The following is excerpted from the
brief commentary on 2015 children's and young adult books that will appear in CCBC Choices 2016, our annual best-of-the-year list.
The CCBC Choices 2016 booklet
will be available after March 5. ( How
to get a copy of CCBC Choices 2016).
Throughout the year as we read, we try to observe trends, themes, welcome surprises, and sometimes simple coincidences
among the books published for children and teens. In 2015, one of the first
things we couldn’t help but note as books came into the CCBC was the continued
explosion in young adult fiction. Our shelves are still groaning under the
weight of all that teen drama.
Among all those books were some themes
and common threads. This included quite a few titles about teens with mental
illness, ranging from anxiety to OCD to depression to schizophrenia, among them
the National Book Award-winning Challenger Deep. This was also the year of the road trip in young adult literature. It
was a device used with varying degrees of success, with The Porcupine of Truth among our favorites.
We also continue to see books that blur
the lines between young adult and new adult. Taking Hold, which concludes Francisco Jiménez’s memoir cycle, follows him through
graduate school at Columbia. The intriguing graphic novel Sculptor is about a fine artist in New York
City. Sculptor is one of the several books we’ve
included in Choices in recent years in which not only
the audience but the publisher (in this case, First Second) is a crossover,
with titles that are not always distinctly either young adult or adult.
There were a number of fine works of
fiction for children, including one that broke new ground: the blithe and
tender George, about a transgender child. It's among a few such titles, and has solid elementary-age appeal. Gender
and sexuality were also given groundbreaking treatment for children in the
outstanding informational book Sex Is a Funny Word.
The picture books we found most
arresting were those tackling difficult topics with incredible honesty and
sensitivity. The extraordinary Two White Rabbits speaks in the
voice of a child describing things she sees on a journey with her father. Only
the essential illustrations reveal they are refugees fleeing toward the U.S. /
Mexico border. The moving Mama’s Nightingale is in the voice
of a young girl whose mother is in prison awaiting a deportation hearing. And
reassuring Yard Sale speaks in the voice of child whose
family is having to sell many of their belongings.
Funny Bones, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award, leads us into what we consider the real
story when it comes to children’s and young adult literature in 2015: increased
focus on and discussion about multicultural literature. Some would say this
began in 2014, with the launch of the We Need Diverse Books initiative, and
that group’s work is welcome and critical. But many people of color and
First/Native Nations have been drawing attention to issues of race and racism
in children’s literature for years, as well as to the need for more books by
authors and artists of color and First/Native Nations.
The 2015 ALA children’s and young adult
literature awards, recognizing books published in 2014, were notable and
invigorating regarding the diversity represented in choices across the awards
(rather than seeing diversity only in awards whose purpose is to recognize
books by authors and artist of color and First/Native Nations). That excitement
continued with the recent announcement of the 2016 ALA awards, for books
published in 2015, which reflect even greater racial and cultural diversity.
The choice of Last Stop on Market Street, a picture book
(picture book!), for the Newbery Award, written by a Latino author with an
African American protagonist and illustrator (it also received a Caldecott Award honor citation for the art), was as deserving and welcome as the choice of Crossover last year. But the good news didn’t
stop with the Newbery. Across the ALA awards, this year’s list of winners and
honor books is one that reflects and speaks to multiple dimensions of the
identity experience.
In the year between these two award
announcements, a lot was happening in children’s and young adult literature and
in our nation with regard to race and racism. It’s been a hard year in so many
ways. Perhaps no book captures some of this agony as well as All American Boys, a
groundbreaking look at racism, police violence, and white privilege.
Late in the year, a lot of attention in
the children’s and young adult literature world focused on the depiction of
enslavement in the picture book A
Fine Dessert. There was also conversation about references to American
Indians in the historical novel The
Hired Girl. Those discussions
were hard, painful, and honest in ways that weren’t always easy to read. They
revealed not only how far we’ve come, but how far we have to go in our field in
understanding racism and working to challenge it. Yes, what’s in a book
matters. Of course it does.
Increased
diversity of representation within and across racial and cultural experiences
in literature for youth, and indeed across the human experience, is not an
option, it’s essential. So, too, is critical thinking in how such books are
made. Children and teens deserve no less.
