Book of the Week: Zero Tolerance

Zero Tolerance

by Claudia Mills

Published by Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013
240 pages
ISBN: 978-0374333126

Ages 9-12


Sierra Shepard is an honor student who has always followed the rules. So on the day she accidentally brings her mother's lunch to school, she turns it in as soon as she discovers the paring knife inside. But her middle school has a zero tolerance policy on weapons and misbehavior. Her principal, told of the incident just as he’s proudly touting the policy and its many positive results to a colleague from another school, refuses to consider the circumstance. To her dismay, Sierra faces in-school suspension, to be followed by a mandatory expulsion hearing. She’s now spending her days among kids she’s always judged harshly for getting in trouble. To her surprise, she discovers that, like hers, their stories are not always a simple case of right versus wrong. In the meantime, the media has latched onto Sierra’s plight thanks to her father, a high-powered attorney who is furious about what’s happened. Sierra’s situation is affecting every aspect of her life, and the way she sees everything and everyone is changing. Claudia Mills excels at revealing the complexity of both child and adult characters and their relationships in a novel that upper elementary and early middle school students will be eager to discuss: Could something like this happen at their school? (MS) ©2013 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: The Problem with Being Slightly Heroic

The Problem with Being Slightly Heroic

by Uma Krishnaswami
Illustrated by Abigail Halpin

Published by Atheneum, 2013
288 pages
ISBN: 9781442423282

Ages 7-10


After meeting her idol, Bollywood star Dolly Singh, in The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (Atheneum, 2011), young Dini is now caught up in the whirlwind that is life whenever Dolly is around. Dolly has come to the United States for a premier of her latest film as part of an international festival at the Smithsonian. Dini, visiting Baltimore and her best friend, Maddie, with her father while her medical mom remains in the Indian village of Swampnagiri, is determined to help Dolly have everything she needs to make the premier perfect. So she’s working with Maddie on a special dance, trying to get a baker to make the rose petal cake (what would the premier be without one?), and then there’s the matter of finding an elephant (ditto), not to mention worrying over the mystery of Dolly’s missing passport. Uma Krishnaswami’s second breezy, buoyant novel about Dini and Dolly and friends and family has no shortage of coincidences, which means, of course, everything will work out in the end. But getting there is such a pleasure. Krishnaswami’s fresh, lively writing is full of rich language and word play and an irresistible sense of fun. A great read-aloud choice, this novel will delight listeners and independent readers alike. (MS) ©2013 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Etched in Clay

Etched in Clay: 

The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet

by Andrea Cheng

Published by Lee and Low, 2013
160 pages
ISBN: 978-1600604515

Age 11 and older


Andrea Cheng examines the life of Dave the Potter (who took the name David Drake after the Civil War ended) through a verse novel that tells his powerful, poignant story of endurance, artistry, and rebellion. Cheng’s poems reveal Dave’s hunger for words and learning and self-expression, and his pain of living in slavery. He was trained by and worked for Pottersville Stoneware in Edgefield, South Carolina, where founder Abner Landrum developed unique glazes. Dave later worked for Landrum’s brother and nephew, Lewis Miles, a kind man who nonetheless did not think to free Dave. Dave endured multiple, lifelong separations from people he loved: his first wife, Eliza; his second wife, Lydia; and Lydia’s two sons, whom he had taught to read. The poems are in the voices of these and other individual’s, all listed in a cast of characters near the beginning of the volume. Cheng incorporates some of the inscriptions Dave carved into his pots into her poems, and the novel as a whole gives a context for those words, showing them as a form of rebellion. Lovely, occasional black-and-white woodcut prints punctuate a work that includes back matter with more information on Dave and his poems and pottery in Edgefield, South Carolina. Cheng talks about her interest in Dave in an author’s note that precedes her list of sources. (MS) ©2013 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

From the CCBC Archives: The First Librarian

Meet Bonnie Stecher. She was the Cooperative Children's Book Center's first official librarian, and she worked at the Center from June 1964 until June 1965.  Mrs. Stecher, as she was always called back then, accomplished a lot in her one-year tenure at the CCBC. She made numerous contacts with children's book publishers to assure that the CCBC would receive review copies (there were 88 publishers included on her 1964-65 checklist). She responded to correspondence related to donations for the CCBC's Historical Collection. And she started compiling the bibliographies of recommended books that the CCBC is still known for today.

But perhaps her most lasting accomplishment was her compilation of Newbery and Caldecott winners and honor books. In the age of easy access to this sort of information via the internet, it's hard to imagine a time that there was no comprehensive list of Newbery and Caldecott Award winners. But even ALA didn't have such a list. In fact, in the CCBC files is a copy of a letter from Mildred Batchelder herself (the Executive Secretary of ALA's Children's Services Division), thanking Mrs. Stecher for sending her the list of award winners and runners-up. In her letter, Miss Batchelder brainstorms some possible ways for ALA to disseminate the list -- pending Mrs. Stecher's permission, of course.

