I made this in case it’s soothing or comforting or just a break from the day to day during this time to hear I Can Write the World. Sending you love and wishes for safety and health in this time.
Tag: Kid Lit
Happy Pub Day to I Can Write the World
Happy publication day to us!
I’ve thought for months about how to best commemorate this day. I’ve been posting and talking and writing and talking about I Can Write the World since last year, so it’s hard to believe that the rest of the world will have access to my labor of love starting today.
It might surprise you that I never thought I’d write a children’s book, let alone a series. Many of you know that I had a childhood that made me grown in many ways before my time, just like a lot of little Black girls who have our innocence taken or presumed to be a non-entity. But when Six Foot Press’ publisher, Chul R. Kim, asked if I had a children’s book to write, Ava Murray arrived fully formed — a curious girl with incredible storytellers and justice warriors as her namesake in the brilliant storyteller Ava DuVernay and Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, the poet, scholar and legal pioneer who broken barriers even while Murray struggled with gender dysmorphia.
I was raised in the Bronx, an underdog borough often defined — like Black women — by lack, poverty and everything that it is not. But just like I always sought out Black women role models and lighthouses of beauty and class, I have always seen the best of the Bronx even when I struggled within it because of poverty. Some people see a place that has been neglected because of the Latinx and Black people, largely immigrants, who are stuck or striving; people for whom success would mean being able to leave for a less abandoned, more expensive, whiter place. But I missed the Bronx every single time I left, even though I was in beautiful elite spaces that were supposed to be better for me, were supposed to be indicators I was moving up.
This is what home is: It is the place where you are most yourself, where you can feel yourself becoming more of your dreams by the minute, regardless of what you or others may see right before you.
This is what I loved about my girl Ava as soon as she arrived: She came asking questions about the media she absorbed. She is far less shy than I was, with a parent that is more present, more receptive, more attentive, as so many Black mothers and maternal figures are.
Why, she wonders, is a little girl getting arrested for tagging outside when the murals and graffiti around the poor neighborhoods — which, by the way, have become a global force and industry — actually feel like they make it easier to see the beauty there? As adults, we can say and observe that this is heavy for little kids to encounter, but my answer to that is that we already see that they are witnessing this world of criminalizing Black and Brown children. Not just in the Bronx, but everywhere where teachers tell me 7-year-olds have to report to court monthly to talk to strangers to justify their living here in the U.S. Of course, too, at our borders, where toddlers cry unattended, may have to sleep on warehouse floors, may not be allowed to bathe.
I had the great privilege of being at Essence Festival this weekend and hearing Michelle Obama talk about the kind of world we want our children to inherit, to live in. I am not yet a parent, but I know that I want our babies to grow up in a world where they know that their voices are important. That they can write their stories. That they can write the world. Not only can they write their world; in order for the world to be the best it can be, for the world to be hold, they must.
I say happy publication day to us because any book’s publication day is the representation of the work of dozens of people. Thank you for being in partnership with me as I seek to tell stories for young readers. This book is for you. Thank you to Charly Palmer, the gifted illustrator who so thoughtfully crafted the beauty of Ava’s world. Thank you to Six Foot Press and Serendipity Literary Agency for all of the support. Thank you to everyone at Ingram for your encouragement. To my librarian, teacher and writer friend communities — Thank you for understanding the vision and helping me share it widely. I hope this book is as meaningful to you as it has been to me.
I shared this on social media, but during PrideFest/KidFest, a young girl around Ava’s age with barrettes in her hair held the book and lovingly gazed at it and even in the chaotic craziness around us, I could see that small flicker of recognition that you get when you see yourself. And she said, “She looks like me.” And that to me is everything. That is the inspiration for this book, and the next, and the next.
You can buy the book on Indie Bound, Barnes and Noble or Amazon. Please review this book on Amazon and Goodreads please!
I Can Write the World at ALA 2019
Charly Palmer, the wonderful illustrator for I Can Write the World with me at the Ingram Signing Table
We were out of books within 30 minutes – Librarians are incredible!
Sandra held us down when she volunteered to moderate us – Thank you!
I can’t believe my baby is in the world and being received with such love
Chul R. Kim, Publisher of Six Foot Press, with Charly Palmer
Jamia, my hero, & me & Ava
Alison Miner, my Emma classmate & rock star
I had a whirlwind weekend launching I Can Write the World at the American Library Association Conference in D.C. Librarians, teachers and others were so receptive to the book that I was the first author in my cohorts to run out of books both on Saturday night at a lovely Ingram reception at Spire and on Sunday afternoon after a great panel discussing the importance of representation in Children’s books. I even got to see a former library professor who popped up in the signing line (thanks for coming by, Stan!).
The most common question librarians had is one that most people ask me, which is “What is this book about?” This comes up right after they say, “Wow, the book is so beautiful!” Which makes my heart sing.
The answer is that I Can Write the World is about 8-year old Ava Murray, who lives in the South Bronx. She is named after the brilliant filmmaker Ava DuVernay and the incredible legal scholar, Episcopalian priest & poet Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, who created the legal precedent known as Jane Crow and, were the world ready for her in her time, might have had a much easier time accepting what we would call her trans identity in this time.
In I Can Write the World, Ava notices the beauty of the Bronx that she knows and loves is at odds with how journalists often depict her world. On the news, a little girl about her age is fined for tagging, which confuses Ava because she sees the colorful murals around her as making the city more beautiful. Her mother, Kim, explains that journalists are like the window frame around their living room window and they shape what we see when we look out of it. Ava decides that she wants to become a journalist so that she can be just like them and shape the world they see.
