Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion On Multicultural Book Publishing 20140726

Revolution on americas education system. Join the conversation as he takes your calls, emails and tweets live for three hours summed, august 3rd, at noon eastern. And tune this next month for author, historian and activist mary frances berry. Best selling author and historian michael corps can is our guest in november. In depth on cspan2s booktv. Television for serious readers. Booktv recently attended the 2014 harlem book fair. Coming up next, a panel of experts explores approaches to increasing audience awareness and market gland for multicultural literature for acquiring libraries and expanding the the interpretation of what is multicultural. My name is wade hudson, and i am president and ceo of just ush books inc. , an independent Childrens Book publishing company. My wife, sheryl, and i startedt it in 1988. We established just us books to address the need for more books that reflect our societys diversity. I will moderate todays discussion. I will moderate the but before we starts i would like to pay a little homage to a great writer we lost last week. Walter myers, winner of many of the awards for children and young adult literature produced a body of work that included more than 100 books for children and young adults. He often wrote about younger africanamericans who battled troubles in the streets, in school and at home, giving them a voice. Also a leading advocate for diversity in childrens literature. We will all miss his outstanding and wonderful writer and human being. Those interested in recognizing walter by making a donation may do so by contributing 2 two of his favorite causes, the Children Defense Fund and a literacy for incarcerated youth. You can go to the web site at www. Justusbooks. Com for information about these two institutions. It was walters article titled where are the people of color, and Childrens Books which appeared in a march 16th, 2014, issue of the New York Times that brought renewed focus on an issue, lack of diversity in books with children that received the spotlight from time to time, then slide underneath the coverage again until another clarion call for change is voice. The article was followed by an Online Campaign calls we need the first books, took the internet by storm with more than 116 million impressions in just one week. A number of africanamerican books creators also undertaking initiatives to address the problem. The lack of diversity issue seems would not go gently into that good night. Harvesting of the wealth in multicultural publishing will examine the issue of diversity in childrens literature but we will do so recognizing complexities involved. Does this represent a crosssection of people and organizations that must and do play roles in finding solutions. Brown king is director of the Public Library in new york. He is also former editor of School Library journal, raise your hand. Ted cummings is an Award Winning author and illustrator whose career spans decades. Publisher of vision works publishing, independent book publisher made him and rolled into the educational market. This e o of the literary media publishers consultant, founders of the africanamerican Childrens Book project and she is seated next to brian. And we have the director of marketing, one of the nations leading independent publishers of books for young people and veronica creech, director of markets at first books in nonprofit organizations that connect Book Publishers and Community Organizations to find access to new books for children and Young Readers particularly those who are in need it. We start our discussion by giving each panelist a few minutes to share information about their organization, their company and their program and follows that with questions and we will start with brian. Can everyone here me . I am a lifelong librarian. Two of our core values in terms of working with kids are to engage children as readers and key element of that is to find books that reflect the diversity of the community that you represent. I began my work in the early 1980s in brooklyn, new york working for brooklyn Public Library, coming out of an optimistic period in publishing and on this lucky enough to working branches with the Virginia Hamilton, walter myers, that previous generations and previous decades did not have access to. We really thought back then that the world was going to change. Walter myers in 1986 wrote an essay that said we are going to change the industry. Since then the industry has changed but in many ways not as fast or as strongly or comprehensively as many of us would like. Good morning. I am the ceo. The world of publishing. I sort of stumbled into the world of publishing in the 90s because africanamerican Fiction Books had taken this country by storm and publishers did not understand how to market and promote these books and my company, literary Media Publishing consultants was created. We did a lot of work in that area and was so fascinating to be on the cusp of all the wonderful authors and most were no long serbian published. Terry mcmillan was at the top of the food shane making people understand reading, there was a joy in reading. Subsequently as the Publishing Industry developed, Fiction Books especially for women i started to see a void in the world of Childrens Books and 23 years ago, i found in an Organization Called the African American Childrens Book project. That cold frosty morning, the beginning of a novel, over 250 people came to a Childrens Book fair. This past february, 3500 people attended a when they book event. In two hours we sold 25,000 worth of books. People come from all across the country hungry for books that reflect their images and i continue to say this to people, if you give it to the community they will come and they will respond. All across this country you see a full lead in books in our community not because people dont want to buy them, they just cant find them. I will be talking a little bit about these africanamerican Childrens Book classics and the success as well as the things we can do as consumers to keep publishers producing great books. I am thrilled to be here, this is an excellent resource, when i started in Childrens Book publishing way back, in 1975, everybody that i had as a teacher, everybody around me was telling me it is impossible to get into Childrens Books, you cant break into the field but i was 27 years old and you dont hear those things so i saw every publisher i could see downtown and none of that worked. The council of innovation book 3 children, this is some place that i believe walter started. I had put some work into that publication and a publisher or had already been to