Category: children’s literature

Updated video–please respond to that for the video challenge

- Stacy

On Tuesday, I challenged everyone (teens, especially) to respond to my video with videos of their own talking about their experiences with reading and multicultural literature. Since then, I’ve figured out how to not squish my lovely friend Christine, who answered several questions for me, and was able to add music as well. (I really like the music, actually–it reminds me of a silent film now because of the slides between interviews.)

Here’s the updated video (I had to upload a new one, rather than just doing a straight replacement, so any links you might have posted to the YouTube video are out of date, though the Kickstarter link is the same).

Also, thanks so much to everyone who has retweeted, blogged, Facebooked, and otherwise shared this project with others. We’re off to a great start, and I appreciate everyone who has been so kind as to share the news and to pledge to the project. A special shoutout to Kimberly Pauley of YA (and Kids) Books Central, who has issued a challenge: she will send out a signed copy of her book to the first 10 people to donate $50. Also, thanks to Mitali Perkins, Cheryl Klein,Varian Johnson, KaedtiannHP, Jana Stocks, Kim Baccellia, Cassandra Yorgey, and all the other people who have been passing the word along!

I’ll work on getting a thank-you page going on the Tu Publishing site as soon as I round up a few other things I need to finish first–namely, critiques that people have been waiting on–and I also plan to add a few more things to the site as time goes on. Thanks again, everyone!

Announcing Tu Publishing, and a video challenge

- Stacy 7 Comments

I’m cross-posting this from the Tu Publishing website, the website of my small press. I promised you the announcement of a project, and I’ve finally finished it at 3:15 a.m. I’m going to go ahead and share it everyone despite the video needing a little fine-tuning still. (I seem to have a different resolution camera than Christine Taylor-Butler, who helped me out by providing an educator’s and parent’s perspective on multicultural fantasy and science fiction.) The Tu Publishing site is a work in progress–I didn’t have time last night to completely update it when I posted the video, but it will be changing and getting more informative soon.

Just a reminder (though I iterate it below, too) that those who have used the “donate” button here on this blog are on the list to receive the same incentives put in place in the Kickstarter project. You’ve been very helpful as we’ve gotten through the red tape to start a company, and I want to reciprocate, even if it’s a pretty small gesture comparitively.

Tu Publishing is a woman-owned small press startup that believes in the power of books to change lives. Children’s books, especially, have the ability to inform, inspire, and entertain in a way that few mediums can.

The word “tu” means “you” in many languages, and in Ainu (the language of Japan’s native people), it means “many.” Tu Publishing is dedicated to publishing fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction for children and young adults inspired by many cultures from around the world, to reach the “you” in each reader.

Kids who love to read do better in school. One way to encourage that love of reading is to provide stories that readers can identify with. By increasing the number of books that feature multicultural character and settings, we can influence the multicultural world of tomorrow.

Fantasy and science fiction, mystery and historical fiction–these genres draw in readers like no other. Yet it is in these genres that readers of color might feel most like an outsider, given that such a large percentage features white characters (when they feature human characters). It is the goal of Tu Publishing to publish genre books for children and young adults that fills this gap in the market–and more importantly, this gap in serving our readers.

As author Mitali Perkins and many others have pointed out, books can be both a mirror and a window to other worlds for readers. Tu Publishing hopes that by publishing books that feature multicultural characters and settings and books with worlds inspired by all the many non-Western cultures in the world, we might shine a mirror on you and open a window to many.

To be able to achieve that goal, we need to raise enough money to fund the acquisition, production, marketing, and distribution of our first two books, for which we hope–with your help–to begin acquiring in January 2010. With your help, we can make this happen.

We have officially started our fund-raising project at Kickstarter.com and invite anyone interested in being a part of making Tu Publishing a reality to check out the project.

What is Kickstarter.com? If you know Cheryl Klein, you might have seen her project to publish a book of her essays on writing there. This project is similar, except that it’s a bit more than Cheryl needed because we also need to pay a modest advance to the authors and publicize and market the books we acquire. It takes a lot of money to get a publishing company started, and we thought that this would be a nice, secure way for anyone interested to get involved, and to get something back for it. Kickstarter runs their payments through Amazon payments, and the project is only funded if the full goal amount is reached by the deadline. If it isn’t reached, no harm, no foul, and no payments go through, with the idea being that it would be worse to have a project be underfunded than not funded at all.

For those who have already donated before we started the Kickstarter project, you are on our list already of people to receive the same incentives here. Thank you for your support.

ETA: Yay! I’ve figured out how to fix the video. I had to completely upload a new one to replace the one that squished Christine, so I ended up adding music and making it shorter, too. If you’ve been sharing it, please note the new location.

