We Need Diverse Books Campaign

Recently, there’s been a groundswell of discontent over the lack of diversity in children’s literature. The issue is being picked up by news outlets like these two pieces in the NYT, CNN, EW, and many more. But while we individually care about diversity, there is still a disconnect. BEA’s Bookcon recently announced an all-white-male panel of “luminaries of children’s literature,” and when we pointed out the lack of diversity, nothing changed.

Now is the time to raise our voices into a roar that can’t be ignored. Here’s how:

On May 1^st at 1pm (EST), there will be a public call for action that will spread over 3 days. We’re starting with a visual social media campaign using the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks. We want people to tweet, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, blog, and post anywhere they can to help make the hashtag go viral.

For the visual part of the campaign: 

• Take a photo holding a sign that says “We need diverse books because ___________________________.” Fill in the blank with an important, poignant, funny, and/or personal reason why this campaign is important to you. 
• The photo can be of you or a friend or anyone who wants to support diversity in kids’ lit. It can be a photo of the sign without you if you would prefer not to be in a picture. Be as creative as you want! Pose the sign with your favorite stuffed animal or at your favorite library. Get a bunch of friends to hold a bunch of signs. 
• However you want to do it, we want to share it! There will be a Tumblr at http://weneeddiversebooks.tumblr.com/ that will host all of the photos and messages for the campaign. Please submit your visual component by May 1^st to weneeddiversebooks@yahoo.com with the subject line “photo” or submit it right on our Tumblr page here and it will be posted throughout the first day. 
• Starting at 1:00PM (EST) the Tumblr will start posting and it will be your job to reblog, tweet, Facebook, or share wherever you think will help get the word out. 
• The intent is that from 1pm EST to 3pm EST, there will be a nonstop hashtag party to spread the word. We hope that we’ll get enough people to participate to make the hashtag trend and grab the notice of more media outlets.
• The Tumblr will continue to be active throughout the length of the campaign, and for however long we need to keep this discussion going, so we welcome everyone to keep emailing or sending in submissions even after May 1^st.

On May 2^nd, the second part of our campaign will roll out with a Twitter chat scheduled for 2pm (EST) using the same hashtag. Please use #WeNeedDiverseBooks at 2pm on May 2nd and share your thoughts on the issues with diversity in literature and why diversity matters to you.

On May 3^rd, 2pm (EST), the third portion of our campaign will begin. There will be a Diversify Your Shelves initiative to encourage people to put their money where their mouth is and buy diverse books and take photos of them. Diversify Your Shelves is all about actively seeking out diverse literature in bookstores and libraries, and there will be some fantastic giveaways for people who participate in the campaign! More details to come!

We hope that you will take part in this in any way you can. We need to spread the word far and wide so that it will trend on Twitter. So that media outlets will pick it up as a news item. So that the organizers of BEA and every big conference and festival out there gets the message that diversity is important to everyone. We hope you will help us by being a part of this movement.

My website is safe again!

Thanks to Alex who gave me the heads up about the virus on my website and to my amazing web designers, Denise and John Biondo, who worked really hard to clean it all up for me. Ellenoh.com is safe!

My author website HACKED!

 Guys, my Ellenoh.com website has been hacked. Please do not go there!! It has been infected with very bad malware.  Fortunately, my blog is hosted on blogger and I never moved it to my website. I always thought that was a pain but now I'm very grateful because my blog is safe.

I would gladly hurt the person who did this to me. Also, if you see any emails from ellen@ellenoh.com - DON'T open for now!! Delete! Everything has been compromised and it's a huge mess. I'm real sorry guys!!

We Are Still Not Doing Enough for Diversity in Kid lit

I’ve written about Why Being a POC Author Sucks Sometimes. I’ve written about the importance of Diversity and Diverse Reading Lists. And I’ve even written about Diversity in Writing. The discussion about why diversity in children’s literature is continuing because POC are still greatly underrepresented at less than 10%. (see this fantastic post by Malinda Lo at Diversity in YA.) There’s even an article in CNN about “Where’s the African-American Harry Potter or the Mexican Katniss?" There’s a lot of good talk but there’s still no action. And furthermore, there’s a lot of lashing out that somehow when we ask for diversity, we are somehow anti-white. If we talk about our need for representation, our articles are just "race-baiting" and discriminatory toward whites. How can asking for more authors of color and characters of color in children’s literature mean we are anti-white? I will never understand this thinking and I have no use for it. Kelly Jensen, a librarian and true supporter of diversity, said in her excellent post “When you support one group of people, it is in not denigrating another group of people. Instead, it’s doing your part to raise everyone up.” And this is what we are fighting for. Raising us all up because diversity is good for everyone.

