Diversity

Sherri Winston’s JADA SLY, ARTIST & SPY + Giveaway

Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you all to Sherri Winston and her newest middle-grade novel Jada Sly, Artist & Spy, which hit shelves this week. While Sherri has published several middle-grade novels, this is the first she illustrated as well. Read all about Sherri and Jada Sly, and then leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed copy of the book!

 

Sherri Winston is a lover of cakes, sarcasm, and wish fulfillment. She grew up in Michigan before spending several years as an award-winning newspaper columnist and journalist in sunny South Florida.

Sherri is the author of President of the Whole Fifth Grade (a Sunshine State Young Readers Award selection), President of the Whole Sixth Grade (a Kids’ Indie Next pick), President of the Whole Sixth Grade: Girl Code, The Sweetest Sound, (a Sunshine State Young Readers Award Selection) and The Kayla Chronicles. She lives with her family in Florida. Connect with her on Twitter: @sherriwinston and Instagram: @jada_sly_may14

 

Jada Sly, a hilarious and spunky artist and spy, is on a mission to find her mom in this illustrated novel from acclaimed author Sherri Winston.

Ten-year-old Jada Sly is an artist and a spy-in-training. When she isn’t studying the art from her idols like Jackie Ormes, the first-known African American cartoonist, she’s chronicling her spy training and other observations in her art journal.

Back home in New York City, after living in France for five years, Jada is ready to embark on her first and greatest spy adventure yet. She plans to scour New York City in search of her missing mother, even though everyone thinks her mom died in a plane crash. Except Jada, who is certain her mom was a spy too.

With the stakes high and danger lurking around every corner, Jada will use one spy technique after another to unlock the mystery of her mother’s disappearance–some with hilarious results. After all, she’s still learning.

 

What was the inspiration behind Jada Sly?

I love museums. When I worked for the Sun-Sentinel I spent a lot of time visiting the Flagler. They had a section with antique dollhouses and toys. I used to think how wonderful and mysterious it would be to be a kid whose family owned the museum. It was years later before the idea came back and I developed the character. I love this book.
 
This is your first illustrated novel. Did you have an art background and how difficult was it to adapt to this format?
 
I minored in art in college but hadn’t drawn in 20 years. When the concept came to me I spent eight years re-learning teaching myself how to draw and use digital technology. Jada was drawn entirely in an iPad Pro.
 
What kind of research did you do for all the spy details in the novel?
 
Honey, a lifetime of James Bond, Nancy Drew and Harriet The Spy.

I see that Jada Sly is going to be a series. Can you give us a hint as to what she’ll be up to in the next book.
 
Well, if there are future books, the next one will focus more on the art world. I have a sinister plot involving a menacing 10-year-old art collector.
 
Can you give our readers some tips on how to write a mystery for middle grade readers?
 
Girrrrrrrl, I’m looking for someone to help me with the same. My best advice is to organize the steps of the mystery but start at the end. You have to work out where you’re going in a good mystery.
 
 
 
Thanks, Sherri! For a chance to win an autographed copy of Jada Sly: Artist & Spy, leave a comment below. I’ll pick a winner at random on Saturday night, May 18 at 11:59 PM, and announce it on Sunday, May 19. (U.S. Residents Only, please.)

Diversity in MG Lit #9 Better With Books

Ordinarily I feature a group of books in my monthly feature but today I’m going to call out one book that offers a guide to 500 diverse books.  There are many roundups of diverse books in addition to this one. Solid on line resources like The Brown Bookshelf to name just one. There are also other books that round up and recommend  books for kids A Family of Readers edited by Rodger Sutton and Martha V. Parravano is one from several years ago. But here is what makes BETTER WITH BOOKS so notable. Consider the tag line: 500 diverse books to ignite empathy and encourage self-acceptance in tweens and teens. That’s a great mission and it’s more books by a considerable margin than most of this type of book. In the introduction Sharon Draper says, “all of them…speak to contemporary issues and offer a solid starting point for the essential human quest toward greater understanding of ourselves and others. “
Melissa Hart has a beautifully expansive way of looking at diversity going beyond race, ethnicity, gender identity and class to include categories like
Adoption and Foster Care
Immigration
Learning Challenges
Mental health
Religion and Spirituality
and Physical disabilities
Categories that are often over-looked.
You’ll find books you already know and love and plenty of lesser known gems. The books featured are all published in the last 10 years and will provide a foundation for empathetic reading for many years to come. It will be a particularly good book to give as a gift to a favorite teacher.

World Press Freedom Day

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, which celebrates the importance of a free press in a functional society. First organized by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993, it’s a day to commemorate journalists around the world who have fought with integrity for a free press.

Here at The Mixed-Up Files, we’d like to celebrate by shining a light on middle-grade books about real and fictional investigative journalists. If you have your own favorite middle-grade book about a star reporter, tell us about it in the comment section!

 

The News Crew, (Book 1: Originally The Cruisers) by Walter Dean Myers
The is the first in a series, which included: Checkmate, A Star is Born, and Oh, Snap! Zander and his crew are underdogs at DaVinci Academy, one of the best Gifted and Talented schools in Harlem. But even these kids who are known as losers can win by speaking up. When they start their own school newspaper, stuff happens. Big stuff. Loud stuff. Stuff nobody expects. Mr. Culpepper, the Assistant Principal and Chief Executioner, is ready to be rid of Zander, Kambui, LaShonda, and Bobbi – until they prove that their writing packs enough power to keep the peace and show what it means to stand up for a cause.