see called me and said they had a book for me to do, not a book they would like me to consider but they wanted me to do it and i was thrilled and i didnt want to act like a didnt know anything about doing books so when the editor said do you know what youre doing i said yes. I didnt have a clue so i went home and i knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, i called and said you have to help me out. Was extremely generous. One thing i found, i came in on a way of, Virginia Hamilton and walter and there was a real interest in growing the number of people of color in the Childrens Book field. The images were so low at the time of all the books that would done, people of color were underrepresented. The numbers havent really changed in all those years, this is 75. I sat on the panel with Walter Dean Myers, Multicultural Panel but we were all black and i thought it is not exactly multi. It has changed, people have become more aware of their needs to be diverse city. One thing the walters said that i carried with me always, it is extremely generous. People help each other. Uconn always find someone to get into the business or assess your work. One thing walter said it has stuck with me is he wants is books to get in the hands of black teenagers and black kids but it is so important in the hands of white kids. There was an article in the New York Times, it is very important to see yourself in books as a child but equally important to see people who are not like you so that you get cal dont have books because it is a question of getting yourself up to speed and finding somebody to help you get into the business. Thank you. Good afternoon. I come to publishing as a wife and mother of eight. When my husband and i started to have a family i was actively seeking culturally diverse literature that i wanted my children to experience and found there was a shortage of that when i went into the typical bookstores. I was disappointed with the quantity of what i was able to find for my children and with the internet and it did allow me to find more things and i was able to water but i grew up in a family where my mother taught me to create the world you want to see sell my husband was a writer as well as myself and we decided a body of Childrens Books that were not just divers in culture but also in gender and physical abilities that told Great Stories of children navigating the diverse world we all share because one of the things i turned was sometimes not children that people fear that which they are not familiar with. I developed the Publishing House our Childrens Books come as an educator, a few years ago i got my masters degree in childhood education. I have worked with teacher development. In schools. I also created a Residency Program so children could learn to communicate more effectively and feel more comfortable in their body and their skin, and the Emotional Wellness workshop that would allow us to work more cohesive lee and that is the universe we all share. Thank you. All right. I am the director of marketing, an Award Winning Childrens Book publisher focused on diversity so we were started in 1991 and we have been publishing multicultural Childrens Books for 20 years. Ltiuralow the biggest. Completely independent. That is one of the things that makes us different from other publishers out there because most publishers at this point are owned by Huge Companies and because we are so independent it allows us to take risks to publish things we believe in. And they paid in response to the response we have gone from parents, teachers, Young Readers and in terms of major book awards that we xp credits making awards and several other major awards and it use really great as a Small Publisher is that we are able to compete in the huge Childrens Book market especially with what we create. So we began by publishing primarily picture books and we have expanded to include middle grade books and young adult books as well. We have several imprints, we had two books in print which publish low grade and young adult sciencefiction and fantasy and some of you Science Fiction and fantasy readers may know these have traditionally been extremely white washed so we are trying to add more to those seans. Our be bought books in print which publish books for classroom use in english and spanish, and introduce Young Children to the cultures of asia and our Childrens Book press imprint which publish primarily bilingual english spanish picture books and we have some bilingual books and other books, we have vietnamese, japanese, a whole range. Overtime over the last 20 years we have been expanding device city to look at what there is a need for and try to fills that need to and we have expanded our definition of diversity beyond racial diversity to also include diversity in terms of abilities, other things like that. We are tuned in to what people are looking for and because we are a Small Publisher we are able to answer that need as fast as possible with groundbreaking books. One of the things that makes a special is lee low books has always been dedicated to debut lockers and specifically authors and illustrators of color. Theyre extremely underrepresented in publishing. It has been there for many years and if you look at the statistics is not getting any better. We make a special effort to work without this industry is of, especially new offers to help them break into publishing and start long and successful careers in the publishing and book world. If you look at our 2014 titles we have seven new titles of our out this year. Three of the seven are by debut authors and five are buy out his or illustrators of color or both. We are sticking to the mission we have had since the beginning. We have two book awards specifically for rockers of color, our new voices for picture books in new visions award for young adults. We give those awards annually and the winner gets a contract with us as well as a cash prize. That is one of the ways were trying to continue to up the numbers of Diverse People working in this field because having diverse books is important and having divers others and illustrators telling their stories is important. We are really an activist company. One thing lee low is trying to do is push the conversation forward. Why dont we have more diverse books . What is holding its back . How can we get past those challenges . We did illustrate the lack of diversity in Book Publishing because we want people to understand the problems with Childrens Book publishing exist everywhere. They exist in movies and tv and politics. They are not isolated, we want people to see the numbers starkly, and then be able to look at these problems so we have been releasing over the course of the last year they