How bad is the problem?

Of the 3,600 books the Cooperative Children’s Book Center reviewed in 2012:

• 3% were about Africans/African Americans; 1.8% were written by Africans/African Americans
  
• 1.5% were about Latinos; 1.6% were written by Latinos
  
• Less than 1% were about American Indians; less than 1% were written by American Indians
  
• 2% were about Asian Pacifics/Asian Pacific Americans; 2.3% were written by Asian Pacifics/Asian Pacific Americans
  

Click here for a fantastic illustration by Tina Kugler that really highlights the problem based on statistics released by the CCBC.

There are a lot of good people out there fighting for more diversity in publishing. But it’s not enough. There’s even more people who nod their head and agree whole-heartedly that we need more representation. But it’s definitely not enough.

Today I’m pointing fingers. At publishers, librarians, teachers, booksellers, publicists, conference and festival organizers, reviewers, journalists, in fact our entire media. You are all not doing enough. There are some wonderful children’s books authors of colors out there publishing amazing books that are just not getting the attention they deserve. They are ignored. Where is their media coverage? Where are their book tours? Why isn’t their more diversity at book festivals and conferences? Why is it that any promotional materials talking about ALA award winning books don’t also highlight the Coretta Scott King or the Pura Belpré, etc? (See Meg Medina’s post on this.)

Publishing and promoting books that include diversity by white authors is a good start for diversity. But that is not enough. Publishing and promoting authors of color so that we break the arbitrary 10% cap is what is really needed. We need more published authors of color. But if current authors of color are not promoted, then it hurts the chances for all other potential POC writers. It becomes a vicious circle. A self-fulfilling prophecy that continues the belief that books by and about POC don’t sell. We are not doing enough to break this prophecy.

Recently there was a big controversy over the fact that BookCon was featuring an all white male power panel at BEA. Lerner Publishing Group editorial director Andrew Karre said in the PW article, “If they really want to put their money where their mouth is, they should have a panel on this topic, the issue of diversity in children’s books.” I want to put a rallying call out for this to happen. Meg Medina, the fabulous author of the award winning Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, and I were recently talking about how we wanted every conference and every festival in the country to have a diversity panel until the day comes when we don’t need to do it anymore. So yes, ReedPOP, please include a diversity panel to make up for your world class blunder. And please don’t fill it up with white people. We authors of color are here yelling into the crowd. We are writing our books and fighting to promote them in an ocean filled with white capped waves that wash over us. But we are here because there is a need for us. And we won’t stop fighting or raising our voices.

Several months ago, I was at a school event where a very young black girl was standing shyly off to the side as I was chatting with some 6th grade students after my presentation. She gave me her notebook and asked me to sign it, which I was glad to do. It was a book of her own poetry and short stories. I smiled and said “I’m so glad to meet a young writer!” She beamed at me and said “I love writing and I want to be a writer but I didn’t think I could because I’m not white.” I was surprised and asked her if she’d read any books by Walter Dean Myers, Angela Johnson, or Linda Sue Park. She nodded and shrugged her shoulder and said, “But I’ve never seen them in person.” To this young teen, an author of color was a mythical creature, not to be believed, until she’d seen one in person. She couldn’t believe in her dream to become a writer until she saw for herself that a real life POC had done it. This is why we must continue to fight for diversity in children’s literature. For all of our children, so that they can see that we exist and that they can believe that their dreams of becoming whatever they want, can come true.

Teen Librarian's Book Battle!

So I just found out that PROPHECY won a book battle over at the Teen Librarian's first ever book battle in her library and I couldn't be happier!!

Here's the link to go read all about it!! Thanks so much Teen Librarian!

NoVa Teen festival, Gilded Winner and other news...

Hi everyone! Sorry for being out of the loop for awhile. I caught a terrible cold that apparently didn't want to leave me. Ever cough so bad you bruise your ribs? Yeah, this is not fun. It hurt so much that it even hurt to eat! I find that unforgivable! But in any case, I'm on the mend and can actually focus on things like writing a blog post - which takes more brain power than I have had these days!