The challenge portion of this

Whether or not you can donate, I’d love to see people, especially teen readers/nonreaders, share their own video or blog responses to this video, discussing whether you identify with the characters in the books you read and whether it matters to you. Mitali Perkins got this ball rolling separately as a part of the larger conversation about race in children’s and YA in her blog post asking “are books windows or mirrors?” I found her use of the mirror/window analogy very important–books can be a window to other worlds, but they also need to be mirrors in some ways, especially for young readers. The more “mirror” books we have for every child, the more “windows” there are for everyone. What do you think?

Read-alikes

- Stacy 3 Comments

I have finally just discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid Diary of a Wimpy Kid (I know! I had heard of it, but hadn’t read it) and I’m looking for read-alikes. I’m at the local B&N (yay for free wifi!) and their website suggested Dan Gutman’s The Homework Machine, which looks like a lot of fun. I’m looking for books that are popular and well-known among kids (and hopefully their gatekeepers)–the kinds of books that get passed from kid to kid the way Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter and Levin Thumps were. Is Homework Machine one of those (despite the fact that it has many fewer illustrations)? It seems to have had a long shelf-life at B&N at least–it came out in 2007, and here two years later it’s still getting stocked/warehoused in B&Ns in the thousands, which is pretty good for a backlist titles. I’m not talking about something as big as Wimpy Kid, necessarily–just books in the same general fun, illustrated, adventurous genre (realism or fantasy) that have staying power.

So with this in mind, what other books am I missing that are the kind of read for kids ages 7-10, with a concentration on the 8 and 9 year olds that Wimpy Kid really hits on target? It’s an interesting niche, because it hits slightly younger than the all-prose books in the same middle grade section of the bookstore, yet slightly older than the kids reading chapter books like Magic Treehouse.

I doubt we’ll find quite as many books in that range that are as highly illustrated as Wimpy Kid, but I am looking for books with illustrations.

I’m going to start compiling a list of all the suggestions from people in various places (Facebook, Twitter, this blog and its LJ mirror):

  • Supernatural Rubber Chicken by D.L. Garfinkle (except that it’s a chapter book for a slightly younger age, so perhaps it *doesn’t* meet the narrow criteria?)
  • The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman (except that it doesn’t have *as many* illustrations… you get the idea. Let’s be broad for the original list so I can go check the books out and narrow things down)
  • The Dork Diaries
  • Dear Dumb Diary
  • Flat Stanley
  • Ellie McDoodle

The age-old, oft-discussed, oft-annoying discussion: what is the difference between MG and YA?

- Stacy 3 Comments

A conversation came up on Twitter today that moved over to Facebook that covered a lot of ground and I think it would be great to open up the discussion here. It all started because my friend Brandon and I got into yet another discussion about the difference between YA and middle grade, a subject that seems to confuse a lot of people. A lot of misinformation gets spread, especially in the con circuit and SFF community, because it’s this relatively new, hot thing and all the cons feel they need to have something about it, but then we end up with local cons that have four or five panels covering the same old boring topics: four about what the difference between YA and MG is, and one on Harry Potter. They might have thrown up a Twilight panel or two in the last few years.

Years ago I was attending Cascadiacon in Seattle when I had an experience that would illustrate this. The panel had a great NYC editor on it–a NYC editor who worked on adult fantasy books–and several local authors, all of whom wrote for adults, except for one self-published author. The first question the panel had was, “Uh, so, first we should probably define YA, huh?” and they all looked at each other blankly.

I was in the audience–I was there strictly as an attendee, and had only been at Wizards for a few months at that point–and when a few minutes of fumbling comments had passed, I raised my hand. “I’m a children’s book and YA editor. Here’s what YA is for me: books for teens. Readers 12 and up.”

They said they had a new panelist and had me come up to the front.

I tell this story usually because I find it funny that I became an impromptu panelist, but also because it’s frustrating to me how little information there is beyond the children’s book world–or, that is, how little those beyond the children’s book world pay attention to the children’s book industry, and are downright scared of it at times. (All my friends and present company excepted, of course, because they all know better, right? 🙂 ) (When I worked at a B&N in grad school as a bookseller, I got assigned the children’s section by default because everyone else in the store was literally “afraid of it.” I don’t know why; it didn’t bite!)

When “YA” SF award nominees come up, the books could be either middle grade or young adult–Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series, solidly middle grade, was nominated for the 2007 Locus Award, for example. Very seldom do these awards have a “children’s” category, so the YA term becomes the catch-all.

