“Oksana, we deeply apologize but we cannot let children out from the bomb shelter for the reading time. Today we have air raids one after another, ” messages the teacher to me the minute I sit down by the computer with children’s books in my hands still deciding which book might be better to read aloud to 2nd graders. I am ready to meet with kids via zoom, our read aloud is about to start. “We are sorry but it looks like we can’t even reschedule this reading,” adds the teacher after 15 minutes. “We are afraid tomorrow will be similar…”

To get messages like this is not a rare thing these days for me as an author and scholar of children’s literature. Classes are delayed, meetings are rescheduled, events are cancelled a number of times. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, Ukrainian educators and their students are trying to re-learn how to make possible a solid education for Ukrainian children in the time of war. This is also right after COVID, which already had significant impact on education quality in Ukraine.

Despite difficulties and instabilities, children’s literature enthusiasts managed to organize about 40-45 read alouds for me during which I read to Ukrainian children my own books and books of other Ukrainian authors. This taught me many lessons on how to read with children who live in extraordinary difficult circumstances. Moreover, this experience showed me what book preferences children have while going through extremely dark times (quite literally).

In this short article I would like to share key takeaways  from my experience reading books to Ukrainian children through these turbulent and unstable two years. First, it is important to note that my preparation for read alouds always took a lot of time, because from the first read alouds I came to understand that children’s reading preferences highly depended upon:

I learned how to manage these three major issues by having with me a few different kinds of books as options: funny books about dogs/cats, hybrid fictional/informational biography books about famous Ukrainians, and some realistic fiction books about war experience.

What about us, educators and enthusiasts of children’s literature,  here in the USA? How is everything mentioned above relevant to our reading choices?
 
I believe we can borrow three major points from my experience reading books aloud to children in Ukraine.

1. Challenges of unknown (such as war, disaster, etc.) bring to sharp relief the need to live, learn and laugh for here and now. Thus, if you are working with children who might be going though difficult and traumatic times, try to bring some laugh and easiness, some playfulness and whimsy into your read alouds;
2. “Teach children about life, not about death,” says Tania Stus, the leader of Barabooka, a Ukrainian portal for Children’s Books. When conversations about wounded people and loss are literary in the air, it is important not to forget a philosophy of vitalism. Books about life and the vitality of people are important in your reading choices; always make space for them in the classroom and/or reading time.
3. Be ready to talk about feelings and emotions. Try to equip yourself with at least some basic understanding of how you respond, not react, in a moment of a challenging emotional appeal. It might be useful to always have the possibility to reconnect with how children feel in a few days.

 
In their article for Time Magazine, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Oliver Jeffers state, “We exist in a place where all the problems of the universe are present” and note that, nowadays, we should not to think of ourselves just as individuals – but rather we need to teach our children to have a mindset that we are all interconnected. Similar to Jella Lepman (1891-1970), a German journalist, author, and translator who founded the International Youth Library in Munich right after WWII, I believe that children’s books are couriers of peace and support. Thus, “if children read books from other countries, they would realize that they share common human values and strive to preserve them.” Inspired by this, I have a proposal to all the children’s literature enthusiasts who are planning to talk about the two years of Russian’s invasion to Ukraine, which for sure will be widely discussed on the news and mass media this February: You can bring a fabulous supportive experience for the young readers in your classrooms and reading circles by sharing books!

Lepman, J. (2002). A bridge of children’s books: the inspiring autobiography of a remarkable woman. Dublin, Ireland: The O’Brien Press, Ltd.
Rivett-Carnac, T., & Jeffers, O. (2023). Choose your stories well. Time, 2023(1–2).
Romanyshyn, R., Lesiv A. (2022). How War Changed Rondo. New York: Enchanted Lion Books.

We invite you to join us for our annual Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast at the 2022 NCTE Convention featuring the award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft! Our breakfast is on Sunday November 20th, starting at 7am (PST) and takes place in Ballroom D at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The CLA breakfast is not to be missed! As you have seen in other blog posts, we will present awards, have an art auction and book raffle, and then Jerry Craft will speak and sign books afterwards! You need a ticket to the CLA Breakfast to attend. If you have already registered for the NCTE conference, but would like to purchase a ticket to the breakfast, the easiest way to do this is to call NCTE directly at (877) 369-6283.