have done well, picked up by the New York Times, Huffington Post and that is the way were trying to continue to push the conversation and as the years go on, and the statistics are not changing. They are tracked by the cooperative Childrens Book center every year. Numbers of not gone up in 20 years. Five years from now i hope we will look different numbers than the numbers were seeing in 2014 and feel better. Good afternoon. Veronica creech, i am with a nonprofit social enterprise working to lower the barriers of access to highquality new titles for our kids. First book has been around 23 years. We in that time have distributed 118 million titles. We worked with over 130,000 teachers, educators, Program Leads across the country to work to make sure they have access to the books they need with their kids in the classroom and their programs and we are creating 130 member based the opportunity to learn from educators and teachers what do you need in the classroom and what are your kids drawn to and what books i kids picking up on the bookshelf and that is the laboratory which we realize research comes to life. Kids pick up books when they see themselves in the cover and in the stories. That feed back of our 130,000 member base which is growing by beat san bounds every month helps us to work more closely with our publishing partners, lee low being one of them. At first book we have been around 20 years and strengthen the ability to provide highquality books and we have strengthened our distribution in the Market Solution to making those books accessible. We not only want and need the books but Many Organizations that serve the kids were trying to have lower budgets and lower infrastructures and work on ways to build capacity also for the teacher, the afterschool program, faith communities that we understand from them, how do we work smartly with partners to make those affordable . That is working with the publishers to drive down that costs. Publishers are not publishing books that are the they are looking for. They are not aggregating the voice of those in the networks that says yes, you pull that buying power together and make a case on why it is so important to have those titles. The way we distribute our books is one of two ways. Working with over 8190 publishers across the u. S. We receive a high number of donated books each year that we in turn read donate to communities through the first book, the National Book bank, and we take these books and different communities around the country and invite the community to sign up with 1 book and drive to the distribution and pick their books up for free. The book bank is a good resources to build home libraries and for summer programs and books that dont follow a curriculum or teachers dont need specifically for a particular topic but we just want to teach about dinosaurs and science and history, we need access to highquality books but more specific goals and curriculum in mind so six easily traded our second Distribution Channels a first book marketplace. We work with publishers to have an online resources where our sane members can go and buy one copy or ten copies or classroom collection or 10,000 copies of 8 titles that fits with the theme or the curriculum today or this summer. I look forward to first books through the course of the panel today. Thank you each of you. Now that we know a little bit more about our panelists we are ready to start our discussion and we want to really focus on sharing answers and solutions and not just focus on discussing the problem. What i would like to throw out first to our panelists is this. Some time soon the issues we address our clear to everyone but often that is not the case. I am sure a few are wondering why is it important to have more diversity among the books made available to our children. Maybe few people are wondering that. My question to you is why is it important to have more . Some of you touched on in a little bit. I would like to go a little more in detail. Why is it important to have more diverse books among the offerings . Many years ago when i was a young girl, i attended an elementary school. We had these drills where we would have to stop and drop and go under our desks because the russians were coming and this went on for weeks. The russians are coming and they are coming from moscow, asked my teacher who are these russians and wyatt and coming to east wick which was a small town house side a suburb of philadelphia. My teacher couldnt explain why the russians were coming so she said to me go to the library. We had a bookmobile, we didnt have a Free Standing library. I went there and we had a two book allotment and the children laughed at me because i got books on moscow, books on russia and they laughed at me and said you are never going to go to moscow, why would you want to read about something so stupid as that . My dad, George Andrew lloyd said never mind, keep reading. I started to read books about moscow, paris, rome, and i was in moscow and i am standing at red square as a tour guide. I started to identify every building in that square. He said how do you know so much about my country . I said i read it in a book. I am young black girl living in eastwhig. Most of the men in my community had gone to war and never went anyplace outside a five mile radius of the city and every place we went that they the tour guide pulled me aside and introduced me to other people and said this is a person who knows something about our country and the response was so positive. Got a couple discounts and along with that, it also i used this example to say subsequently in paris, rome and a host of other Foreign Countries around the worlds, i say that because when you know something outside of your community it opens your eyes to the possibilities and that is why diverse books are important. So when middle milik walks into the room and little albert knows something about him that the positive tone. Robert is not seen on television all the negative images thinking that is what he is all about and malik doesnt have a history. It is important for us as a community, each and every one of us to know something about ourselves, to read about ourselves. Anyone else wants to make a copy . This is very true. We often talk about diversity in kids books in terms of the window in the mirror and there was a book than years back by bishop who talked about that. Looking out of the mirror, seeing yourself and be invalidated. I was reading an essay last spring, christopher wrote about something that resonated with me in terms of working with kids, it isnt always about the mirror. Is also about the road map. Diversity in kids literature whether it is for kids of color, it isnt always finding yourself but