So there’s the backstory to this post, which I’ve edited together from my answers on Facebook to replies to my frustrated tweet earlier today:

Argh. It really bugs me when middle grade books are referred to as “YA.” They’re not! We’re already stretching “young adult” to mean a teen!

People replied asking just what was the delineation, so I replied:

Relatively official delineations in the industry (it might vary by a year or two from publisher to publisher) is MG=ages 8-12, YA=12 and up.

It’s based on developmental levels and/or grade levels.

Author Robison Wells replied to clarify:

Is it that simple that it’s all about ages? I’d always heard that it was based on content, like the number of characters or the inclusion of romance, etc.

To which my reply was (and remember, this is my opinion, and it’s a complicated question; I’m sure entire theses have been written on the subject):

Content follows developmental levels, not the other way around. The reason why there’s not a lot of romance in middle grade is because most *kids* that read it aren’t developmentally into romance. The opposite sex still has cooties, or at least is only puppy love/crushes. Deeper romance in YA happens because those readers are ready for it and interested in it.

To which another author replied with a few questions of her own:

When you say YA is for 12 and up you’re talking about the reader? Correct? because some people say that it is all based on the age of your main character. In that case why wouldn’t Eragon be considered YA? And, do I have to tell the editor whether it’s YA or middle grade?

First, let me attack a couple questions I forgot to address in my long reply to that: Yes, the author needs to tell the editor what age group you see it as, because it helps us to know whether you have a firm enough grasp on the market to be able to place it. However, where you say it is may not be where it ends up. Writers Jessica Day George and Shannon Hale both thought their first books were, respectively, for young adults and for adults (or perhaps both were for YA–I often get Shannon’s part of the story wrong, so go to her site if you want to know more about Goose Girl). Turns out that Jessica’s first book, Dragon Slippers, ended up being marketed as YA even though there’s romance and the character ends up getting married or something (it’s on the TBR pile; I can’t remember exactly the situation) and Shannon’s first book was marketed as YA but now is seen mostly in the middle grade section.

Why? Because of an exception to the rules we’ll discuss: both books were “clean” reads, so they tend to attract a younger audience (and I would hope, a wider range of audience–both books cross over into YA nicely). Those kinds of complicated considerations will be discussed between editor and author on a case-by-case basis, but it’s best for the author to come in knowing the market and having an informed opinion on where you see it fitting the market.

Regarding Eragon as YA–I have always considered it to be YA. Did someone tell you it wasn’t? I’m sure it has middle grade appeal, but as for where it’s marketed, it’s solidly in the teen section of the bookstore.

Now, for some more complicated answers that may even contradict themselves:

Here’s a rule of thumb. Remember, rules of thumb have their exceptions, but for beginning writers especially this rule of thumb can be of guidance, tempered with wide reading in both age groups to get an idea of where your book fits.

When I say that MG is 8-12 and YA is 12 and up, that’s *anticipated* readership. Now, what kids are *actually* reading depends on the kids–there’s some fluidity in the genres because of course a mature, well-read 11-year-old might be ready for a young YA book while a not-so-mature 12-year-old might still be reading middle grade books. And both kids might be reading from both shelves and that’s okay. But a publisher has to pick a category, so we get a feel for it and generally when putting together a variety of factors we’ll come to a conclusion that a given book fits the generalized picture of a middle grade reader or a YA reader (and then we get into younger and older MG and younger and older YA, because there are vast developmental differences between an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old, and even more between a 12-year-old and an 18-year-old. An “edgy” YA might not be appropriate for 13-year-olds but perfect for high school seniors (this is where content comes in).

Okay, so there’s anticipated readers, actual readers, and then there’s the characters themselves. Kids tend to “read up.” In human development terms, we call it “anticipatory socialization.” Think about Ramona the Pest vs. Harry Potter. Some middle grade books are great for the age that the child is at–six-year-olds love Ramona, who also starts out at 6. But Harry is 11 when the book opens, and the first book is targeted at 8-12 year olds. 11 and 12 year olds can read it quite comfortably, and it might be a challenge for some 8-year-olds, but at the same time they love it. Not that they’re going to go off to magic school when they turn 11, but it’s something they can dream about happening to them in a couple years.

So a lot of editors will suggest that you make your protagonist a year or two older than your anticipated reader. Kids older or younger might read and love the book, but think about your reader. And to figure out your anticipated reader, that’s where the content we’ve been talking about comes in–if there’s not a lot of “mature” topics (i.e., think… Read More PG-13 vs. PG or even G–the movie rating system is imperfect, but a good guide, because it takes into account not just language and sex but also violence, dramatic situations, romantic situations (mature romance vs. puppy love), and so forth.

