Posts Tagged We Need Diverse Books

WNDMG Wednesday — Call for Submissions

By on November 9, 2022   /   Articles, WNDMG  
We Need Diverse MG Logo hands holding reading globe with stars and spirals floating around
We Need Diverse MG Logo hands holding reading globe with stars and spirals floating around

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado

WNDMG Wednesday Submissions

It’s a WNDMG Wednesday call for submissions! This month we’re excited to tell you that we’re looking to expand our team.  We’ve been a fixture on the Mixed-Up Files blog for two years now,  providing readers with once-a-month posts designed to center diverse writers, books, and readers.

Now it’s time to grow! We’re eager to add more voices to those to contribute content for this important series.

Who Should Apply?

Do you love middle-grade books as much as we do? Are you a middle-grade book writer, librarian, or media specialist from an underrepresented or marginalized community? We’re eager to add your voice to the ongoing conversation about diversifying our bookshelves!

WNDMG Contributor Responsibilities

Posting: WNDMG is part of the Mixed-Up Files blog team, which means our contributors work together with the whole blog to keep us running. As a WNDMG contributor, we would ask you to post 2-3 times a year for the series, plus possibly 1-2 times a year for the blog as well.

We value original, quality posts on discussion-invoking topics about diversifying our bookshelves and the publishing industry, unique book lists, or author interviews.

((What don’t we do? Book reviews or self-published books.))

Promotion: We need dedicated new members who will commit to regularly promoting our blog via their own social media pages as well as our own. We also urge you to share the good news when our members have a launch or great news to share!

Blog Upkeep: We ask EACH Mixed-Up Files/WNDMG contributor to take at least one blog maintenance job. A few examples of these jobs (there are more!) are:

  • Updating one of our social media pages
  • Keeping our Oh MG! sidebar news updated
  • Interview team (they rotate taking interview requests that come in…but Mixed-Up Files members are always welcome to coordinate interviews themselves!)

 

If you’re interested in joining us, click here to fill out an application.

 

Tip to help you prepare: Read some of our posts here: We Need Diverse Middle Grade. What would you like to see in this series? Use that to help you craft your submission sample.

Please spread the word to others who might be interested. If you applied a while back and would still like to join us, we’d be happy to receive a new application from you.

Applications will be open until December 1. We can’t wait to hear from you and will contact all applicants by mid December. If you have questions, we’re happy to answer them—leave a comment below.

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WNDMG WEDNESDAY – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO IDA B. WELLS

By on July 13, 2022   /   Articles, WNDMG  
We Need Diverse MG Logo hands holding reading globe with stars and spirals floating around
We Need Diverse MG Logo hands holding reading globe with stars and spirals floating around

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado

 

Happy Birthday Ida B. Wells

This month on We Need Diverse MG (WNDMG), we celebrate the July 16 birthday of Ida B. Wells. The 19th -century journalist, author, and activist would be 160 years old this year.

Sepia toned photo of Ida B Wells - she wears a high-necked gown and her hair is up in a bun with curls framing her face. Her gaze is off to the side and wears a serious look.

Test Your Ida Facts

To honor her birthday, I’ve put together a little booklist and a quiz … see if you can guess True or False for each of these statements about Ida B. Wells (answers below):

  1. She was born into slavery.
  2. She was an elementary school teacher.
  3. She started her journalism career by writing for a white newspaper.
  4. She marched at the back of the procession in the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession.
  5. She campaigned for anti-lynching laws.
  6. She married young.
  7. She visited the White House.
  8. While riding on a train to work one morning, she was asked to move from the White car to the Black (Jim Crow) car. She did so quietly, vowing to dedicate her news career to fighting Jim Crow laws.

Profile shot in sepia tones of Ida B Wells, a Black woman with her curly dark hair in a bun wearing a lace ruffle shirt

 

Answer Key:

