Evening links.

• At the Brown Bookshelf: The Importance of Dreaming: Why Diversity Matters in Science Fiction and Fantasy. "As we approach February, inevitably children across the country will be introduced to the same ubiquitous fare that adults provide every year. We’ll fill their reading lists with realistic fiction, historical fiction and angst based nonfiction centered around race. But we won’t tell them they can aspire to slay dragons, build castles or venture out into the great unknown. They won’t travel to outer space or even abroad to a foreign land. When they are looking at the stars, we’ll quiz them on books that go no farther than their own environments. And when some children are dreaming of the future, we’ll be drilling into their heads only visions of a painful past."
• At the Daily Beast: Harper Lee Promises a New Novel—or Does She? "To anyone who has followed Lee’s story over the years, that sounds suspicious. She has always been fierce about her privacy, and late in life she’s become pretty litigious. But she’s never seemed anything less than cooly, superbly intelligent, and the notion that she just forgot about the existence of the earlier draft is ludicrous. If you have only ever written two books in your life—or, perhaps more accurately, two versions of the same book—the chance that you forgot one of them is beyond slim."
• At the Toast: Questions I Have About The Harper Lee Editor Interview. "HOO BOY, it is never a great sign when the answer to a direct, simple question is “THE VERSION I WAS TOLD.”  Because, right, “I’ve seen a 40 million figure”…your editor doesn’t just bung away your only other book into a safety deposit back for fifty years when your only novel is that huge of a bestseller? And then right after Harper’s sister/lawyer/advocate dies, this book just happens to turn up, and you just happen to set a release date? This feels like the publishing equivalent of “these jeans just fell off a truck, forty dollars, cash.”"
• At io9: Melanie's Marvelous Measles Is A Book For Children That You Can Buy.
• At Gawker: Confronting Grief in YA Literature: An Interview With Jason Reynolds. "I don't think I originally wanted to write YA. The genres, the categories—all that came a bit later. But I did write a few adult novels that were really, really bad. Before quitting writing altogether, Christopher Myers, Walter's son, basically propositioned me. He said, "Look man, my dad's getting older and who's going to write those books?" Chris is a writer so I'm thinking, "You're probably going to write those books." And he said, "Nah, it's probably going to be you.""
• At Cinema Blend: One Of The Most Important Lawsuits In The History Of Hollywood Is Quietly Happening. "Last February, author Tess Gerritsen received information that would, over the course of a year, fuel a monumental legal action against Warner Bros and New Line Cinema. That battle pertained to the record breaking, crowd pleasing, Academy Award-winning film Gravity - which, as it happens, shared its title and bits of space terror with a novel that existed over a decade before the film's genesis."
• At the ALA: 2015 Reading List announced: Year’s best in genre fiction for adult readers.
• At unadulterated.us: What just happened at the Newbery/Caldecott Awards. "Sharon Draper's books are read to tatters in the middle school classrooms I know best. Literally, the books are soft, their corners rubbed round. She speaks to so many kids, somehow letting them be cool and be moved at the same time. And she's won the Coretta Scott King Award FIVE TIMES. You bet your ass she gets a lifetime achievement award."
• At Laurel Snyder: WOMEN MAKE PICTURE BOOKS TOO: the 2014 edition… "How does it begin? I don’t know. Maybe there are more marketing dollars for dudes.  Maybe men are more inclined to illustrate.  Maybe we, the women who buy most of the books, simply adore dudes.  Maybe men are more inclined to make “Caldecott-style” illustrations. Or maybe MEN ARE SIMPLY BETTER AT ART THAN WOMEN AND I AM WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER SAID ON THE MATTER."
• At Lee & Low: ANNOUNCING THE 2015 NEW VISIONS AWARD FINALISTS! "[W]e established the New Visions Award in 2012 to discover and develop new writers—writers who have not yet found an agent, writers who have never been published before in the middle grade or young adult categories (even as self-published authors)."