Opinions vary from editor to editor, house to house, agent to agent, but like I said, these are *general guidelines*. Like the Pirate Code.

Let’s throw in a few more complications
Okay, on top of that, here are some questions thrown out by Brandon Sanderson in this discussion for whichI don’t have a definitive answer for (I threw one out in the conversation, but I’m not sure I stand by it, because it’s a good question to consider; if you want to see my thrown-together answers, they’re on my twitter page):

@stacylwhitman Middle Grade wouldn’t fit. Too many characters. Still, I do think the terms are shifting to stick MG into the YA blanket. [in response to me claiming that The Graveyard Book is older MG, not YA]
@stacylwhitman Why? Children’s includes YA. Why can’t YA include MG? It’s all about semantics anyway.
@stacylwhitman Definitions should change to fit the needs of the audience. It’s good to know the difference, but if language shifts…
@stacylwhitman I was talking about readers. Most kids I’ve met and most non-writer adults all use YA to mean Teen and Tween books.
@stacylwhitman Yes, but those same developmental levels use YA to mean 19-40, don’t they? I think that’s the psychological definition.
@stacylwhitman The problem is, everyone defines things differently. Graveyard Book has won MG awards and YA awards. So which is it?

So, oh People of this Industry, where do you stand on this utterly fascinating, earth-shatteringly interesting, way overtalked issue? Do editors have it all wrong because we’re thinking about marketing categories (which, by the way, are mirrored in a majority of children’s and teen libraries)? Should we change our terminology because the audience is using it, or should we just keep correcting them? 😀

I still say it’s the Pirate Code, though.

Links for the cover issue

- Stacy 1 Comment

Via the Brown Bookshelf, John Green discusses the cover issue for Justine Larbalestier’s book in a thorough way, taking into account all the changes our industry is going through.

***

Also, I’ve added several books to my POC booklist thanks to all the people who have been suggesting books. There are a number of fantasy books by or about people of color that I’ve never seen before, including new books just coming out this year. One that just came out last month, Libyrinth, features a black girl right there on the cover (which we have found in the recent discussions is really rare in YA and children’s, especially in fantasy) and sounds like a really good read, so perhaps for those of you looking to read and review books for Color Online’s Color Me Brown book review challenge, you might want to check it out.

I’ll be looking for it myself. I tend not to read new books when they’re new, so here’s me trying to catch up yet again! I am in the middle of reading Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and need to get back to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon so I think I’ll be meeting that challenge myself. I’ve got plenty of other books on my TBR list now with the booklist to reach the needed more than three reviews. The only question is whether I’ll have enough time to finish these in the month of August, given all the other things on my plate right now. Even if I don’t meet the challenge for prizes (and yes, there are prizes, so you guys should try for it!), I definitely will try to meet it to get myself to review books on a more regular basis.

Questions I have about our industry in general

- Stacy 3 Comments

I added these to my last post, because some readers pointed out that it sounded like I was defending Bloomsbury’s choice of cover, which wasn’t my intent at all. In fact, I was trying to point out that despite pressures from sales and marketing, the fact remains that it is very important to be aware that if you’ve got a person of color main character in the book and you want a person on the cover of the book (as opposed to a striking symbol, which is a current cover trend), you really have to make sure that the character represented on the cover actually matches the character described in the book. Heck, it’s important all around, no matter whether the character is a person of color or not. If the character in the book is a white blonde girl, don’t make her a redheaded Asian man on the cover, any more than vice versa. But it’s especially important to think about, given our industry’s history of whitewashing covers, when the character is a person of color.

So here are some questions that arose in my mind as I’ve been reading over the articles and discussion of the Liar cover:

Questions I’d love to hear addressed from the publishing end of things:

1. I’ve had authors tell me that their houses (houses I have not worked with) have asked them to change their characters from black to white because of this very myth that “black books don’t sell” or that it forces a book into a niche for only black readers (a myth that I personally think is bunk). Why do marketing departments say this, and therefore why does this pressure on editors, especially in fantasy, exist?

I never got that kind of pressure at Mirrorstone. Our marketing department was completely excited about Star Sisterz — a series that featured several different girls of various ethnic backgrounds as the rotating main characters, including a Jewish girl, an Indian-American, a black girl, and a Latina — and Hallowmere, which featured a white main character to start with in the first three books, but then split up to the French girl, the Hungarian girl, the Irish girl, the black girl who was formerly a slave (remember, this is post-Civil War Virginia), and a Hopi girl was going to be introduced in book 8, a character Mara (the former slave) was going to meet on her journeys.