The first book in the series has Ava exploring more of hip hop culture and how it came to be through a prose poem. I’m honored to say that one of my writing heroines Jacqueline Woodson has called I Can Write the World, “Lovely and timely.” I hope you will find it to be the same. Thank you so much to everyone who has pre-ordered and shared your thoughts with me about the book. I’d be so grateful if you could also write reviews and spread the word. You can find the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and several other outlets.
Next stops for I Can Write the World signings are the Children’s Institute (Ci7) & PrideFest on Sunday — which includes a book giveaway for the first 100 kids.
My new children’s book series: I Can Write the World
I am just settling back into being home after a quick, amazing trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair – one of the world’s largest international fairs for children’s books – where I discussed the children’s book series I’ve been working on over the past year, I Can Write the World. I was in Bologna as part of a “Black Books Matter” panel meant to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Coretta Scott King Awards.
I’m delighted to share the cover and one of my favorite images from award-winning artist Charly Palmer from the book, which is the first publication of Six Foot Press, coming June 15th. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon .
I Can Write the World is the story of an 8-year-old Bronx girl named Ava Murray, named for the trailblazers Ava DuVernay and Rev. Pauli Murray (two women who have changed the course of history by uncovering stories with beauty that might otherwise remain lost, hidden or forgotten) who decides to become a journalist after seeing a different version of her neighborhood on television than the one she normally experiences.
I originally wrote a book that was for older kids without knowing it — my default is always to write more complex stories because even the lives of our children are, unfortunately, more nuanced than we might prefer. Carla Precht, the Executive Director of the Bronx Children’s Museum, and her team were instrumental in offering me feedback of child development experts who liked the narrative but thought it might be geared toward older readers in its previous iteration. So inspired by the likes of Jacqueline Woodson and Elizabeth Acevedo, I revisited my original writing love, poetry and wrote it as a picture book in verse. I felt like the result was much closer to my heart. I hope you will sense that too.
I recently went to a workshop for storytellers and educators at the Caribbean Cultural Center and African Diaspora Institute where Juliet Gray, a phenomenal educator and storyteller, shared with us that the average Black six year old child enters elementary school with around 3,000 words, which her white peer is likely to have 20,000. That astounding figure has stuck with me, because it only reinforces how important a book like I Can Write the World is — to give young readers access to a world that looks like them, sounds like them and makes them feel like they can do and be anything they want.
Kirkus Feature: Jacqueline Woodson
“Our community is such a community of survivors and resisters and resilience. We’ve been like water when we have also wanted to be a bridge. Day by day, I have to find a way to figure out a way to do self-care. Writing is very cathartic for me; creating worlds where people end up OK is very helpful. Whatever’s happening now is happening for a reason, the thing that happens when there’s a big, big shift coming.”
Jacqueline Woodson on her latest books, Harbor Me and The Day You Begin
Did someone say Book Lovers Day?
It makes total sense that Book Lovers Day would fall right in the middle of the hottest days of summer, when there really isn’t anything better than sitting in front of the air conditioning (or some other cooling device) and reading. As it happens, as I’ve been in the homestretch of finishing a work in progress for young adults, I’ve also been immersed in reading books for young readers of color by writers of color — like a message of love from the universe. Here are some of the books I’ve read & been reading lately that have won my heart:
- Fresh Ink: An Anthology
: I got a sneak peek at this one (Oh, the rewards of being a book nerd are few, but feel so enormous sometimes…) since the pub date is next week, on August 14th. I love the color, and adore the mission of We Need Diverse Books, cofounded by the anthology’s editor, novelist Lamar Giles. Here, he’s compiled fresh, and beautiful short stories by a constellation of YA’s strongest voices. I’m not all the way through, but stand-outs so far are “Why I Learned to Cook” by Sara Farizan, (whose third novel, Here to Stay
, is incredibly timely and comes out this fall) Walter Dean Myers’ “Tags,” a one-act play that’s previously never been published and Melinda Lo’s (adorable) “Meet Cute.” I can’t wait to dig into the rest of the collection, especially stories from Daniel Jose Older & Melissa de la Cruz and Nicola Yoon. This is a collection that isn’t to be missed — it fully represents the world in which our youth live, which is what makes it so fresh. There are parts of Eric Gansworth’s “Don’t Pass Me By,” that are laugh out loud funny, and other moments of regular ‘ol teen angst that show that stories in own voices are also universal stories of kids who are just kids. The book is a relief.
- Courage
: One of the things that’s inspiring about talking to writers who write for a young audience and particularly for children of color (who often don’t see themselves reflected in literature, so get turned away from books at a young age) is that they often have such an interesting path to get to the page. Barbara Binns is one such author — and I interviewed her for Kirkus about her first middle-grade novel to be published by a large press, Courage. After other careers, Binns took a brief foray into romance writing for adults before she learned that the Black boys, in particular, are often resistant or struggling readers because no one really writes for them. She’s written to try and fill the gap for years, and Courage is another, larger step in that effort. It’s the story of 12-year-old T’Shawn, who is navigating the loss of a parent, the homecoming of a formerly incarcerated older brother, a crush and being the newest addition to his swimming team.
- Proud: Young Reader’s Edition: “People think that there are limitations to what women and people of color can achieve,” Muhammad said when I interviewed her for Kirkus Reviews. She made history in spite of a number of odds as the first woman to compete in hijab, and more adversities that she describes in both the adult and young adult versions of her memoir. “It’s part of my life’s work to break through that box people try to put you in.”
I’m reading some other books, of course, but I’ll save all that for another time. What are you reading this summer? How are you liking it? What’s your favorite?
Joshunda Sanders 