This morning I began my day by having a conversation with author, Brynne Barnes and illustrator, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh about their new picture book, Black Girl Rising on the Diversity in Publishing Stage in the Exhibit Hall.
I cannot say enough wonderful things about this book, but what I appreciate most about this conversation is how open and honest they were talking about their creative processes and their desire to reach out the black girls directly with their work and art.
Here are some of my notes from the discussion questions I used to frame our discussion and some notes of what we discussed:
What is the most striking thing about this book, is all of the different audiences you are able to speak to, directly. First, you are able to speak to black girls, young girls but also the adults reading to them and honestly say to them, "I know the world has asked you to dim you light, that it is unfair and awful, and not who you are because you are awesome and let’s see examples but also let’s stop dimming ourselves and shine." This acknowledgment is something most picture books do not do. Rather they focus on the shining, the light the joy. But this honesty is important and this mourning of the injustice is necessary because it has left and still leaves a lasting mark.
And then you are also speaking to all children, of all races and sexes about why black girls are special and awesome.
And then even more, you are speaking to the well meaning white parents who buy this book or encounter it, and you are asking them to take a hard look at themselves and how they have been complicit in dimming g the light of black girls and women.
And you do it all with text that appears simple— but it is not in anyway simple-- it is complexly built poetry with visual and sound cues, pictures that are so vivid you feel like you can touch them. Can we just talk about this for a bit, and how you approached getting such a complicate message into such a concise book without sacrificing your message?
We talked about the art a lot. And Barnes even read pages as we showed the art. Then Fazlalizadeh explained the art. We spent time on specific pages.
The focus on showing so many different black girls, in different situations, who all look so different. You celebrate all the ways of being a black girl. Let’s talk about that choice. I think it does wonders to underscore what we talked about at the open as well.
I also think it is important to talk about the poetry and how you refer to so many important and inspirational and creative black women but only refer to them by their first names. I like how that makes them accessible, and I think for some teachers and or parents it will lead them to look up more and see who those people are. The curricular connection here are vast.
I truly loved working Barnes and Fazlalizadeh and I sincerely hope their excellent book is read and enjoyed by as many humans as possible. Fazlalizadeh specifically is an immense talent. She did oil paintings that became the illustrations for this book and they are spectacular.
I want to plug her art in general. Here is her website. Please seek her out.
Finally, I want to publicly thank my colleague Stephanie Sendaula [see below for another mention of her in the photo to end this post], who could not make it to ALA. Thank you for trusting me to moderate this discussion, to fill the space that should have been taken up by another Black woman, who was also once a Black girl. I was humbled and honored with your trust. I also feel very lucky to have met and gotten to know these remarkable women.
After a work related lunch [the details of which will be revealed here at a later date] I attended, Addressing Critical Race Throaty Challenges in Your Library. I have notes, but after going to some similar events throughout the conference I think my time is better spent writing those up. It was not bad, but there is not much here to share beyond the important fact that there will be a CRT Toolkit available soon for libraries facing CRT challenges. The entire program was really a presentation of what the toolkit will say. I will post that when it is available. Anything I would write here would duplicate that effort.
Then I headed to the Ballrooms to see R.L. Stine in conversation with my colleague, Betsy Bird. I live tweeted this one so that my Horror followers would see it [they don't read the library blog].
Click here for that recap. Spoiler alert: It was AWESOME!
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| Click here for text list of the full committee |
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