what can be possible in your life and in terms of that metaphor of a road map it was really about talking about personas, things you could be and try to become. And if it doesnt fit you. And how you can conceive your life beyond where you might be at this present time. And another perspective to look at this literature. It seems this whole book fair is global and the world is getting smaller and smaller thanks to the internet and even if you dont travel you learn respect. One thing christopher said in one of his articles was about the little boy in a hoody and not being afraid of little kids in hoodes. I grew up in the military so we lived around the world and at one point we lived in okinawa, germany and when i came back from okinawa i was 10 years old and an ashtray, a buddha ashtray felt offensive to me because i knew buddha was a god. You wouldnt make an ashtray of christ on the cross. I knew you dont do this. You learn respect for other cultures and other people and get familiar with them and they dont seem strange and you dont have fear for them when you turn into them in a dark street. I will direct this question to you. Who is responsible for ensuring there are more diverse books in the marketplace . Are publishers solely responsible . What about booksellers and wholesalers and distributors and what role does market demand play . I would say everybody is responsible because everybody is part of the problem. When we look at why there arent more diverse books it is a complex problem that happens on so many levels. You have Publishing Houses staffed primarily by white editors so the books they are acquiring are not diverse and then people in marketing and sales dont believe diverse books sell, they dont see them or stop them and then consumers go to bookstores cant find them, dont buy them and it is that reading cycle. I feel the responsibility is shared between everyone. Publishers have a very deep responsibility to try to fix this problem and fix this problem actively does not just mean saying they believe in diversity but actively going out to look for divers manuscripts to publish them and believe in them and put Marketing Power behind them but consumers have a really important job here. It is easy to just buy the books that are in front of you but if you want more diverse books you have to seek them out. That might mean u. S. Your bonds and noble where are the diverse books in your collection . Or your independent bookstore or it might mean you see out publishers who specialize in that or look at awards the specialize in that and you buy from those lists for your children and give them a gift to people for their birthdays and you support that 3 or buying power to prove there is the market. Everyone can be part of the solution. Use sort of look at what can i do from the place that i am. In terms of marketing diverse books it is a matter of believing theres a market for it and we live in one of the most diverse cities in the world where in a country where 37 of the u. S. Is people of color, those numbers alone prove there is a market and it is just a matter of everyone whos making purchasing decisions and budgeting decisions to see those numbers and believe that the market is there if we put the books out and make them acceptable to people. When we first started in 2005 people said why do you want to produce multicultural books . People of color dont buy books. I am a person of color and im looking for them. I know theres a market out there and so we just did it and it turns out that the books we were producing are considered to Character Education Childrens Books. That allowed to us we didnt know that when we first started better education curriculum deals with perseverance, so we have had to actually create a market that didnt necessarily exist and sometimes we had to bring it to the people. There are teachers looking for these types of materials for classrooms and parents who are looking for these materials for their children. I am always excited about birthday presents, looking for a birthday presents from my curriculum. And these books are the perfect fit for that. Add to the conversations that while many people in that cascade have responsibility for improving the situation, publishers, divers editors, books being submitted, we also know there is a case to be made for the buyers . Who is buying . Not only who is buying but combined with high statistics of the percentage of the population that are minority is the High Percentage of the population, 45 of kids in America Today live at or below poverty so we have lowincome kids and diverse backgrounds not seeing themselves in literature. Our ceo, kyle alzheimer, is passionate about making sure we are aggregating love voice to say yes, there is a market and buying power across this market. As we continue working with national organizations, school systems, Public Health departments, social services, home visitors that we are tracking how can we buy more of them, how we go back to publishers and say yes, here is your markets across this panel if we all continue working from the publisher to the 3yearold who wants to see him or herself in the story or share the story with another culture that we all are adding to that piece of that. Mid. This assumption when she mentioned africanamericans dont buy books for their children and it was the miss. If people are not buying books, nine times out of 10 it is about access ability. You cannot just walk into a Big Box Store and find affordable books. You cannot just walk down the road to like many Childrens Books find a Childrens Book store. Most major metropolitan cities have Childrens Bookstore. The notion that we dont buy books is completely false. How many bought a book for a child in the past year . Everyone in this room raise their hand. I am sure if you go around this country you will find more and more the reason why people dont buy a book is access ability. We have to change the dynamics of that. Go to your bonds and noble, your independent bookstore and ask if i come back next week will you have a list of books . We talked about the need for more diverse books but theres another side to the issue. What about those books that are already being published and made available . How can we get more of them into the marketplace into the hands of Young Readers call children . I know that book fares offering extremely viable option, another valuable option, what are some of the other options that are available to get more books into the marketplace into the hands of those children we know and read the books if we can get them. I was there ask lee low and one thing we are working on is working with educators. I believe educators are a great gateway between the books and the children