Jarod Roselló: Tuesday, August 27th

The Harvey Awards, Dot Day, and a new nonfiction book for the young writers in your life. We’ve got all this and more. I’m Corrina Allen and this is All The Wonders This Week.

Joining me today to talk about all things exciting and new in the world of children’s literature is Jarod Roselló - a literacies researcher and creative writing professor at the University of South Florida. And author of graphic novels for children and adults, including the recently released (and amazing!) Red Panda & Moon Bear.

• The Harvey Awards are open for voting right now. Voting closes on September 10th, and winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on October 4th. You can apply at HarveyAwards.com and then just wait to be approved before you can cast your vote. 
• At the Disney fan expo, D23, Disney announced a new Phineas and Ferb movie, Candace Against the Universe, a movie set in the Monsters, Inc. universe called Monsters at Work. a live-action Ms. Marvel series, and a new unscripted, short-form Muppet show coming in 2020. Also  two new Star Wars projects they have planned - a live-action spin-off called The Mandalorian and an Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor back playing that role.
• Disney’s new streaming service, Disney Plus 
• Last week, Entertainment Weekly published an eye-opening article called “LGBTQ books are being censored in middle school. Authors are speaking out” where they interview various booksellers, publishers, authors about the kinds of “soft censorship” these stories are facing in some schools and the behind-the-scenes actions like pulling titles off of book fair shelves.
• Make sure you check out the “10 Back to School Books for Little Readers” and an upcoming craft featuring a school bus crayon box.

• NerdCamp Long Island registration is open. It takes place in Huntington, New York on Saturday, November 2nd.
• International Dot Day is coming up!  If you are not familiar, Dot Day is inspired by Peter Reynolds’ picture book The Dot and is a celebration of creativity and courage and collaboration where teachers and librarians across the globe read the book to their kids, do a Dot-inspired project, and sometimes connect with other classes. And even though Dot Day is one day, the celebration lasts the entire week. And you can get lots of inspiration and ideas from their website - thedotclub.org.
• The Small Press Expo is happening September 14th & 15th in Bethesda, Maryland. All the indie comics publishers will be there along with hundreds of creators selling their small press and self-published comics.

There is not much in the way of new movie releases for kids this week.  However….

TV Shows / Miniseries

• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance series is coming to Netflix on August 30th. And it’s a 10 series prequel to Jim Henson famous Dark Crystal movie from 1982.

Jarod

• Well, classes started yesterday for me, so I’m doing all my own assigned readings for now. For my grad fiction course, I’m reading Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Ghost Boys, and Carmen Maria Machado’s story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. And for my undergrad comics class, I’m reading the 2018 Best American Comics anthology, edited by Phoebe Gloeckner. I’m also reading this really interesting book on narrative structure and form called Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison.

Corrina

• This past week I read Hello, Door by Alastair Heim and illustrated by Alisa Coburn - which is a clever and cute homage to  Goldilocks and the Three Bears featuring a thieving fox. And my daughters and I are pages away from the climactic ending of  Bone Jack by Sara Crowe which is an eerie mystical horror middle grade set in - I think Cornwall, England - featuring an ancient Stag Chase.

Corrina

On my mind this week is a post that a school counselor I follow on Instagram shared about how back-to-school can be filled with anxiety for kids of all ages (and adults!) - even when it’s something you are looking forward to. And she had some really great tips like making and practicing a good-bye ritual, making a practice run, and reading about it to help process those feelings. And it was geared for primary kids having a rough time, but the advice I think is good for kids of all ages, so I’ll share a link to that so you can check it out.   

Jarod

A few days ago, there was an article, though really more of a hit piece, published about the partnership between We Need Diverse Books and the Scholastic Book Club and the curated list that appeared in one of the recent book club mailings. I don’t want to draw any attention to the publication or author of the piece, but it was an explicit attack on the idea of diversity. The author clearly hadn’t read any of the books, but was offended by their audacity to exist and show the complexity and nuance of the lives of children. It’s easy, when you’re talking to your friends and fellow authors and teachers, to believe that we’ve gotten to a place where we can agree on the inherent worth of diversity, especially in children’s literature, and the necessity to engage with difference and difficult stories. But there are still people (who can get published) calling for an end to diversity because it challenges their worldview and poses a threat to their power and dominance. As someone who writes stories about Latinx characters, about the borderlands between cultures, histories, and languages, I am again reminded that those stories aren’t always welcome by all people. Progress is not always linear. There’s no quick solution, we just have to continue to insist that our voices be heard, that spaces be made.