Morning Links: June 27

Infographic citation: Huyck, David and Sarah Park Dahlen. (2019 June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, a…

Infographic citation: Huyck, David and Sarah Park Dahlen. (2019 June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline Tyner, with statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/.

Censorship & Book Challenges

  • At NPR Illinois: Lawmakers To Question Officials About Removing Hundreds of Books From A Prison Library. “Most of the removed books deal with race, some are about the Holocaust, and others are children’s books about growing up with an incarcerated parent.“

  • At NPR: Arizona Prisons Lift Ban On Book About Mass Incarceration. “An uproar over the ban of Chokehold: Policing Black Men, including threats of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, prompted Arizona prison officials to review a publication blacklist and reverse suspending the book.“ This one’s got a few links about other related incidents—if you’re not up on censorship in prisons, this would be a decent place to start your rabbitholing.

  • At the Portland Press Herald: Gay-themed books fuel fight over free speech at small-town library in Maine. “The controversy began last fall when local pastors challenged the inclusion of two books with gay themes in a display of frequently banned books. Tensions bubbled up again this spring when the interim town manager asked if the library had a policy for book displays and, in doing so, questioned whether librarians were making political statements with their displays on “‘town time and the town’s dime.”“

Publishing

  • At sarahpark.com: Picture This: Diversity in Children’s Books 2018 Infographic. “One important distinction between the 2015 and 2018 infographics is that we made a deliberate decision to crack a section of the children’s mirrors to indicate what Debbie Reese calls “funhouse mirrors” and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas calls “distorted funhouse mirrors of the self.” Children’s literature continues to misrepresent underrepresented communities, and we wanted this infographic to show not just the low quantity of existing literature, but also the inaccuracy and uneven quality of some of those books.“

Booklists

Here For It

Book Awards

A/V