By Sarah Yung | Apr 15, 2021
Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the sixth annual Kweli Color of Children’s Literature Conference took place this past weekend on Zoom for its second year of fully virtual programming. The now three-day symposium was held by
Kweli Journal on April 9–11, featuring a notable lineup of book creators and industry professionals participating in the nation’s largest children’s conference exclusively for Black, Indigenous, and other creators of color.
Master Classes from Industry Pros
Friday featured intensives with four esteemed members of the kidlit community: Newbery Honoree Jasmine Warga (
The Shape of Thunder, HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray), Henry Holt editor Tiffany Liao (who edited Angeline Boulley’s
Fall 2021 Children s Sneak Previews publishersweekly.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from publishersweekly.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
At our first Book Club meeting of 2021, on January 30, the
Stone Soup Book Club discussed
The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani.
The Night Diary tells the story of a half-Hindu, half-Muslim girl named Nisha during the separation of India and Pakistan, and is written through letters from Nisha to her mother, who died when Nisha was born.
Our meeting consisted of over forty kids from across the US, Canada, and Europe, and we were very lucky to be joined for the first twenty minutes of Book Club by Veera Hiranandani, author of
The Night Diary! We were able to ask her a variety of questions, from how she decided to be a writer, to the amount of research she had to do in order to write her book, to the impact of cooking and food in the story. She told us how she was inspired by her grandfather’s experiences in India, and how she herself feels that food can connect her to her culture. Thank you very much, Ms. Hiranandani, for joining us!