BE and WNDB and BEA 2015 (Guest Blog)

By DeeAnn Veeder

So this happened. Just a couple of weeks ago. At Book Expo America 2015 (BEA) in New York City, at the Javits Center. I was attending the conference with the newest member of our BooksEndependent (BE) team, Samuel E. Woods-Corr, our Digital Marketing Administrator. This was the first opportunity we’d had to connect as a team, and I became more and more impressed with this young man over those two days. He is enthusiastic, smart, and charismatic. He is knowledgeable and confident in areas that complement my ability to work a typewriter. He’s a super people person, asks questions easily and sees the big picture fast.

This particular incident happened when we were each attending separate seminars. Before the session started, Sam was standing off to the side talking to David Parker, author of The More You Do, The Better You Feel, when a woman approached Sam and asked if he could turn the air conditioning down. Now why did she ask Sam to do that? Was it the strong feeling of capability that Sam exudes? Was it his friendly demeanor, his killer smile, his light blue polo shirt? Was he standing next to the thermostat? Or was he the only black guy in the room? Mr. Parker apologized to Sam on behalf of all white people. Sam related this story to me in good humor, but, really…ouch.

Ironically, the seminar I attended was WNDB: Be the Change You Want to See. WNDB (We Need Diverse Books) was a campaign conceived last year in response to an oversight of BookCon’s organizers; diverse authors were absent from their Blockbuster Reads panel, which was all white authors and one cat. The people in charge stretched right on past and over people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ people to a cat. Grumpy Cat. I love cats but, come on, is it even a calico cat?

It’s tremendously gratifying and exciting to see how fast WNDB has grown in a year. Their website http://weneeddiversebooks.org/ is now a fantastic resource, and there are some seriously talented, prolific, award-winning authors involved in every facet of the organization.

Ellen Oh, one of WNDB’s founders, was the moderator of this conference and on the panel were Lamar Giles, Linda Sue Park, Matt de la Pena, and Tim Federle. This was by far the most entertaining, exciting, and important panel at the show. The discussion was animated, brilliantly insightful and relevant. They talked about the groundbreaking WNDB Publishing Internship Program headed by Linda Sue Park. They presented WNDB in the Classroom, and appealed to the gatekeepers, the teachers and librarians, to understand how vital it is to bring diverse books to every school and library in this country.

Now back to Sam’s seminar, Public Libraries, the Publishers’ Friend in the Digital Age; the white lady who thought Sam was a janitor could very well be one of those gatekeepers, a librarian. I can only hope that she attends WNDB’s conference next year. Or better yet, maybe she heard about them this year and is reading up on their mission, their worthy efforts; maybe she’s perusing their Summer Reading Series right now; maybe she’s checking out their Booktalking Kit. Maybe she’s ordering all kinds of diverse books so she can avoid hurting someone else’s feelings in the future.

posted by Valerie C. Woods

on June, 17

The post BE and WNDB and BEA 2015 (Guest Blog) appeared first on Valerie C. Woods.

Too Ethnic? (Guest Blog)

The Armchair Activist
By DeeAnn Veeder

When I was a kid, I had a dream of having a child of every race, a noble dream for a young blonde child; I thought if families were made up of every race, there wouldn’t be hatred or prejudice, and I would start with my own. Realistically, though, how many children would that be? And, well, so many men, so little time. I only made it as far afield as Italians, then I married a Jew and had two white children. Fifteen years later, I notice I’m living in a predominantly white small town. But I am not a racist. Right?

My daughter’s first friends here in first grade were a ginger-haired boy, a white girl and a black boy. I became the most friendly with the white girl’s mother and the ginger-haired boy’s parents. My son’s first friends here were an East Indian girl and a Chinese girl. But it’s not like he chose these friends; he was only six months old. The girls’ parents were my friends, and they were all white. Still, I am not a racist. Right?

My kids’ pediatrician is a black woman. My daughter’s basketball coach was a black man. Her track coach was a black woman. Her favorite teacher and mentor was an Asian man.

Also once I walked into the room where my son was engrossed in a television show, which I watched with him for a few minutes; it was a kid detective show with three young sleuths, a white boy, a white girl and a black girl. I asked him which one found the clue, and he said the one in the skirt, which was the black girl. Yes! I happily patted myself on the back; my son doesn’t see color!

Wow, when did I get a clue anyway?