All right, first things first! The winner of my Gilded contest is Patrice Caldwell! Congrats Patrice!

Secondly, wanted to post up some pics of my fabulous time at NoVa Teen Festival.

The day before the festival, Jessica Spotswood, Lamar Giles and I had an event at a local high school. It was a lot of fun, plus I got to hang out with Jess (who is always wonderful to be with) and meet Lamar in person for the first time! Lamar and I have the same brilliant editor, Phoebe Yeh, for our first books, and we've been talking online for years now! Lamar is just as great in person as he is online! Plus, don't miss his new fantastic book Fake ID!!

Lamar and I got to be on the first panel of the festival (about Identity) with Sarah Guillory, Diana Peterfruend and Meg Medina. This was a fantastic panel and we had a great discussion and I would love to do this again real soon!

I have to take a moment to say that meeting Meg Medina was like meeting a long lost friend! Meg is the winner of the 2014 Pura Belpré Award for her excellent book Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass! I have wanted to read this book for a long time and I now have a signed copy to cherish for myself! Meg is also a huge supporter of diversity and so like minds started rocketing through all the things we should, could, and would do to keep diversity on everybody's minds.

 

 

 Next up was my Breakout Panel with my dear friend Marie Lu, who I adore and who you all know I'm a big big fan of! There's something very comforting about having a discussion with someone you really love and admire a lot. It makes for a great and stimulating discussion. Plus, it helps when you have a huge crowd of eager fans (mostly Marie's) with lots of smart questions.

And then it was time for the signing!

Here I am with Lamar, Sarah and Meg at the signing part of the day! I was grateful and so appreciative of everyone who came and bought Prophecy and/or Warrior! It was exciting to have such a great turnout! In fact, I underestimated and didn't bring enough SWAG, which I was sorry about, but what a great problem to have!
 

 I met some really lovely teen readers who were super sweet and smart and I just wanted to hug them all!

I got to see another teen reader who, btw, is going to be a big author one day in the near future! She's got the drive, the determination and some amazing story ideas! I got a good feeling about her.

Ok, last picture and an important one! Because this is with Danielle Ellison who is not only an author and an editor (for Spencer Hill Press) and a bookseller and YA event coordinator, wow, right?, but she came up with the whole NoVa Teen festival idea! Along with Nico Piro, Arlington YA librarian extraordinare, and Lelia Nebeker, YA book buyer at One More Page, these 3 amazing women put together one of the best events I've ever attended. I have so much respect for them. Even Marie Lu, who has been too many many events, couldn't get over how great the festival was for a first time event! There were tons of teens and authors and volunteers and books!! So to Danielle, Nico and Lelia, and all the wonderful volunteers that helped make Nova Teen festival happen, thank you very much. It was truly a splendid event.

I think there was one more thing I was supposed to blog about but my cold medicine has worn off and my brain has turned to goo. So here's me signing out for now!

GILDED By Christina Farley

So my very dear friend, Christy Farley, has just released her debut book GILDED and I seriously couldn't be more excited!!! I love love love this book! Because it is set in Korea and has a Korean MC!!! Here's the summary:

When sixteen-year old, Jae Hwa, is uprooted from her home in L.A. to Korea, she thought her biggest problem would be fitting in with her classmates and dealing with her dismissive grandfather. But she was wrong. A Korean demi-god, Haemosu, has been stealing the soul of the oldest daughter of each generation in her family for centuries. And she’s next.

Jae trains with a Korean master, confident her taekwondo will be enough to fight Haemosu. But she’s wrong again. Desperate, Jae delves into the ancient arts of metamorphism and uses her growing power in the Spirit World.

And then there’s Marc. Irresistible, charming, and mysterious, Marc threatens to break the barriers around Jae’s heart. But Marc has a secret of his own. One that could help destroy Haemosu. As Jae grows closer to him, she must decide if she can trust him and whether putting his life in jeopardy is worth the risk.

Jae thought she knew all the answers. It turns out that she’s been wrong about a lot of things: her grandfather is her greatest ally, even the tough girl can fall in love, and Korea might just be the home she’s always been looking for.

I've been  so happy and excited about Gilded and now that it is out, I want everyone to go read it. So I'm doing a giveaway for a copy of Gilded!!! All you have to do is tweet or tumble back to me or leave a comment on the blog! The giveaway will be open for one week!!!

