You Think You Know Children's Books?

Babe the Blue Ox

Last month the Friends of the CCBC hosted our first annual children's literature trivia contest, CCBC Bowl. Over a hundred children's literature aficionados participated, competing in teams of ten to win the coveted Babe the Blue Ox trophy. (Our University of Wisconsin football team competes each year against the University of Minnesota for Paul Bunyan's axe, so we thought it would be appropriate for our teams to compete for Paul Bunyan's ox.)

Quiz Master Kevin Henkes went through three rounds of ten questions. By the end of the evening the team that called themselves Wild Things were the victors, answering 22 of 30 questions correctly.

Kevin Henkes hands the trophy to the Wild Things team

 

The CCBC librarians made up the questions, and they were challenging. There were two questions that flummoxed everyone. Do you know the answers to either of these?

Round Two, Question Six:

What is unusual about this picture from Song and Dance Man, the 1989 Caldecott winner by Stephen Gammell?

Round Two, Question Nine:

 What was Lois Ehlert's first published picture book that she both wrote and illustrated? 

 Do you know the answer to either of these questions without looking them up?   Let us know! (And remember, you have 90 seconds.)

CCBC librarian Emily Townsend, Timekeeper

All photos (c) J. Matzner

Same Old Story: The Stats on Multicultural Literature

It seems every 3-5 years, someone in the press discovers the statistics the CCBC keeps on multicultural literature, and publishes an article about it. This first happened back in 1989 when USA Today did a story on how difficult it was for African-American parents to find books for their children with characters who looked like them. It was accompanied by a nifty little graph that showed the first four years of our statistics, numbers we started documenting in 1985.

USA Today, 1989

This year on March 15 there were two terrific op ed pieces in the New York Times, one by Walter Dean Myers and one by his son, Christopher Myers, about the sad state of African-American children's literature, and the CCBC stats were again quoted.  This has led to a whole new cycle of reporting. Even Entertainment Weekly did a two-page spread called Kid's Lit Primary Color: White. Their accompanying graphic even looks a bit like the original 1989 illustration from USA Today. Not surprising since the story is essentially the same one.

Entertainment Weekly, 2014

These stories always generate a lot of passionate discussion for a month or so. Then things die down and nothing changes. New books flow into the CCBC every day, and we continue to count and document the books by and about people of color. The numbers have stagnated for the past couple of decades -- we update the statistics on our web site every year. Many people know to look for them there. Others will stumble across them for the very first time and, in a few years, there will be another story. Maybe next time, it will be a different one.

The CCBC at 50

Elizabeth Burr (right) oversees CCBC cataloging

When the CCBC first opened its doors just over fifty years ago, founder Elizabeth Burr would never have imagined a time when we would be blogging about books. But I hope she imagined that we would still be here five decades later, still going strong and still sharing a passion for children's books. (Young adult books, too!)

The CCBC has been much in the news lately due to a recent NPR report that used our multicultural literature statistics. We've had quite a few email messages and phone calls as a result -- and, of course, this all happened while we were all away attending the annual conference of the American Library Association. Over the next week or so we'll continue the discussion here on our new blog in order to provide some context for the statistics and discuss the sorts of issues they bring up. We welcome your own observations and questions.