Queen of Physics features Wu Chien Shiung’s acts of persistence and resistance throughout her life. As a child, Wu Chien Shiung defied gender norms and expectations and led student protests and strikes in China for free speech. At the age of 24, she relocated to the U.S. to pursue her professional dreams as an advanced student of science. While enduring the hardships of war, life-long familial separation, and multiple episodes of racism and sexism, Wu Chien Shiung persisted in her pursuit of scientific discoveries and mentorship of female scientists in the U.S. and China. Wu Chien Shiung’s experiences remind us of other significant female Asian and Asian American activists to know. We share four female activists below, with more included in the The Biography Clearinghouse entry for Queen of Physics.
​

1. Yuri Kochiyama was a political activist from California who fought with Malcom X to work for racial justice, civil and human rights, and anti-war movements. She went on to work in the redress and reparations movements for Japanese Americans and continued to fight for political prisoners until she passed away in 2014.
2. Pranjal Jain is an Indian-American activist who has been organizing since she was 12 years old. As a current undergraduate at Cornell University, she is the founder of Global Girlhood, a women-led organization that inspires intercultural and intergenerational dialogue in online and offline spaces.
3. Stephanie Hu is a Chinese American who founded Dear Asian Youth while she was a high school student as a support website for marginalized young people as a result of the rise in anti-Asian racism and violence during the Covid-19 pandemic.
4. Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star to appear in U.S. box offices. Although she was often relegated to smaller roles that perpetuated Asian stereotypes, her career spanned silent films, talkies, theater, and television, and she helped blaze the trail for Asian American performers after her. See Paula Yoo and Lin Yang’s (2009) picturebook biography, Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story, published by Lee & Low Books.

Rebecca Huang uses a medium called printmaking to create the illustrations in Queen of Physics. Two basic relief printmaking techniques are woodblock and linocut in which printmakers carve a reverse or mirror image of their final picture onto linoleum or wood blocks. Then they use ink rollers called brayers to roll ink across the carved block and either hand rub or use a special press machine to press the inked block onto paper to create the final artwork. Often, a printmaker will carve multiple layers in the block, stopping to print each layer in a different color, to create a multicolored print.  Check out the following online resources to learn more about printmaking techniques:  Pace Prints and printmaking techniques. The back matter in Duncan Tonatiuh’s award-winning picturebook biography about the printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada, Funny Bones also includes information about printmaking techniques.

By using basic supplies such as styrofoam plates and markers for printmaking, students can create a character to print and use in their own creative story. Watch this short video of a teacher demonstrating the styrofoam printmaking process. 

​Visit The Biography Clearinghouse website for additional teaching ideas connected to Queen of Physics as well as other biographies for young people.  

Sanders, J., & Damron, R.L. (2017). They’re all writers: Teaching peer tutoring in the elementary writing center. NWP & Teachers College Press. 

Right around this time last year, the blog featured two posts from CLA officer Dr. Wendy Stephens who deftly described the exciting annual YMA awards for children and adolescents. Wendy’s posts offer a rich introduction to understanding the focus of each of these prestigious awards, as well as a few other children’s book awards from other organizations, and some of the general selection criteria. 

In our undergraduate children’s literature course we introduce these important awards to begin discussions around evaluation of children’s books. We consider how the criteria might point to ways of evaluating excellence in children’s and young adult literature, and consider the connection of this evaluation to selection of books for use in classrooms, libraries, and other settings. 

We also use these award discussions as a way to heighten awareness of the business and marketing side to children’s literature, particularly considering how awards can influence sales, authors’ and illustrators’ careers, publishing trends, and ultimately access to books. Below we briefly describe a reading-reflection sequence and activity that we have found helpful in building undergraduate students’ understanding of the impact of an award.