NOVA Teen Book festival

I'll be at the NOVA Teen book festival on March 8th, 2014. Just take a look at all the amazing authors who are going to be there!! If you are in the area, please come by! It's going to be awesome!!

HOORAY FOR BOOKS TONIGHT - BETHESDA LIBRARY TOMORROW!

Hey guys!

Tonight at 7PM, I am part of a panel with some fabulous authors at HOORAY FOR BOOKS in Alexandria!

Megan Shepherd - The Madman's Daughter
Victoria Schwab - The Archived
Stephanie Perkins - Anna and the French Kiss

Tomorrow, this same group of ladies, plus Jessica Spotswood (Born Wicked), will be at the Bethesda Library at 2PM.

If you come, you will get to hear an old ancestor story that I've been holding on to for quite a while. it will be worth the commute!!

Heading to ALA Midwinter!

I've been invited to be part of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association's annual author talk dinner this Saturday in Philadelphia. I'll be attending with the fabulous Soman Chainani who wrote one of my favorite fantasy books School For Good and Evil, as well as my wonderful former editor Phoebe Yeh, VP and Publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers, Random House. What's particularly exciting about this, besides being able to hang out with 2 of my favorite people in the world, is that I also get to see a whole lot of librarians.

I adore librarians! They made my life better.  I'm not kidding. Growing up, I spent most of my time in a library. And I always got wonderful help and support from public librarians who showed me the way to world after world of wonderful and magical stories. When you are poor, the library is a haven, a safe place to go and lose yourself. Or find yourself. I owe a lot to librarians and the public library and I'm pretty excited to be going to ALA and meeting not only APALA members, but librarians from all over the country.

So I'll be walking the floor of the convention on Sunday morning. If any librarians out there see me, please don't hesitate to say hi! I'd love to meet you!

WARRIOR IS OUT!!!

Today is the release day for WARRIOR, the second book in the Prophecy Series. It's been an amazing year seeing Prophecy published and now Warrior. These books are labors of love and I am so grateful to have a fabulous publishing house, HarperTeen, to send my books out into the world. I have also been blessed with hearing from so many wonderful readers that have touched my heart. Thank you to all of you! I am so glad to be able to share Kira's journey with my fabulous readers!

So today, for WARRIOR's release, I get to share with you my oldest daughter, Summer's portrait of Nara, the kumiho, a nine tailed fox demon. Given Nara's importance in WARRIOR, I think it is only fitting to have another picture of her to commemorate the release date!

I can't wait to hear back from all of you and see just how you feel about Nara and Gom, the new Warrior characters. I hope you get to love them as much as I do!!

More Warrior Fanart!!

Today I get to share with you the cutest little goblin drawing I've ever seen! This is 14 year old Sharon's illustration of Gom from WARRIOR! Gom is a dokkaebi, goblin like creatures that always carry magic cudgels. I am dying from the cute!!

Gom is another new character in WARRIOR that I love. I can't wait for all of you to meet him and tell me what you think. Thank you Sharon for this amazing artwork!!! If I could make a plush from this picture, I would, I love it so much!!

WARRIOR releases tomorrow!!! YAY!!!!

WARRIOR Fanart!!!!!

I've said it before and I'll say it forever, the best part of being an author is FANART!!!

This beautiful rendition of Nara, my kumiho (nine tailed fox demon) character from WARRIOR is by the incredibly talented 13 year old Erica. She sent me Nara and my heart just melted. WARRIOR comes out on New Year's Eve, only a few days away! And Nara is one of my favorite new characters in the book. So imagine my joy when I received Erica's artwork! I'm in love!

Thank you Erica! This is truly a beautiful kumiho!!!

WARRIOR Quote!

The fantastic team at HarperTeen did this beautiful social media graphic for the release of Warrior! If you like it, feel free to use it to help spread the word that Warrior is coming out December 31st of this year!! Woo Hooooooooo!

Helping Hands over at the Thirteeners!

I did this for the Helping Hands post we did for the Friday the Thirteeners blog post. Go take a look at some very helpful and handy advice! Go here!

All artwork by my Oldest since as we all know by now I have no artistic talent.

December already?!!

How did time fly so fast? Just yesterday school was starting and the day before that it was summer time. How can it possibly be December already? Please someone tell me my calendar is wrong. 2013 isn't almost over, is it? Really?

Wow.

