Author: Don Tate

For a few years now, The Brown Bookshelf  has talked about the need for more diversity in children’s and YA books. Our focus here has been books by and/or about African Americans. Our voices are strongest during the month of February, when we host our 28 Days Later campaign. Thankfully within recent months — and [ Read the full article… ]

Today, we are proud to announce the honorees for our seventh annual 28 Days Later campaign, a Black History Month celebration of emerging and established children’s book creators of color. As is tradition, a stand-out author or illustrator will be saluted each day during February.  The month-long submissions window for our campaign opened in October. [ Read the full article… ]

Thank you for your participation in our 28 Days Later nomination process. At this point, we will gather names that you submitted, as well as toss in our own. Please look for our announcement of the 28 Days Later, 2014 honorees towards the end of this year. Thanks again. The Brown Bookshelf Team

Get ready to rep your favorites. It’s that time. The submissions window has officially opened for the seventh annual 28 Days Later campaign, a Black History Month celebration of picture books, middle grade and young adult novels written and illustrated by African Americans. We will take nominations today through November 8th. Over the past six [ Read the full article… ]

Given the release of “42,” the story of how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, we feature a couple of books about the legendary star and others. Jackie Robinson: American Hero, written by Sharon Robinson (Scholastic, 2013; ages 7 and up). In this comprehensive biography, Sharon Robinson introduces a new generation of readers [ Read the full article… ]

Didn’t We Have Fun! Written by Hilda Robinson and Jeff Kunkel Featuring paintings by Hilda Robinson Published by Crickhollow Books First off, I enjoyed everything about this book — its poetic prose, its vibrant art, its aura of a down-home African American culture gone by. The book captured it all so perfectly. Didn’t We Have [ Read the full article… ]

Yesterday The American Library Association announced its 2013 book award winners, which left us at the Brown Bookshelf happy dancing all over the place. Ellen’s Broom, written by Kelly Starling Lyons, one of the Brown Bookshelf’s founding members, received a Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor. Daniel Minter, featured next month during our 2013 28 Days Later campaign, [ Read the full article… ]

Unspoken: A Story From the Underground Railroad Author-Illustrator Henry Cole Scholastic Press, 2012 First of all, my reader, please don’t take anything in this book report as negative. I love this book! The marketing folks at Scholastic mailed it to me, I’m supposing, because they consider it a diversity book. And we are a diversity [ Read the full article… ]