 

 

Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter by Beth Fantaskey

It’s 1920s Chicago—the guns-and-gangster era of Al Capone—and it’s unusual for a girl to be selling the Tribune on the street corner. But ten-year-old Isabel Feeney is unusual . . . unusually obsessed with being a news reporter. She can’t believe her luck when she stumbles into a real-life murder scene and her hero, the famous journalist Maude Collier. The story of how Isabel fights to defend the honor of her accused friend and latches on to the murder case makes for a winning middle grade mystery.

 

 

 

The Tragically True Adventures of Kit Donovan by Patricia Bailey

Life in a Nevada mining town in 1905 is not easy for 13-year-old Kit Donovan, who is trying to do right by her deceased mother and become a proper lady. When Kit discovers Papa’s boss at the gold mine is profiting from unsafe working conditions, she realizes being a lady is tougher than it looks. With a man’s hat and a printing press, Kit puts her big mouth and all the life skills she’s learned from reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to work, defying threats of violence and finding that justice doesn’t always look like she imagined it would.

 

 

 

Adam Canfield of the Slash by Michael Winerip

Adam Canfield has to be the most overprogrammed middle-school student in America. So when super-organized Jennifer coaxes him to be coeditor of their school newspaper, THE SLASH, he wonders if he’s made a big mistake. But when a third-grader’s article leads to a big scoop, Adam and his fellow junior journalists rise to the challenge of receiving their principal’s wrath to uncover some scandalous secrets. From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and NEW YORK TIMES columnist comes a funny, inspiring debut that sneaks in some lessons on personal integrity — and captures the rush that’s connected to the breaking of a really great story.

 

 

 

The Truth About the Truman School by Dori Hillestad Butler

When Zebby and Amr create the website thetruthabouttruman.com, they want it to be honest. They want it to be about the real Truman Middle School, to say things that the school newspaper would never say, and to give everyone a chance to say what they want to say, too. But given the chance, some people will say anything—anything to hurt someone else. And when rumors about one popular student escalate to cruel new levels, it’s clear the truth about Truman School is more harrowing than anyone ever imagined.

 

 

 

Clara Voyant by Rachelle Delaney

Clara can’t believe her no-nonsense grandmother has just up and moved to Florida, leaving Clara and her mother on their own for the first time. This means her mother can finally “follow her bliss,” which involves moving to a tiny apartment in Kensington Market, working at an herbal remedy shop and trying to develop her so-called mystical powers. Clara tries to make the best of a bad situation by joining the newspaper staff at her new middle school, where she can sharpen her investigative journalistic skills and tell the kind of hard-news stories her grandmother appreciated. But the editor relegates her to boring news stories and worse . . . the horoscopes.

Worse yet, her horoscopes come true, and soon everyone at school is talking about Clara Voyant, the talented fortune-teller. Clara is horrified — horoscopes and clairvoyance aren’t real, she insists, just like her grandmother always told her. But when a mystery unfolds at school, she finds herself in a strange situation: having an opportunity to prove herself as an investigative journalist . . . with the help of her own mystical powers.

 

 

Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told by Walter Dean Myers, illus. Bonnie Christensen

This picture book biography introduces the extraordinary Ida B. Wells. Long before boycotts, sit-ins, and freedom rides, Ida B. Wells was hard at work to better the lives of African Americans.

An activist, educator, writer, journalist, suffragette, and pioneering voice against the horror of lynching, she used fierce determination and the power of the pen to educate the world about the unequal treatment of blacks in the United States.

In this picture book biography, award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers tells the story of this legendary figure, which blends harmoniously with the historically detailed watercolor paintings of illustrator Bonnie Christensen.

 

 

 

Nellie Bly and Investigative Journalism for Kids by Ellen Mahoney

In the late 1800s, the daring young reporter Elizabeth Cochrane—known by the pen name Nellie Bly—faked insanity so she could be committed to a mental institution and secretly report on the awful conditions there. This and other highly publicized investigative “stunts” laid the groundwork for a new kind of journalism in the early 1900s, called “muckraking,” dedicated to exposing social, political, and economic ills in the United States. In Nellie Bly and Investigative Journalism for Kids budding reporters learn about the major figures of the muckraking era: the bold and audacious Bly, one of the most famous women in the world in her day; social reformer and photojournalist Jacob Riis; monopoly buster Ida Tarbell; antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells; and Upton Sinclair, whose classic book The Jungle created a public outcry over the dangerous and unsanitary conditions of the early meatpacking industry. Young readers will also learn about more contemporary reporters, from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to Amy Goodman, who have carried on the muckraking tradition, and will get excited about the ever-changing world of journalism and the power of purposeful writing. Twenty-one creative activities encourage and engage a future generation of muckrakers. Kids can make and keep a reporter’s notebook; write a letter to the editor; craft a “great ideas” box; create a Jacob Riis–style photo essay; and much more.