and if we work with teachers and librarians to get them to have those books available in their classroom, those books naturally will find their way into studentss hands. Especially now with the common core being so big teachers are looking for really quality complex texts and wont go too technical into it but we can get diverse books onto the lists that are being recommended, and instead of using the same old classics every year year after year written by white authors about white people you can substitute those classics for more diverse books that reflect the classrooms that are in our country so i think that is one way we can really connect our books with kids through our booking service. It is on writers and illustrators a lot of times to be proactive, i have students who are 20, 25 and when they get out there, the second or third books are extremely proactive. You have to be these days so they have websites, trailers, they go out and market themselves endlessly and you need to go to the bookstores, constantly put on programs showing new Childrens Books and they will set up anything for anybody. It is not that hard to get a bookstore engaged and get a library engage. If you sam will come to a program and talk to kids get the teachers engage the. I go to school with my entire class because these schools are open to hearing stories. I think it is on the creators as well as publishers to get this stuff out there and teachers and parents have to look for it. We have also extended into Community Programs because schools looking for this that offer literacy programs during the summer or too low income communities and we create workshops and lesson plans around the books and bring them into those communities and inspire children that way as well. Churches, most people belong to some type of civic social church, if the church for Civic Organization does not know, and asked to prepare the list. Brian is a great resource and will speak on that, how to start, to get books into your home. Following upon that, from an elaborate prospective we talk about discovery a lot today and we have got a real responsibility to make sure not that we just dont these books but we own them bountifully, have multiple copies that they are in the public eye because chances are people are not going to come across these books in a bookstore. Theyre not going to come across the anywhere else unless theyre coming in to the Public Library in their community and often times they will go on and become buyers of these books once they learn of their existence but unless theyre there and a face on the shelf it wont happen. Many libraries shrinking, most libraries are underfund did. In some urban areas they closed branches. What kind of impact does the lack of money have on the selection . Are they more inclusive to books . You put me on the spot here. Since 2008 budgets have been impacted for sure. A lot of us have 50 less buying power. We are trying to build back but it is slow. There are a lot of arguments and the culture why we dont need libraries anymore, everything is digital, etcetera, a lot of that is false i would say. When you talk about books for kids, libraries and librarians, we remain uniquely committed to is that. When i look at my own budget things get cut but the book but it isnt being cut because our role there is unique. Just talking through, we want to work a lot of libraries now, we are surprised time and again how many libraries actually are buying their books at market retail prices, yet 100 of the kids they serve are lowincome communities. First book is an option to stretch book buying dollars for teachers, libraries and if we can aggregate the boys across libraries across the books theyre buying we could do more with the publishers we have relationships with so sometimes it is just knowledge, who is doing what, what are the resources, how do we put libraries with first boat, Publishing Houses have the books we are all talking about and we are building on those synergies. We are all busy and doing the best we can every day so times like this, max bringing us together to have this conversation we will come back to the conversation and these resources are Getting Better every time. It is a matter of us working together to figure out how we hold hands and bring corporate dollars to the table, sponsorship to the table, libraries whose budgets are being cut but private industry dollars profits continue to increase. First book has an Online Presence marketplace. How is that fairings . Is that doing well . You are making more books available through the market place. How is it doing . The static this year, each year the number of titles increases, the quantity of books we are selling increases. We have sold 3 to 4 million books a year. That is serious buying power. Finding the market place, knowing how to use it, stories for all projects which is first books, contribution to increasing literature, working with harpercollins and lee low and allows us to bring 600 new titles to the first book marketplace, and talking about today, we want those, white kids and kids with means and lowincome kids, everyone across the racial spectrum have access to those titles, and roadmap experience. The marketplace continues to grow and we look forward to releasing our project around 2 allowing us to bring more titles to the marketplace but the average cost of a highquality paperback book and our marketplace is 2. 50. We know from Economic Assessment we did recently that the average cost of highquality board book is 18. If youre talking about kids that attend title i eligible schools, kids that have a High Percentage, moms and families struggling with paying rent, getting that kids through school bus, buying books, back to the point, our families do lead but the money and priority to buy books is where first book is unique and uniquely positioned to work with sponsors and other compassionate partners to make sure they bring money to our schools in the form of grants and a matching funds to stretch book buying dollars that we know for half of spending. They make a big difference to us. We are happy to part with facebook last year and Small Publisher, that purchase was really meaningful. Heres a look at publishing divers books. Big purchases that create a market for diverse books means a lot of publishers and for larger publishers as well it is a significant purchase. These programs are wonderful but i am a strong beaver, and seeing the work we have done in philadelphia. These consumers have to buy books and put them back in the home. I dont care how poor you are, we have a corner in your home, we have to begin, the responsibility revise solely on the seat of the consumer. And is wonderful that all these things are