Reading-Reflection Sequence 1: Read about older children’s book award debates. 
We have found that our undergraduate students, in general, have had very little exposure to children’s book awards prior to this class. Many recognize either the Newbery or Caldecott as being a book award for children, but few are aware there are other awards beyond this. 

Thus our first step is to introduce students to the idea that there exists many more awards beyond those two. To begin priming students’ thinking about the full range of awards, and their impact,  we start by having them read Marc Aronson’s (2001) article, “Slippery Slopes and Proliferating Prizes,” published in The Horn Book Magazine. In addition to reading Aronson’s article, students read the letters to the editor published in the next Horn Book issue that respond to Aronson’s piece as well as Andrea Davis Pinkney’s response article, “Awards that Stand on Solid Ground.” 

After students read, we pose Aronson’s position to students: There are too many awards. Students then compose a brief response as to whether or not they agree with the statement and their reasoning. At this point in the discussion, students are often about 50/50 in where they fall on the issue.

Reading-Reflection Sequence 2: Read about the lack of diversity in awards. 
To extend Andrea Davis Pinkney’s response article, we then ask students to read two additional articles that begin to address the lack of diversity in books that win the Newbery and Caldecott Medals: Roger Sutton’s (2016) “Last Stop, First Steps” and Megan Dowd Lambert’s (2015) “#WeGotDiverseAwardBooks: Reflections on Awards and Allies.”  

We deliberately use these short editorial pieces, both written near the beginning of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks (2014) movement, as they continue students’ understanding of not only these awards, but also focus on the historical lack of diversity in United States’ children’s literature and more recent focus on this problem. Dowd Lambert’s piece mentions the hashtag specifically, which encourages students to visit the WNDB page, where they can learn more. Sutton’s editorial reinforces this with reference to a 1996 discussion, and presentation of numbers of nonwhite authors. It also brings up issues related to book genre and format

After reading these two short pieces, students are again asked to consider the statement: There are too many awards, and then compose a brief response as to whether or not they agree with the statement at this point, and their new reasoning for why they continue in their same opinion, or have now changed their answer.  At this point in the activity, with students now having learned a little about the lack of diversity in award winners, we often find that those students who initially thought there were too many awards begin to shift their opinions. And those who disagreed with Aronson from the beginning often feel more justified in their stance that there are not too many awards. 

Reading-Reflection Sequence 3: Read about the impact of awards on authors. 
Next, we continue to further students’ understanding by having them learn about the author’s experiences in receiving an award. We seek out the newest reactions; for example, this year, we shared short articles from Publisher’s Weekly about Donna Barba Higuar, Jason Chin, and Andrea Bouley’s experiences when they found out they had won their respective awards. In connection with these readings, we typically ask students to read the short piece “Recognizing Rising Stars” (Aimonette Liang, Reading Today, 2015) that discusses the history and impact of the ILA Children’s and Young Adult Book awards that are designed to honor new authors with extraordinary promise. Quotes from multiple winners highlight the way an award can change the trajectory of an author’s career. 

After students consider these additional perspectives, we again ask them to consider the statement: There are too many awards. Once again, they present their opinion and reasoning. We then ask students to explain how their ideas around awards have changed over the course of the set of readings.  

Final Activity: Tracking Amazon rankings of award books. 
For our final activity to develop students’ understanding of the impact of children’s and young adult book awards, we have students track Amazon book rankings of winning books in the days after the YMA awards have been announced (see our class-compiled results for 2022 below). Students are assigned to an award and asked to find the winning book and honor books on Amazon as soon after the award announcements as possible. They record the sales rank. Students then check 24 hours later on the books’ sales ranks on Amazon. Students are typically shocked at how within hours of the award announcements books are sold out and have substantially higher rankings than they did before; for example, “When I looked earlier today [it] was #2277 and when I looked just now [it] is now #1 in children’s graphic novels. I can’t believe it was that low on the list earlier today and is now sitting at #1!” 

