Biddy and Quincy have just turned 18 and graduated from their high school’s Special Education program. Their counselor has arranged for them to live together, with Biddy helping Elizabeth, an older woman with a neurological disorder, and Quincy working as…
Category: Multicultural
The Poetic Voice of Jacqueline Woodson
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulson Books) $16.99 Sometimes we pick up a book because we know the voice will be poetry. That’s always the case with novels written by Jacqueline Woodson. Through poetic snapshots in Brown Girl…
IBBY Honors Inclusion of all Voices in Books From Around the World
The International Board of Books for Young People – IBBY – held their international congress this month in Mexico City. IBBY introduced their 2014 Honour List, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books honouring writers, illustrators and translators from…
COLORS OF THE WIND by J.L.Powers
COLORS OF THE WIND is a picture-book biography with startling paintings that open your eyes and a true story about an Olympic champion runner and award-winning artist who is blind: George Mendoza. The author of this book, J.L. Powers, tells…
Bird: An Interview with Crystal Chan
“Grandpa stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John. His name was John until Grandpa said he looked more like a Bird with the way he kept jumping off things, and the name stuck. Bird’s thick, black hair poked…
YES! WE ARE LATINOS
YES! WE ARE LATINOS By Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy, pictures by David Diaz Voices! Power and pride singing in this book is felt in each of the thirteen distinctive narrative poems. Each poem is told in the…
Making the Invisible Visible: Estela Bernal’s Can You See Me Now?
I met Estela Bernal at a novel revision workshop led by the wise and generous Barbara Seuling. Estela and I shared a room and she told me about her work rescuing abused animals and educating people about responsible pet ownership.…
Three Middle Grade Titles from Indie Publishing Pioneer Zetta Elliott
Zetta Elliott burst onto the children’s publishing scene with a Lee & Low New Voices Award and the acclaimed 2008 picture book for older readers Bird, the moving story of a boy’s close relationship with his troubled older brother. Since…
The Poet Upstairs by Judith Ortiz Cofer
The theme that poetry is magic is readily captured in the glorious illustrations by painter Oscar Ortiz, who manages to synthesize the natural environment of a tropical island and the stern reality of urban brick and mortar. (The book won…
A Child on Her Own: Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Sugar
A poet and author of fiction for adults, Jewell Parker Rhodes turned to writing for children with the highly acclaimed Ninth Ward, the story of an 11-year-old girl whose ailing grandmother—and her grandmother’s stories—help her to survive Hurricane Katrina in…