happening. Everyone has a responsibility to seek and find books that are not affordable because the more affordable i believe they will become, you by paperback. And the need for diverse books, are out there. When this rally cry went out the we need more diverse books i thought to myself as i got the text, no black books out there, what a shame. I just did a book fair with rows of books, they had long lines to buy books. The books exists. We got to make an extra effort ended using your hands right now so when we walked out of here dont think there arent any diverse books, they are out there. You can come to our web site, the africanamericans book project, the books are there. We need more. Im not disagreeing with that. The full responsibility for they reserved a legacy by buying a book. Make an important point. How do we get more people in the community to understand how important it is by consumerists, is there a step we can take to help bring that about. If they can bring the books back, it is marketing. You have to begin to understand because you cannot expect books are a commodity. For a pair of earrings, got to bring it back to that level. My book fair in philadelphia is very successful. Radio and television and print and promotion, not only paid advertisement but the editorial aspect, everybody thinks they are going to any event. When they arrive at the book fair the books are laid out in a way that you would buy a shirt or a pair of shoes you can visually see it. We have got to change the dynamics of the way books are sold to Diverse Communities and until we dont approach it from that manner we will still be having this discussion. We have got to take the books to the consumer. We cant wait for them to come to us. It is not just Diverse Communities, the thing is i have never done a book strictly about being black. They have black children in them but they are about going to school for the first time or getting a pet for the first time or getting a lunch box in any child can pick up the book and find a story relevant to them. I had too many times that book fares where people will buy one of my books and said they want to give it to a friends daughter and i know the friends daughter is black but it doesnt need to be that way. My husband and i did beauty and the beast. I am getting a lot of feedback because apparently aside from what is it . Not a lot of retold classic fairy tales with black or people of color as the main characters and it is not going to be the Diverse Community can completely support completely support it. It has to be everybody. Read it because it is a good book but books i disappearing in the house and people buy them and i actually saw an article about this, people will buy them for their color. They want pink books, doesnt matter to their medical textbooks, they are pink. Something comes to mind when i talk about engaging consumerists, two points. Low income families, books are expensive, period. One generation later books are expensive and even though we are driving down the cost of books and lowering the barriers to access, expensive is expensive and until we help parents revisit, books are not as expensive as we think they are and the outcome of that investment, investing in highquality issues, the product of it, helping parents, it may be as expensive but not as expensive as i thought it was. The parent engagement around the value of books and why prioritize dollars on that resource. There was a series of 24 books published by scholastic books, the average cost of those books were 3, 3. 99. They were amazing books filled with African American images but they dealt with traditional things about getting up on time, do you eat your vegetables, 3. 99. Everyday issues. African americans even if they are struggling to build pay their bills, i say this over and over again, wont buy books for their children but you got to present them in a format they feel comfortable with. A bookstore can be an intimidating environment for many people. You walk in the store and if i dont have on my make up the fallen round the store, okay, these are issues we have to address the way books are sold, bringing books back into the home is really important. Beside the point is not just the price but if kids go to the library start to grow readers. He was read to as a child and imprint on reading is something you do. It is part of your life. I was in iowa city and a stops that city for 15 minutes every wednesday morning and the city leaves. The Bank Sponsored this. Everybody in the high school , at work, in the gas station, everybody stops in 00 wednesday morning and they read for 15 minutes. I thought good grief. Of phenomenal thing but if you bring kids to the library and they get Free Library Cards and get books and learn to read and to love reading and you have libraries that put books in their hands, i have heard that so many times, gary larsen was coming home on a cold and that into a library to get warm and librarian put a book in his hands and that made him a writer. You have no idea of a Ripple Effect of putting a. File that can so if they have grown up learning they will buy books and seek out books. You can buy books in expansively. You can buy a book on the street and used bookstore. It might not be the 18 book you want to get but if you love love love that book you will go get that 18 book. What role what more of a role for schools conflate in advancing the cause of divers books being made available . I know lee low is principally an institutional publisher and your company focuses on targeting the school market. Our schools stepping up to the plate to really make a difference . You have done work with schools as well. Share with us your relationships and what you see the relationship between schools and divers literature. I would say schools are on the whole stepping up to the plate. I think we have a very big country and some schools, were all in agreement that every school needs diverse books regardless of the demographics of your student population. Some schools are more open to that than others but i do sing the lot of Educators Want to put great books in their students hands and want them to learn about the world and see themselves in books and theyre about other people. I think the thing that is hardest is teachers are under an incredible amount of strain because in a lot of states implementing these common core standards, teachers are underfunded. A lot of positions have been cut said teachers with huge classrooms, just one teacher and so we are at a point where some from a publishing perspective they want the books but we need to make it easy for them to see how to use them. Talking about taking a look at classics and substituting more modern diverse classics