually not upset with the delay. It should allow Warrior to come out in paperback and hopefully help bring Prophecy to a wider audience. So I'm going to assume it is all good! :o)

In the meantime, there is going to be quite a lot of WNDB news coming out in the next few weeks and I'm excited to share it with you all. If you haven't signed up for the WNDB newsletter. Please do so here. With all the money that WNDB has raised, we are going to be able do do some really great things, thanks to all of you!!

WNDB Indiegogo Campaign!!! And Personal Appeal

Dear WNDB Supporter or future supporter:

You may have heard of We Need Diverse Books as the organization whose hashtag went viral back in May when we launched a campaign to share with the world why diverse books in literature matter. We were covered in many major news outlet from around the globe and the coverage shows no sign of slowing down.

Since then we’ve incorporated, and have new initiatives coming down the pipeline. Programs such as Diversity in the Classroom, The Walter Dean Myers grants and awards, our Educational kits and programs, and our Diversity Festival will directly impact diversity in children's literature.

These programs are all geared to make change happen. And we need your help! We’ve just launched an indiegogo campaign to help fund our goals. All donations are tax-deductible. Bonus: You can choose from a plethora of perks including original art prints, t-shirts, totes, agent critiques, dinner with top authors and more! Every dollar you donate goes directly into our programs. You can be the change. Let’s teach all of our children about empathy by sharing the Story of Us All. If you can't donate financially, that's okay too. We can still use your support to spread the message as widely as possible. Some ways you can help are:

1. Please pass this message on to 5 or 10 folks who may be interested in supporting this campaign and buying a perk!
2. Use Twibbon to add some WNDB flair to your avatar (http://twibbon.com/Support/we-need-diverse-books)
3. Participate in our cue card contest by creating your own sign to emphasize why you #SupportWNDB, whether it’s for yourself, because of a family member, or because of a diverse book that changed your life. Use the templates we’ve created (http://weneeddiversebooks.org/cue-cards/) and submit pictures to our Tumblr. The photos with the most reblogs will win a WNDB prize pack. Make sure to tell your local librarian to participate as well—your local library could win a huge book donation prize!

We can't do it without you. Please join us and Support WNDB.

Ellen Oh, President 

King Bookmarks!

Now that I have Twitter, tumblr, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, when do I have time for my old blog? Poor old blog. There are too many things to cross promote over too many platforms. If only I can feed them all into the blog! But at least I have something worthwhile to share on the old blog! With so many things going on with #WeNeedDiverseBooks, I forgot all about making bookmarks for King until I suddenly realized I had all of these events in September and got a reminder that I should be promoting King at them! With less than a week to make bookmarks, I was in a bit of a bind. My usual fantastic designer, Amber at MMSAI, was all booked up and unavailable (because she is fantastic and you need to get on her schedule asap because she is extremely popular!!). Fortunately for me, the wonderful Diana Sousa came to my rescue! Diana is the amazing web designer of the WNDB website. If you haven't seen it, check it out here it is brilliant!

And so she did me a big favor and made me these beautiful bookmarks for King! Look how gorgeous!

For more information about Diana,  here's her webpage. Diana is amazing and I can't recommend her highly enough!

I am so lucky to know such gifted and talented people!

Bloom article

Hi everyone! So the first part of my Bloom article has posted!

Check it out here! 

The second part - which is a Q&A, will be posted on Wednesday.