Ypulse Books Essentials: MadLibs is 50, I Wanna Go To 'Bard Academy,' Win A Weekend With A Book
Posted by alli on 04-11-2008
MadLibs is 50! (Fun for hours on those family road trips) (Publishers Weekly)
- Lola's Land (Harper Collins UK to launch a site for teen girls devoted to Lisa Clark's character Lola Love) (Digital Arts Online)
- Bard Academy (A new young adult series where life at a prep school [bleh] mirrors the plots of classic books. Love it. With titles like Moby Clique and The Scarlett Lettermen…how can you lose? ) (L.A .Times, reg. required)
- Stephanie Meyer & J.K. Rowling (are "kindred spirits" according to Meyer in this MTV.com interview)
- Calling all Harry Potter Fans (Win a weekend with J.K. Rowling's, The Tale of the Beedle Bard. Yes, an entire weekend under lock and key, complete with security guards and…. a book. Um, can I go to the Tower of London instead?) (Omnivoracious)
- Young Lions Fiction Award (Ethan Hawke, who co-founded, will present the second annual award…who knew?) (SLJ)
- New Imprint at HarperCollins (Balzer & Bray @ HarperCollins Children's) (Cynsations)
- 'Teenage Riot: It's Not About You' (Space: physical, emotional and spiritual in the library and the things that get in the way. Great article.) (SLJ)
- Teen Literature Day (Thursday, April 17th, as part of National Library Week.) (YALSA)
- Literature by and about African Americans down since 1997 (Appalling. Check out more bummer statistics regarding people of color and books for youth.) (Black Thread in Kids Lit)
April 11th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Re: 'Black Books' (The article, not the excellent UK sitcom)
Article is somewhat misleading as it doesn't show the number of books published in total in each year - would be more accurate to adjust for "X books in 1000 published by African Americans, down from…").
Also, it's unclear about whether the stats are for authors or books (each author being able to write more than one book, and a book being able to have more than one author)
2002: 3,100 books total - 68 black authors, 166 books with significant A/AA content
2006: 3,000 books - 87 black authors, 153 books with significant A/AA content
2007: 3,000 books - 77 black authors, 150 books with significant A/AA content
So although the number of authors has fluctuated, the number of books featuring significant african american content has stayed approximately constant when adjusting for total number of books published.
Still, AA authors are severely underrepresented - 13% of the population is black and only 2.5% of the YA authors are.
5% of the literature features significant AA content which is slightly better - although it's not clear if that's books about AA issues written by non-AA authors, or that AA authors tend to publish multiple titles each year?
April 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Ahhhh statistics. Thanks so much for adding to the discussion Gareth. You've given some Important points.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I just read a great (and very readable) book called 'Innumeracy' by a mathematician called John Paulos which has made me become very skeptical of any statistics… well worth a read if you're as bad at mathematics as I am :)