I was excited about this series, and never really got any kind of pushback from the market on either Star Sisterz or Hallowmere from library shows or IRA–in fact, the librarians we talked to snapped up those books, knowing their readers would *love* them. Why is there this pressure in (at least certain) NY houses over a myth that simply isn’t true? And how do those environments differ from houses where they seem to welcome diversity in both covers and content (books edited by Alvina Ling and Cheryl Klein come to mind)?

2. (Somehow, this question disappeared from my previous post. Argh!!) Even with this pressure from sales and marketing, why do others give in to the pressure, rather than focusing on re-educating the marketing people? I could probably answer this one: because the marketing and sales people are worried that the biggest buyers will shelve the books in the wrong place in the bookstore (a complaint that is lodged multiple times in the comments to Justine’s post about her cover). Again, I don’t know what conversations went on behind the scenes at Bloomsbury, or why this cover would be decided on despite how they must have known it would have been received. I can believe that they thought that making the cover a “lie” — i.e., as if the character had put a picture of someone else on the cover, not herself — might have been part of the discussion, but it obviously doesn’t work for readers in the intended way, if so.

I’ve also had local booksellers here in Utah tell me that “my customers are as white as you are, and they’re not interested in multicultural literature” when I would mention that I was in the process of starting a small press focusing on multicultural fantasy and SF for YA/children. But I don’t believe that’s true regarding the readers themselves, and it ends up being a self-perpetuating cycle that leaves out a huge proportion of the population that probably avoid that store because they can never find books that either 1) they can identify with themselves or 2) in which they can read about other people not like themselves, if they’re white-bread Utahns. Honestly, the proportion of Latinos, black people, Asians, and Polynesians in Utah is pretty strong and steadily growing, so I think it’s ignorant of historically white communities to ignore the growing diversity right in front of them.

So how can we show the whole chain, from booksellers on back to publishing houses, that the readers are there if they’d just acknowledge them?

3. This relates to the questions raised last week about letting our boys be book bigots, but in this case, I think it’s more decisions made on the parts of adults prior to the books getting into the hands of young readers. Have we ever done any kind of market research (even if it’s just a survey to librarians) about what readers like to read about? (Actually — we did such a survey at some point at Wizards.) I’m pretty sure that most middle grade and YA readers across a wide range of communities would count action, adventure, mystery, romance, fantastic magic, and other story elements way above the race of the character, except that they’d probably like to see more diversity, because exploring the world of the character is a fun thing for most readers. I’d love to see PW or some other independent body publish something on this–or to see an academic study on readership.

Cover art considerations

- Stacy 2 Comments

Justine Larbalestier’s new book, Liar, has been getting a lot of attention lately. When she first revealed the cover, I thought it was nice — striking image, interesting thing happening with the hair. But having never read the book, I didn’t realize that the main character describes herself as black, with short hair, and looking like a boy. So as you can imagine, with a cover like this, some controversy has erupted, starting with Editorial Anonymous. Publisher’s Weekly covered it today in their Children’s Bookshelf. And then the author came out with her response.

This discussion fascinates me from the editorial end. ETA: The reason why it fascinates me is not because I’m excusing what went on on the Bloomsbury end–either way, the end result was that the cover photo didn’t remotely represent the character. The reason the discussion fascinates me is that as an editor, I try to pay close attention to these things, making sure covers that feature the character match the character (see anecdote below on a time I screwed that up), and it’s an important subject that needs to be discussed. I just figured I was late to the party on something like this, given how so many people I know in publishing feel so strongly about diversity.

I’m not sure what was happening behind the scenes at Bloomsbury —  the editor commented to Publisher’s Weekly that the cover itself was intended to be a lie — but I do know how tough it can be for an editor to get the cover exactly right, something that will fit the contents of the book and sell the book to readers. After all, despite the maxim, many people do judge books by their covers, and the editor (in partnership with the art department) has to take the feedback of all the stakeholders like marketing and sales, to make sure that book buyers will love it, so that the book will get onto bookstore shelves, before readers even get a chance to see the book.

This controversy reminds me tangentially of why as an editor, when doing cover orders, I strive to make sure to accurately describe the character if that person will be on the cover (obviously, that’s moot when the cover depicts something else, like a symbol; other considerations are at work then). The reason that I work so hard at it is because of an incident early in my career, which was thankfully fixable before the book went to print, but embarrassing for me nonetheless. Vinod Rams is the excellent artist who illustrated all of the Dragonlance: The New Adventures covers and the Dragon Codex covers. He did a brilliant job with the cover of The Wayward Wizard, a now out-of-print book that kicked off Jeff Sampson’s Suncatcher Trilogy. (It’s SO good, and it’s so hard to find the first book that even I don’t have a copy, because I gave away my copy only to realize we couldn’t order more. Now they’re going for over $100 a piece on Amazon and Ebay).

