Walter Dean Myers, in his own words and what he hoped his legacy would be. “I hope that my legacy is that I was useful for young people…” “…I want to make people of color human beings, and I want to make poor people human beings. I want to include them in my books [ Read the full article… ]

The Making Our Own Market series has been about empowering children’s book creators of color with new ways to tell our stories and get them into children’s hands. Luckily, we don’t have to do that last part alone. Wonderful organizations like Reading is Fundamental (RIF), First Book, Teaching for Change and others support our work in important and enduring ways. [ Read the full article… ]

Earlier this year at a reading conference, I signed my picture book, The Cart That Carried Martin, written by Eve Bunting. The book was published by Charlesbridge Publishing. Before my signing, I nervously wandered around the Charlesbridge booth. Signings can be a scary thing, especially as a book creator of color, in an exhibit hall filled [ Read the full article… ]

Facebook can be what you make it. Want to reconnect with family and friends? Got you covered. Want to use it as a way to unite with other kidlit folks? Got your back there too. That latter reason brought writer Jackie Wellington and publisher Leila Monaghan together. Rallying around the cause of pushing for more diverse [ Read the full article… ]

  For our series, MAKING OUR OWN MARKET, Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, a book consulting company, tackles the subject of marketing books created by or about African Americans.    Taking Book Marketing Off the Page, Out of the Park by Kirsten Cappy of Curious City For me, children’s book marketing on the Brown Bookshelf or off has [ Read the full article… ]

              Irene Smalls is an award winning children’s book author with publishers like Scholastic, Simon and Schuster, and Little Brown. Not only that, she has presented programs at the White House Easter Egg Hunt, toured internationally and most impressively taken her career into her own hand. Study her website [ Read the full article… ]

Why I chose Kickstarter to fund my Children’s Picture Book by JQ Sirls There are many reasons why I decided to go in the route of Kickstarter, all of which stem from a common idea about people in my generation (millennials). People of my parent’s generation often claim that we are lazy, entitled, ungrateful, selfish, the [ Read the full article… ]

  Any time a new book enters the world is a great day. But it’s even more thrilling when the book comes from one of our own. The Brown Bookshelf co-founder Varian Johnson celebrated the birthday of his new stand-out middle-grade novel, The Great Greene Heist (Arthur Levine Books), on Tuesday. It’s already winning raves. Today, Varian is featured [ Read the full article… ]