for the old classics that are used is a helpful way to make it easy for teachers to use diverse books in the classroom but especially with the Charter Schools we are seeing, we are seeing budgets that are specifically set aside for purchasing books and for diversifying collections of is just a matter of making the book that is easy as possible for teachers to use so that they dont have to do all the legwork to figure out is this diverse book you are coming to me with culturally accurate and where can i use it in my curriculum . If we do not work for them and put the right books in their hands they are very receptive. We get that feed back all the time at first book. Our base is saying we are so busy, if we have the reading list from last year, we could keep moving forward with it would be the same reading list the last ten years in these easier to keep moving but teachers are saying i do want a diverse book, but some people dont feel qualified to replace this title with this title and what is the title you would recommend . And then taking a step further to your point, teachers are than saying what is the new language i need to use to talk about this title . How do i talk about this title in a culturally relevant way that is not going to offend, and its theres such a level of nervousness, people stick with what they know and other folks have come to the same conclusion, working with superintendents and principals to gain their endorsement of updating the reading lists, one of the most powerful places we all can work to support teachers, our kids and to get more diverse books on the reading list, but we created tit sheet and tube sheet recreated in the consultation of experts who have outlined ways to take this title and link it to these questions for this age group to engage kids to help teachers feel more confident about using the title. We really would love as we continue growing our stories for our project, create tit sheets to be that bridge. In new york i have noticed the change, a change in terms of distribution. The Distribution Channel for independent books to me has closed up tremendously in new york city so what i mean by that is at one point there were hundreds of independent publishers that carried more multicultural childrens titles and they were selling thousands of them and sell at some point this city has closed out the independent distributors and they are all coming through mainstream 3 distributors. Exactly. Those distributors are not necessarily carrying our books so we had to find a new way of reaching schools. I am happy to say all the teachers i see taught teachers with multicultural classrooms looking for books for their students, they care about Student Development and want to boost selfesteem, theyre looking at i see the mortar in and buying the. Schools could do more to include independent Book Publishers and voices and illustrators and authors of diversity. We have a book that has just been published. What do we do to make the folks to buy this book aware that this book exists . Marketing is one. The book is usually important also. Book reviews are important to general consumer is they dont read the Library Journal publishers weekly, they listen on the radio, on the hottest Radio Station in the city, im casey interviews on television, as they read the newspaper. If you want to get to consumers the talk Radio Station in that network during morning drive, listen to the morning show, have them endorse your book. I guarantee you that book will be an overnight success. That is how you reach consumers. That is how Corporate America is selling their products. You have to use the same model Corporate America uses to sell a book. You can no longer think it is an intellectual property and something dainty and we cant pursue those type of options. It is time to be proactive. Go to the people. The good thing about the internet is there are so many different avenues to reach individuals. The Radio Station is one thing and to endorsing a product may be one but you have linked them and have all these Different Networks where you are able to get exposure for what you are doing. Different marketplaces, everything doesnt have to go through barnes and noble. You have the amazon market place. It is all about promoting your online store. And once again bringing it to the people at the book fares. We saw that every time we were here so i know people are buying the books but it is about getting the exposure and letting people know where to find you. What will . To follow up on that i think you are right. There is the divide between the consumer and the Institutional Markets and if you really want to sell to the institutional market you need those reviews, whether it is a Library Journal or book lists or whoever it is. Because it is a vetting process. They need to see that this book is well reviewed before they put it in their collection. If it is challenged in some way in the future they have is solid. Getting those reviews i think is often a challenge especially for Small Publishers, Small Publishers, emerging publishers, self published authors, all of that. It is tougher for them, if you dont have that marketing staff to sit down and present your lists to a book review editor, it is tougher i think to get those reviews. Some acquisition librarians require reviews before they even look at you. In terms of we have been around long enough to get those reviews and the books of hours that do best do the best initially, by multiple we have the big five and it is harder for independently published people who arent getting those refused to get into collections. At a weird moment for book reviews because a lot of newspapers where direct consumers and getting their reviews the book review sections of closed or been taken out or shrunk so they are not really there anymore and that is the internet comes in, getting into the collection you need to those print reviews. I think we are looking at authoritative sites and the whole thing is changing. What counts as a professional book reviewer the lines are blurring a little bit and what used to be this thing people did in their pajamas from home is becoming excessive book reviews. When you reach diverse audience claps a lot of times people get so many emails they no longer open an email about a book or sunlight or commodity. You can reach Diverse Communities. I keep saying over and over again social, civic and Church Organizations are the heart of many communities. You have got to go out to them and do something awful. Call the pasteur at a church and say i would like to do a book signing. I would like to send you a form to introduce you to my imprint and maybe your church members. Scholastic has done it for years. They start doing