It might have started that day I took the review copy of an old friend’s new book to our village bookstore to ask if they would carry it. It was with speechless surprise a week later that I carried that book back home with me after being told by the clerk it was too ‘ethnic’ for them to sell in their store. (See? I have a black friend.)

Too ethnic? What? This clerk was a retired teacher from our middle school! Too ethnic? We are all ‘ethnic’ or none of us is. Wait a minute, how ignorant, how white, how closed-minded is this town, anyway? I didn’t say those things, I barely thought them; I was embarrassed, shocked, abashed that I dared to ask such a favor at a bookstore I had been frequenting for fifteen years. There followed dismay, sorrow, and eventual anger.

The book? Katrin’s Chronicles: The Canon of Jacqueléne Dyanne, Vol. 1 by Valerie C. Woods.

One of the things I absolutely love about Katrin’s Chronicles is that, for me, it transcends race. It’s about deductive reasoning, trusting your hidden powers, writing your story, 1968, South Side Chicago, sibling love, supportive family, independent and resourceful and good kids. It is a delightful book with wonderfully original characters that made me happy reading it. It’s the Nancy Drew mysteries I loved so well as a young girl, but with new, interesting, and intriguing characters. J. Dyanne is intense and Katrin is precocious, and they have adventures and solve mysteries and learn about their psychic gifts, and Katrin uses wonderfully big words telling us about it all. These young girls are defined through their intelligence, their adventures and their candor, and through their color.

Katrin’s Chronicles isn’t a book about being black, but it is important that these girls are black because there aren’t enough books like this. In fact, this is the first African American girl detective novel. It’s important that young black girls see themselves as the stars of the story. It’s important that young white girls see young black girls as the stars of the story.

It is necessary for books like Katrin’s Chronicles to be present in a town like this, in every town like this, in the bookstore, in the school library, in the public library and in classrooms, so that a book with a drawing of black kids on the cover, a book about two black sisters in an innocent tween mystery novel is not something out of the ordinary, something ‘ too ethnic’ to sell in 2014 in a small upstate New York town of predominantly white people.

It makes black people relatable to those white people who don’t have a black friend.

posted by Valerie C. Woods
on May, 14

Publisher’s Spotlight – J.M. Kay

The great thing about being a micro publisher is the joy of finding a piece of writing that stimulates your imagination, startles visions in your mind and stuns your heart with sparks of simple wonder. And then, you get to publish it!

The first I knew of J.M. Kay’s science fiction novel, Under the Shadow: Children of the First Star, Volume 1 was listening to Mr. Kay read aloud during an evening writer’s group. The language captured me with the delight of hearing an entirely new perspective on being lost in space. The protagonists, 13-year-olds, Jason and Daniel, have been accidently abducted by an alien being. With the travel sequence already underway and no means of reversing its course, the human boys are in need of space suits or they will not survive:

“Jason stepped onto the metal sheet, as curious as he was frightened as to how this was going to keep him alive. Almost instantaneously, Jason’s feet felt warm, like he’d dipped into a temperate bath. He looked down to discover that the flat sheet of solid metal had liquefied into a large blob, held together by surface tension. The fluid snaked its way up his body, conforming to his shape, but Jason felt no foreign material or any added weight.

Then without warning, the liquid metal poured into his mouth and down his throat. Jason gagged and flailed about as he felt the metal fill him from within. Though there was no heat scalding his innards, he was aware of the substance like an itch he had no power to scratch. The sensation intensified, and Jason clawed at his mouth to pry away the viscid metal. Just when the itch became intolerable, the sensation abated, leaving a dull heaviness he couldn’t describe.

A voice that sounded like rustling leaves spoke to Jason from within … There was a bizarre intelligence to the voice, and he knew as surely as his brain was hearing understandable words, his other organs, muscle and bone were being talked to in languages that they too could interpret.

“What do you need?” the voice asked, like a doctor examining a patient. He tried to answer, but was stopped by a gentle clutching of the substance on the exterior of his body. The answer instead emerged from his organs and blood, his sinew and bone, and deeper still to the elements and molecules that made these things: water, oxygen, proteins, enzymes, triglycerides, polypeptides, amino acids, metabolized energy … the essential needs of his existence emanated from him as an interlocking code of sensations, instructing the suit that now surrounded him inside and out, on how to keep him alive.”

I was hooked right then and there. And I’m looking forward to Volume II!

posted by Valerie C. Woods
on May, 06