The only problem? I had forgotten to specify in the art order that the friend Sindri meets in this book, Tayt, had copper-colored skin. Humans are all sorts of hues in Dragonlance, but many of the human characters are white, so it was something that Jeff had done specifically to diversify the story. Of course, in Dragonlance there are no “African Americans” or “Asians” because we’re in a fantasy world — wayward-wizardracial issues in Dragonlance tend to cut across human/dwarf/kender/elf/ogre/goblin/gnome lines rather than skin color — but Jeff had pictured her as looking somewhat like an average African American girl (I’m sure he had a specific picture in his head). In the art order, I included all sorts of details about her: she had close-cropped hair, she was lithe and slim and short for a human (though taller than Sindri, who is a kender — a halfling in Dragonlance) and the color of her eyes. But I forgot to specify her skin color! When we got the artwork back, it was lovely–but Jeff told me that Tayt was all wrong.

I was mortified–we couldn’t go back and change a finished painting. It would take too much time, and because of the nature of the mediums Vinod works in, it would require a whole new painting, which would not be in the budget. What could we do?

Well, the art department saved the day. They were able to alter her skin to be closer to the tone the author had imagined. Or at least, it worked for me–her skin was described in the text as the color of copper, if I remember right. She’s gorgeous, though I still worry that she wasn’t quite as Jeff had imagined. And I don’t blame him; it’s completely my fault that I didn’t pay enough attention to detail to make sure that I specified more about how she was supposed to look. ETA: Jeff tells me in the comments on my LJ that I was actually the one who caught it. I didn’t remember it that way at all! And he says he thinks Tayt looks perfect. So I’m even more glad that it all worked out!

I feel for Justine as she fields the controversy over her book, because as Jeff could testify, authors rarely have control over their books (most editors, myself included, ask authors for cover suggestions, but usually character descriptions aren’t part of this process because we generally already have those details in the book itself, as I did with The Wayward Wizard). As I said above, I have no idea what went on behind the scenes at Bloomsbury in deciding upon the cover; I won’t comment on that. I just know that it’s tough making sure that all the people with a say in the cover are happy (including everyone from big book buyers like B&N, who often will say that they’d buy more of a certain book if the publisher did thus-and-such with the cover, to the sales & marketing people, not to mention the author and the editor). I’ll be very interested to see how this conversation plays out over time.

ETA: Questions I’d love to hear addressed from the publishing end of things: I deleted the questions here, because they’re incomplete and it was making the entry wayyy long–see my next post for them.

Book lists: Multicultural SF/F for MG and YA

- Stacy 41 Comments

ETA: If you’re just googling into this list now, please see my booklists over on Pinterest, which I keep much more up-to-date than this page from several years ago. I break them down by age group and genre. I also publish diverse science fiction and fantasy for young readers at Tu Books now. See the sidebar or the Tu Books page for more information.

Screen Shot 2013-10-25 at 4.12.12 PM

Over at Color Online, they do a meme challenge every week “designed to encourage readers to broaden their reading habits.” This week (well, actually, it was last week; I’ve been working on this list for a few days in spare moments), they’re challenging people to discuss science fiction and fantasy where people of color are the leads.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, as we’ve already discussed, but let’s talk about books I’ve already read in which the main character (not a supporting character) is a person of color. Obviously, a lot of the manga I’ve been reading lately features people of color — at least, the ones set in Japan can reasonably be assumed to be people of color. (There’s an ongoing discussion among people who know more about manga than I do that addresses this, because many people unfamiliar with manga assume that the characters are white because of the range of hair colors and because eye shape isn’t characterized with the fold that is so common to Asian people, but from what I understand, it’s just an artistic choice, not a statement on the race of the characters. It certainly makes it easier to distinguish different characters when you’ve got a range of hair colors, especially in black-and-white manga. But that’s not what this post is really about.)