Her list eventually saw publication as part of Lee Kingman's Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books, 1956-1965 published by the Horn Book, where it was credited to Bonita E. Stecher. Over the years, as the list has been updated, the credit was dropped, and few people know or even think about where it came from.  But here at the CCBC, we haven't forgotten what Mrs. Stecher accomplished. In fact, those of us who started out here as student reference assistants in the 1970s-1980s will remember updating the original list each year after the ALA awards were announced, and sending out copies whenever anyone requested one (and provided us with a self-addressed stamped envelope).

I'll leave you with this last photo of Bonnie Stecher, working with the CCBC collection back when the library was located in the dome of the State Capitol Building. She looks so deep in thought that perhaps she is trying to track down those missing honor books from the first few years of the Newbery Medal's existence.  The CCBC librarians no longer wear pearls and heels to work but we are no less dedicated providing information about children's and young adult literature to those who request it.

We still have those wooden benches -- and that book truck!

Ambassador Myers on the State of Multicultural Publishing

Our national children's book ambassador, Walter Dean Myers, has been a fierce advocate for equality and diversity in children's book publishing throughout his career.  He had this to say about the issue we have been discussing the past few weeks:

I have changed my notion of the obligation of the book publishing industry. While it does have the responsibility to avoid the publishing of negative images of any people, I no longer feel that the industry has any more obligation to me, to my people, to my children, than does, say, a fast-food chain. It's clear to me that if any race, any religious or social group, elects to place its cultural needs in the hands of the profit makers then it had better be prepared for the inevitable disappointments.

These words first  appeared in an editorial Mr. Myers wrote for the New York Times back in 1987. You read that right -- 1987.  For more than 25 years, we have been having this same conversation and nothing seems to really change. The entire essay, "I Actually Thought We Would Revolutionize the Industry," is well worth reading, and still sadly relevant. 

Book of the Week: Inside Outside

Inside Outside

by Lizi Boyd

Published by Chronicle, 2013
40 pages
ISBN: 9781452106441

Ages 2-5


A child engages in seasonal and creative activities both inside and outside in a wonderful, wordless picture book in which each scene foreshadows things to come. The first full-page spread shows the child inside, getting ready to plant seeds in pots. Winter coat and scarf hang on the hook near the door; winter boots can be found midst the jumble of toys on the floor. Through the die-cut windows snowmen peek in. A turn of the page finds the child outside with the snowmen while the windows now frame a picture on the inside wall from the preceding page. Winter turns to spring then summer then fall in Lizi Boyd’s delightful offering that encourages prediction and inspires storytelling. It’s a pleasure to look for the various creatures that recur in every scene (dog, cat, two mice, and a turtle, for a start) and to follow the busy child’s myriad activities from one scene and season to the next. The whimsically detailed gouache illustrations were rendered on brown kraft paper, adding immense warmth to the already cozy scenes. (MS) ©2013 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

By and About

Last week I posted mid-year statistics about the multicultural landscape in children's book publishing so far in 2013.  Using the review copies in our Current Collection I counted the number of books we've received to date (1509) with human characters (1103) as opposed to animal characters or about non-human topics (326), and found that 78.3% are about human beings.  Of the 1103 books about people, 124 (or 10.4%) of these were about people of color.

When I did the count last week, I didn't take authorship into account. But one of the things we do keep track of here at the CCBC is just that -- the number of books written and/or illustrated by people of color. We first began documenting the number of books by African-American authors and illustrators since 1985 when CCBC Director Ginny Moore Kruse served on the Coretta Scott King Award Committee, and was stunned to see that there were only 18 books by Black authors and illustrators published that year. We decided to keep track and put the statistic into print each year, and by 1994 we were also documenting the numbers for Asian/Asian-American, Latino, and Native American author/illustrators, as well.

No one will be surprised to learn that there are always more books about people of color than there are by people of color. But it may surprise you to know just how many -- at least so far in 2013.

15 of the 47 books received so far in 2013 by and about people of color

Of the 124 books documented in the first half of 2013 that are about human characters who are not white, 47 were written and/or illustrated by people of color. That means that just 37.9% of the books about people of color that we've received so far in 2013 were actually written and/or illustrated by people of color.

Published by Abrams, (c) 2013

And remember those animal characters who started this discussion? It turns out, people of color create their fair share of books with nonhuman characters, as well. In addition to the 47 books cited above, there were eight more books by authors/illustrators of color that I didn't count because they were about animal characters, from Monkey King to a frog who sings in Spanish. Most, like Duncan Tonatiuh's Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, are culturally specific.

So are authors who choose to portray characters as animals really avoiding race and ethnicity?  And, if they are, what does it say about us as a nation if we assume our children will have an easier time identifying with a dinosaur than they will with a human child of another race?