This experience helps students understand the impact of awards on the sales of books, and they begin to recognize further how this can affect the sales of future books by the author, and even the publisher in general. (We often add an additional quick check on changes in the sales of the author’s and illustrator’s previous books, or on the sales of that particular genre or format, etc.) Combined with the earlier reflections on readings, the students often begin to bring up concerns about how the award book might affect future children’s book sales, and thus access to both that particular book and others like it. 

In their final reflections on awards written after this last activity, nearly all, if not 100%, of the students in the class believe that there is value in having a wide array of awards that can honor diverse authors, illustrators, and books. Some students even go as far to state that there aren’t enough awards!  

​References: 
Aronson, M. (2001). Slippery slopes and proliferating prizes. The Horn Book Magazine, 77(3), 271-278. 

Garza de Cortes, O., Bern, A., Watson, J.S., Bishop, R.S., Edwards, C., Blubaugh, P., Caldwell, N., Holton, L., Hamilton, V., Taylor, D., Smith, H., Danielson-Francios, S., Rudd, D., Pinsent, P., Bush, M., & Hurwitz, J., (2001). Letters to the editor. The Horn Book Magazine, 77(5), 500-508. 

Lambert, M.D. (2015). #WeGotDiverseeAwardBooks: Reflections on awards and allies. The Horn Book Magazine, 91(4), 101-104. 

Liang, L.A. (2015). Recognizing rising stars. Reading Today, 32(6), 34-35. 

Lodge, S. (2022, Jan. 25). Donna Barba Higuera’s Newbery win: A dual celebration. Publishers Weekly. 

Maughan, S. (2022, Jan. 25). Angeline Boulley’s Printz win: Tears, champagne, and…lawyers? Publishers Weekly.

op de Beck, N. (2022, Jan. 25). Jason Chin’s Caldecott win: ‘Kind of a surreal experience.’ Publishers Weekly. 

Pinkney, A.D. (2001). Awards that stand on solid ground. The Horn Book Magazine, 77(5), 535-539. 

Sutton, R. (2016). Last stop, first steps. The Horn Book Magazine, 92(4), 11-12. ​

The COVID-19 Pandemic has significantly shifted global travel to “zooming” from digital screen to digital screen and surfing online streaming services. For those fatigued by such excursions, international children’s books can offer exciting and thought-provoking adventures of the heart, mind, spirit, and global consciousness. Readers can enter fantastic worlds, hear previously unheard voices and perspectives, learn more about scientific worlds and cultural communities, and become immersed in emotional episodes that speak to senses of humanity and belonging in books published on multiple continents. The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY)’s annual Outstanding International Books (OIB) list is a great go-to guide for such literary experiences.

As mentioned in Wendy Stephens’ overview of youth literature awards and described by USBBY President, Evie Freeman, the OIB list provides readers of all ages--especially educators and readers in grades PreK-12--a collection of 40-42 books originally published outside of the United States (U.S.) that are now available in the U.S. These books, selected by a committee of teachers, librarians, children’s literature and literacy education teacher educators and scholars, connect us to noteworthy international authors and illustrators who seek to entertain, inform, challenge, delight, stimulate, and unite people through story. ​

When researching the Mercury 13, Tanya Lee Stone used an array of multimodal primary and secondary sources, which are listed at the back of the book. The book itself includes many photographs, descriptions of images and events, and transcripts of interactions that reproduce or explicitly reference those sources. In our entry on Almost Astronauts at The Biography Clearinghouse you will find a curated list of multimodal resources to open up the world of the book for classroom communities and support an immersive, multimodal engagement with it.  

In this recommendation, students have the opportunity to engage in their own biography research and experiment with biography composition through a multimodal, multigenre approach.    ​

Bateman, N., & Ross, M. (2020, October 14). Why has COVID-19 been especially harmful for working women? Brookings Institute Essays. https://www.brookings.edu/essay/why-has-covid-19-been-especially-harmful-for-working-women/

Harper, L. (1997). The writer’s toolbox: Five tools for active revision instruction. Language Arts, 74(3), 193–200.​