So what science fiction and fantasy — specifically, for young readers — have you read lately that feature a main character of color? Here’s my list (note that even though this is a “multicultural” list, I’m deliberately leaving out fantasy inspired by Celtic culture unless it features a character of color, because such fantasy is usually the most predominant in the market. I love it, but it’s not what this list is for):

SFF books for young readers that feature multicultural characters that I’ve read

  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, 2009, by Grace Lin. I’m still working on reading this fairy-tale retelling-like tale, but so far it’s beautiful.
  • Wildwood Dancing, 2007, by Juliet Marillier. This one’s a little bit of a stretch, but it is set in Romania, which is a culture we don’t see too often in non-vampire stories.
  • Book of a Thousand Days, 2008, by Shannon Hale. Mongolia-inspired. Lovely, lovely fairy tale retelling. My favorite of Shannon’s books (and that’s saying something, because she writes some good books!).
  • The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, 1994, by Nancy Farmer. Set in Zimbabwe in the year 2194.
  • The House of the Scorpion, 2002, by Nancy Farmer. Set in the zone between the U.S. and Mexico, main character is Latino.
  • Flora Segunda, 2007, by Isabeau S. Wilce, and its sequel Flora’s Dare. Set in a fantasy world inspired by a fun mix of medieval, fashion-forward, and Spanish-inspired cultures (Spain-Spanish, given how the language is used, I’m thinking, but I could be wrong).
  • Little Sister,1996, by Kara Dalkey, and a sequel for which I’ve forgotten the name. Japanese folklore. This is actually one of the first multicultural fantasies I discovered way back in college, and I loved it so much, but at the time couldn’t find many more books like it.
  • Magic or Madness, 2005, and its sequels by Justine Larbalestier. Reason Cansino, the main character, is an Australian of mixed race.
  • A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin. This one has had a lot of misunderstanding over the years due to publishers in the 60s and 70s putting a white Ged on the cover, when in fact Ged and many of the other characters are dark-skinned.
  • Eternal, 2009, by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Miranda is Chinese-American.
  • Tantalize, 2007, by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Main character Quincie is English-Italian-Texan, and non-POV character (but featured in a graphic novel sequel) Kieren is Mexican-American. (This one’s kind of a stretch, because Quincie isn’t technically a person of color–unless that Texan part is Latino?)

ETA: How could I forget Lawrence Yep? I have one of his books, but I’m not sure where it is. The ones I’ve read of his feature Asian characters in Asian settings (Chinese? I can’t remember off the top of my head). His books are great reads.

SFF books written by authors of color (where I’ve been able to identify them) in which characters may be of ambiguous ethnicity, or ethnicity simply not mentioned

Sucks to Be Me

    , 2008, by Kimberly Pauley

Multicultural science fiction and fantasy on my TBR pile

  • Silver Phoenix, 2009, by Cindy Pon. Set in ancient China.
  • Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008, by Nahoko Uehashi, and its sequel, Moribito II. Written by a Japanese author (originally published in Japan and translated to English) and set in a culture inspired by medieval Japan.
  • The Shadow Speaker, 2007, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. Set in Niger, 2070. I’ve had the ARC of this since 2007, and have been wanting to read it for forever, and keep misplacing it when I actually think of it! It’s an oversight I need to correct.
  • Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu.
  • Extras, 2007, by Scott Westerfeld. Main character, Aya, is Japanese, I believe. I LOVED the first three in the series (and somehow have misplaced my signed copies of the first two books 🙁 ) but haven’t had a chance to catch up with this one.
  • How to Ditch Your Fairy, 2008, Justine Larbalestier
  • Tantalize: Kieren’s Story, by Cynthia Leitich Smith–the above-mentioned sequel to her Tantalize.
  • The Animorphs series
  • Chronus Chronicles by Anne Ursu
  • Doret says that she’s been told the Pendragon series apparently has a black girl protagonist, despite the white boy on the cover? I’ll have to investigate that–perhaps it’s alternating viewpoints, or perhaps she’s introduced at a later point in the series? I know there is a follow-up series once the main boy protag grows up, so perhaps she’s in that?
  • Devil’s Kiss, by Sarwat Chadda
  • Libyrinth, by Pearl North
  • The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
  • Sword and Wandering Warrior by Da Chen

Multicultural fantasy that never came to be, and I lament it

Books 7 and 8 of the Hallowmere series by Tiffany Trent, which was canceled at book 6. I was so looking forward to editing Mara’s story (former slave, probably the most interesting of the Hallowmere girls because of her backstory) in book 7 and Chumana’s story (Hopi girl who Mara was going to meet in her travels through the raths) in book 8.