But December does mean something big is coming up. WARRIOR, the sequel to PROPHECY, is out December 31st! And Prophecy paperbacks will also be out this month! That means, watch out for lots of giveaways! If you want a paperback of Prophecy and a hardcopy of Warrior, you will have some opportunities in the next few weeks as I gear up for some Holiday giving!

And I will just leave you with a look back at the first year of a baby elephant. Too cute...

Ellen Picass-Oh

Hi everyone! So I've not been blogging for a while because I am lame. And I'm going to be even lamer and recycle a blog post I did for the 13ers. But as I'm fairly sure no one saw it there, I feel justified as there was a lot of hard work involved, as you can see.

So this blog post is based off of a dare by my buddy Elsie Chapman. It's great if you are a fantastic artist, like all 3 of my kids. But not so great if you have problems drawing a straight line or a circle. Which would clearly be me. Knowing my inability to draw, Elsie dared me to draw my MC, Kira from Prophecy. And I foolishly took the challenge!

Here's my first attempt. It was important for me to make sure I was accurate by including the yellow eyes and a bow and arrow. The boots were just a special extra I did. But my youngest came by and berated me for drawing her naked. 

 So I gave her some clothes and a sword. But then apparently my middle daughter came by and asked me if I was drawing a sailor. Damn it, she is not a sailor! So my youngest said, put her on a horse!

 My oldest shows up because of the shrieks of laughter emanating from my room and she takes a look and says "why is she riding a platypus?" At this point, I decided to call it a night and loaded up my self-portrait.

They have now taken to calling me Mama Smurf.

And BTW - here's how real artists do it:

 Kira by our very own and extraordinarily talented Natalie Whipple.

Another Kira by the amazing Joni who blogs at Lace and Fog Authoress. 

From now on, I shall leave the art to the artists!!

Catching up!!

It's been nearly a month since my last blog post and I have a very good reason for the long radio silence! I caught a bad case of summer brain that essentially turned me into a zombie. Well, a zombie/chauffeur who's sole existence was to drive the Oh kids to a seemingly endless array of sports, health, school, and party time related activities. Needless to say, I'm quite happy the kids are back in school. However, I do have some fun things to report. Well, they were fun for me at least! I went back up to NYC and met up with my new editor and my first editor and my agent and my buddy Alana, Harper marketing guru extraordinaire! Here's me and Alana! She is not only the coolest person in the world, but she has the most stunning hair!

 

I met my new editor Alyson who is super cool and super nice and I am truly blessed to have Prophecy, Warrior, and King in her fantastic editorial hands.

I also got the opportunity to meet up with my first editor, the one and only Phoebe, who is now Publisher and VP of Crown Books for Young Readers, Random House! Seriously an amazing promotion for someone who I think is one of the best editors in all of NYC! This promotion is  so well deserved and I couldn't be happier for her!

Phoebe then took me to dinner with Soman Chainani, author of the amazing SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL, a book that is simply one of my absolute favorite reads of the year! I have been in such awe of Soman because I think he is just a brilliant writer. And I've been telling Phoebe how much I want to meet him in person (we've been communicating via email for months!). So she made it happen! He is seriously as nice and as funny as I expected him to be! And I tried to bribe him into letting me get a sneak peek of book 2, but I haven't been successful yet...

 

I realized after the fact that I didn't have a picture with me and my agent, Joe, which bummed me out! He took me to this fantastic breakfast restaurant up on the upper west side and then we walked from 86th to 66th just chatting up a storm! It is always so great to see him in person and catch up. Joe's knowledge of the industry is amazing. I'd seriously be lost without him!

One last interesting thing that happened this summer was a Lucky 13 event at the Bethesda library! It was awesome to see these amazing Luckies all in one place! Stephanie Kuen, Kelly Fiore, Elisabeth Dahl, Cristin Terrell, and Alex Lidell. These ladies are all awesome and they were a really interesting panel to listen to! Also, we got to hang out and have dinner together which is always the best part of author get togethers! (FYI - I know I'm wearing another black and white top but it is not the same top as in NY. I just have a lot of black and white clothes.)

 

So that's all the news that's fit to print - or post! I'll be back with a giveaway of some WARRIOR ARCs! Stay tuned!!

Diversity in Writing

 I did this post for Write on Com. Figured it would be worth sharing here also.