those things to get people back to buying books and getting them into the home. There are a number of Community Organizations that are stepping up and instituting a National Programs like the Children Defense Fund. They have 125 more Freedom Schools around the country. Getting books actually to the people is the key. Why do you think your book fair is so successful . What are you doing to make it successful . Because people love books. It could be the free stuff we give away also. The realities are i am a marketing and publicity specialist. When i approach it i look at it as a commodity. When the consumers walk in that door, there is a feelgood feeling. The drums are playing, theres a hint sense that there is something special. I have gotten all the authors and illustrators to do reviews around the region so when people come they automatically look for they heard something about the authors book. And library or bookstore if we heard about it. The other thing that is important for what we do we engage Corporate America. Corporate sponsors, and we get xyz amount of dollars. Trying to get people to get books into the home. The only books we give away are the authors are present. Those things changed the dynamics, we begin to look at a different perspective. Not some foreign object that sits in the classroom shelf and the library but something they alone. They open the pages and meet the person who illustrated the book. I had parents come to me, a woman coming to me for ten years, she had 20 and we manage to find four books, i look for books that are affordable. So again and again, and i know i am sounding like a broken 45, you know what that is, we have got to engage the consumer. We give away posters and catalogs, and unfortunately brian mentioned this to me earlier, School Libraries of closed. So you dont have the library and you could go to in the school and say what is new, what is hot, i would like to have a book in my home. We have catalogs from all the major publishers and that enables parents and educators to take those books, those catalogs and look for them to find out what is in the marketplace so all of these things lead back to the importance of what we are trying to do. We are trying to get people to read, to find out about themselves. I want everybody to know how fabulous we are. It is so important to take responsibility for that. Some wonderful things that you stated several times, it has been a resource for educators to come through. I can tell you the amount of Charter Schools that avoided our books. It has been a part of the childrens multicultural childrens festival in pennsylvania and it is ongoing, not just the time you participate but the word grows and the Movement Grows for families and teachers and educators. I want to open it up for questions from the audience. I want to invite erica from the Freedom School program, she is going to give us a Little Information about the Freedom School, about 100 Freedom Schools around the country. Were to 200. It is curriculum based. My name is erica from the Childrens Defense Fund in new york and Childrens Defense Fund has been working the Freedom Schools, it will be 20 years of the Freedom Schools which comes from the history of the mississippi freedom summer and the Freedom Schools 50 years ago but we have five main components to the Freedom School, parents and family involvement, Civic Engagement and social action, intergenerational leadership, nutrition, health and Mental Health and the fifth and final leads to a lot of things panelists are talking about, highquality academic enrichment and we do this through integrated reading curriculum and when we started the panel we were talking about answers and solutions and we think the Freedom Schools are the answers and solutions communities are looking for and we talked about windows and road maps and we have a few books i would like to share with everyone that i feel help to frame the conversation. The first is lee lows how we are smart. I see this as a road map. These are stories of people like patchy mink and Thurgood Marshall and how they are smart and use their talents to become professionals. We also have books that are part of the curriculum that our resources. I talk about the 50th anniversary, we have Resource Books like the freedoms children, where young people can read about civil rights veterans, and retailing their stories for young people today, a window into history so that they can see even at 10, 11, 12, and 16 they can make a difference which is our overall theme and the Freedom School. I went to end with a book by Walter Dean Myers, one of our favorite authors at the childrens defense and Freedom School and i had the privilege of being able to model this book at the freedom summer anniversary and i was with students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Most around 11 years old and in todays, in a few chapters of reading this book, we were having conversations about political philosophy, we had conversations about the social contract, is gunshot russo because of what Walter Dean Myers and the lot of authors and illustrators put in their books and we in turn after six weeks put these brandnew books in the hands of our young people so kindergarten through fifth grade students read upwards of 36 titles in six weeks and our older students readable week, six titles and they get to take these home. The only name that is in these books other than the author and illustrator is tyrone name. When were talking access to books, talking access to authors and illustrators and characters that not only look like our children but also are a window into other cultures, we really think the Freedom School program is a great example of everything the panel has been talking about. If you would like more information we are at www. Childrensdefense. Org Vendor Program tab, you would go to the Freedom School, i will be here for the remainder of the day if you have specific questions. You also have the afterschool programs in addition to summer school. Yes. Rochester, new york, is one of our partners that was able to run the programs throughout the year. Six weeks is what most of our sites, Community Organizations, churches, colleges and universities, we also have sites that are able to run this throughout the year, assisting with introducing these titles, authors, illustrate is, stories, narrative to our young people. Very much, erica. Very supportive of the freedoms Childrens Defense Fund. My wife and i served on the board of the links in his library at the Childrens Defense Fund. Tennessee. If you have questions, please feel free to come to the microphone here and direct your question to the panel. Are there any questions . How do we stand with time . I see wrap