And books to add to my TBR pile thanks to shweta-narayan

  • Across the Nightingale Floor and its sequels, by Lian Hearn. Japanese historical fantasy. I had a copy of this in Seattle, and I’m not sure where I put it. I think I must have lost it in the move to Utah.
  • Annals of the Western Shore series by Ursula K. LeGuin. I remember the controversy over this cover, too–originally when Gifts came out, they’d put a white kid on the cover, too, and given LeGuin’s long history of having the cover of Earthsea whitewashed, that was a pretty big fight, and the final book ended up with I believe an Indian or Pakistani boy on the cover instead.
  • Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I keep forgetting to read this one, though people keep recommending it to me. I even have a free copy from ALA a few years back.
  • The Two Pearls of Wisdom (or Dragoneye Reborn as it’s known in the US) by Alison Goodman. I’ve been meaning to pick this one up. The whole mythology is inspired by Asian culture (Japanese? I can’t remember which one).
  • Lavender-Green Magic, by Andre Norton.
  • A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith. (Is this YA?)
  • Stormwitch, by Susan Vaught
  • The Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson
  • A Girl Named Disaster, by Nancy Farmer
  • The Wizard series by Diane Duane
  • The Green Boy, by Susan Cooper
  • Jin Shei trilogy by Alma Alexander
  • The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, by Virginia Hamilton
  • Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed, by Virginia Hamilton
  • 47, by Walter Mosley
  • Pemba’s Song, by Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
  • The Icarus Girl, by Helen Oyeyemi
  • Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie
  • The Night Wanderer, by Drew Hayden Taylor

There are also books in which the ethnicity of the character is neutral/unclaimed, as in The Hunger Games, in which most of those who work in the Seam are dark-skinned, but of an unspecified ethnic origin (Mitali Perkins discussed this on her blog a while back), so I’m not counting it on this list but it’s still a great book.

As you can see, there are some really great books out there already, but the list is still pretty short. Can you guys help me add to it? Especially the TBR pile, though I know I’m also forgetting books that I’ve read that I just don’t have copies of. What am I missing?

Upcoming books by friends

- Stacy 1 Comment

For those of you who are RPG players or DMs, here’s a book for you. Back in April, I got the chance to line edit/copyedit X-treme Dungeon Mastery, a new book by bestselling fantasy author Tracy Hickman and his son, who is a magician in his own right, Curtis Hickman, and illustrated by Howard Tayler. It’s now available for pre-orders through the Tayler Corp. If you are familiar with Howard Tayler’s excellent webcomic Schlock Mercenary (and the books they publish from that content), you’ll already know about it. For those of you who don’t know the Taylers, well, you should.

The book is a hilarious and enlightening look at how to make your game nights more entertaining and fun for both the dungeon master and your players–including how to wow your players and bring the magic in your game to life with step-by-step instructions on a number of magic tricks. Howard’s excellent illustrations enliven the already-fun text. Here’s a taste of what you’ll learn, from the marketing copy:

Throw off your chains! Too long have your role-playing games been held in the bonds of substandard gamemasters, bound in needlessly complicated rule sets, and enslaved by players who will avoid doing anything unless it counts toward leveling up! It is time to take a stand!

Learn from the masters the ancient secrets of how to:

  • Become a certified XDM and impress dates (Do-it-yourself secret initiation rites included.)
  • Design epic adventures that tell stories.
  • Perform magical feats to amaze your players, and even make them disappear!
  • Employ actual combustion (yes, “fire,” and yes, it’s dangerous) to enhance your games!
  • Hijack any game as a player, and deal with any player revolution as an XDM!

God does not play dice with the universe. We do.

______________________________________

Also, for those of you who are writers, you’ll be interested to know that editor Cheryl Klein–she of the Arthur Levine imprint at Scholastic, who keeps an informative blog and whose writing advice is excellent–has announced that she’s going to collect her many helpful speeches into a book. She’s decided to self-publish this book (remember how we talked about how some projects lend themselves well to self-publishing?) and is raising the money for the initial print run through Kickstart.com to make sure she has enough interest to pay for the project. I’m sure there are enough people in this world who would love to have a copy of her wisdom in a collected form (especially talks that have not been shared on her website), so if you’re interested in getting a copy of the book or just want to support the project, wander on over to Cheryl’s post explaining the details, and she’ll link you to her project page.

______________________________________

I’m forgetting someone. There was someone else’s book I wanted to plug here, but it’ll have to wait for another post when I remember. Instead, I will just tell you that I’m in the middle of (finally) reading The Hunger Games, and BOY is it good. I bought the book way back in February or March, but was so busy I hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. Then I took it to the seminar I taught in March to use as an example of a great opening line (I had gotten that far), and then when the seminar was over, I brought my big tote bag of books home but never got around to putting the books back on the shelves. I spent most of May and June wondering if I’d dreamed buying the book! Thankfully–because I was in the bookstore mulling over whether to buy it a week before–I’d put the book down to wait for the King’s English’s sale a few days later and then never made it back up to Salt Lake to buy it, because in preparing for my seminar last week I finally found the book at the bottom of that tote bag from March.

Whew! So now I’m reading it, and though I’ll save a real review until after I’ve actually finished it, I just have to say–she already had me tearing up in the first three chapters! It’s that good.