Diversity in Writing

Recently, I was part of a conversation where an author said the following: “But there’s been a lot of anger from some quarters about “appropriation” and “exoticism” … I’m terrified of incurring the kind of wrath I’ve seen online, and have decided I’m not qualified to tackle diversity head on.”
Guys, if this is you, then I want to talk to you about why it is okay to “tackle diversity.” If you are the type to say, “Yes, I want to include diversity! I just don’t know how.” I want to talk to you too, because there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. But mostly I want to tell you how important it is that you all are trying. Thank you for that. Because I was once that little girl scanning through the books desperately looking for someone like me, who wasn’t a stereotype. And now I have kids who are doing the same thing. Thank you for wanting to have this conversation.
But if you are scared about being called out for including diversity in your book, then wake up and smell the diapers, children, because you are not going to be able to make everybody happy. Someone somewhere is going to be offended for something you wrote and for a reason that you never intended! You wrote a girl empowerment book? How dare you put down feminine girls! You wrote about sexual exploitation? How dare you write a slut shaming book! You wrote a POC main character? How dare you white person try and exploit minorities!
Look, I’m Korean American and I wrote a fantasy book based in ancient Korea. I studied it for 10 years on top of all that I knew from being raised by Korean immigrants. And yet I had plenty of people bash me for getting things “wrong” about Korean culture in my book – and most of them weren’t even Korean! So the one thing I can promise you with absolute assurance is, someone somewhere is going to be irate at you for writing. Whether it is the fact that you wrote a POC character or the fact that you are posing in your author picture with a hand to your cheek, someone is going to hate you for something. Listen, you are not ever going to make everyone happy. That’s just human nature. I bet someone out there is reading this post right now and pissed off at me just because they don’t like my face. What can you do? You can start not caring about making everybody happy.
Now writing about POC is a bit different in that most people are afraid of being called a racist. So they avoid diversity because of it. However, let me reassure you that by not including diversity, you are also being called a racist. Maybe not to your face, but you are. And guess what? Being called a racist is nowhere near as painful as dealing with actual racism.
Now that I have freed you from the fear of being reviled on the internet, let’s talk about a few things that you need to keep in mind:

1. Do your research and be respectful. Don’t culturally appropriate from POC and then claim that your world is different therefore you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Call your world whatever you want, but if your world looks and sounds like China, and you even use Chinese words and architecture and terms specific to that culture, then don’t pretend it’s not China and mix us up with every other Asian culture. It just reeks of sloppy research and not giving a damn. If you want your world to feel Asian without specifically calling out a specific country, it can be done – see Eon/Eona. See The Last Airbender series.
2. Avoid stereotypes. There are many. The magical negro, the blonde bimbo, the smart Asian math whiz, the ghetto talking black kid, the feisty Latina, the Asian dragon lady, the cryptic but wise Native American, the uppercrusty WASP, etc. Using stereotypes is lazy writing. You don’t want to invest in your character’s development to go beyond an easily recognizable trope. Don’t do this.
3. Exotification of another culture. “But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.” ? David Wong. I think the context of this quote was about women and how men view them. But it works well in this context also. If you don’t include POC in your book, you are dismissing them. If you do include POC but make them exotic and other-worldish, you are going the other way. Neither is acceptable.
4. Check your privilege. Don’t get mad that I used the “P” word. I know privilege can be a touchy subject. Asking you to be aware of your privilege is not the same as calling you a racist. What I’m doing is asking you to be aware of it. If you are a female, then you know that male privilege is very real. Take what you understand as male privilege and make a correlation to white privilege and you will see what I mean. And if it helps, read this: http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html
5. Reach out to minorities for help.  If you know nothing about the culture that you want to include in your book, then reach out for help. Yes, you can find a lot of information on the internet, but some things you can only learn from people who live that culture 24/7.

It won’t be easy, and it shouldn’t be! You will probably make mistakes. And that’s ok! You’ll learn from them and you will fail less and less the more you try. But the most important thing is that you try. Because you are writing for kids. All our kids! And they need to see that their books can reflect their world.

The Summer is nearly over...

And I'm so behind! I have to post my trip to NYC and my Library of Congress event, but the summer has killed my brain and the posts are much delayed. So while I try to work around my summer (zombie) brain, I shall leave you with my new favorite GIF.

This is my husband when he wins an argument. It doesn't happen that often.

And in the meantime, I shall work on my blog posts! See you guys soon!!