  1. T: She was born in 1862, before the end of the Civil War emancipated enslaved people.
  2. T: Her parents died of Yellow Fever when she was only 16. To keep her brothers and sisters from being separated and farmed out to various relatives, she pretended she was an adult and got a job as a teacher.
  3. F: She started her journalism career writing for a Black newspaper that was part of a social group she participated in, where they wrote and performed speeches.
  4.  F: March organizer Alice Paul asked to her to march in the back, to accommodate the wishes of the Southern women, but she refused. She marched in the middle of the parade along with the white women who had come with her from her home state of Illinois.
  5. T: She wrote tirelessly about the crisis of lynching, and she used data-driven investigations to bolster her call for anti-lynching laws. Her data clearly supported what the Black community already knew: that the number of lynchings skyrocketed after Reconstruction and that they targeted mostly Black men, but also Black women. She also gave speeches all over the country and in the UK to drum up support for anti-lynching laws, but they were never passed during her lifetime.
  6. F: She didn’t marry Ferdinand Lee Barnett until she was 33, which was considered old in her time.
  7. T: She visited President William McKinley at the White House in 1898 to lobby for her anti-lynching law.
  8. F: She did not quietly leave the white car for the Black car… she protested and refused. Ultimately, the train conductors threw her off the train!Black and white photo of Ida B Wells with her hair in signature bun and wearing a high-necked gown with a pin at the neck

Learn More About Ida B. Wells

  1. Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth: Educator, Feminist, and Anti-Lynching Civil Rights Leader, by Michelle Duster (Henry Holt and Co.) January 2022 *NOTE: Michelle Duster is Ida B. Wells’s great-granddaughter.

  2. Discovering History’s HEROES: Ida B. Wells, Fighter for Justice, by Diane Bailey (Aladdin) August 2019Amazon.com: Ida B. Wells: Discovering History's Heroes (Jeter Publishing): 9781534424852: Bailey, Diane: Books
  3. Who was Ida B. Wells? By Sarah Fabiny (Penguin Workshop) June 2020Who Was Ida B. Wells?: Fabiny, Sarah, Who HQ, Hammond, Ted: 9780593093351: Amazon.com: Books
  4. It’s Her Story, Ida B. Wells (Graphic Novel), by Anastasia Magloire Williams (Sunbird Books) November 2021

5) Indigo and Ida, by Heather Murphy Capps (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner) Launching April 2023

((COVER NOT YET RELEASED))

((Like booklists featuring activists and journalists? Check out this and this post from MUF))

Ida Fought Today’s Battles

Yes, you read that right — the last book on the list is actually my debut! I’m so excited to join the collection of books about this amazing woman.

My book, INDIGO AND IDA, illustrates many of the pivotal moments in Wells’s life you just read about in the above T/F activity. That exploration happens as my main character, Indigo, reads (historical fiction) letters from Ida. Indigo is a 21st-century middle-school journalist, but what she realizes is that many of the battles Ida fought during her lifetime are the same or similar to the ones Indigo herself faces.

Ida knew she would not be able to finish the social justice work she so tirelessly pursued her whole life, but with her body of work, she left a powerful legacy of activism for future generations to pick up and carry to the finish line.

Happy Birthday, Ida, and thank you.

 

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WNDMG Wednesday – Celebrating Juneteenth

By on June 8, 2022   /   Articles, WNDMG  
We Need Diverse MG
We Need Diverse MG Logo hands holding reading globe with stars and spirals floating around

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado 

Celebrating Juneteenth

School is out for most students around the nation, which means that for many, learning about and celebrating Juneteenth won’t happen as organically as, say, Martin Luther King Day does.  But for families and educators committed to embracing the fulness of our history and the holidays that mark it, we’ve put together some resources for teaching and talking about Juneteenth.

image of the juneteenth flag- blue and red with star in the middle

About Juneteenth Independence Day

Juneteenth just became a national holiday in 2021, but Black Texans have been celebrating it since 1866. The holiday gets its name from the day enslaved Texans learned of their freedom – June 19, 1865 – more than two months after the April 9 end of the Civil War freed all enslaved people. At first, the holiday was confined mostly to Texas. But as families moved to other states, they took their traditions with them, highlighting the day with picnics, music festivals, and family gatherings.

Today it remains a celebration not just of emancipation but of Black culture and tradition. Juneteenth is the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Day was recognized in 1983.

crossed flags - US and Juneteenth

Reasons to Study Juneteenth

In addition to celebrating emancipation, Juneteenth is an opportunity for all Americans to learn about the twin legacies of slavery and segregation, as well as the construction of institutional racism. While the story of racism and bias in this country is painful, it is an intrinsic part of who we are as a country. We can empower future generations by teaching them the truth about where we started and urging them to do better than we did, to imagine a better future. We tell our children to make good choices when it comes to behavior, school, and morality, it seems reasonable that we could encourage them to make better choices to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable world.

Juneteenth Resources:

If you’re interested in guiding your middle-grade readers to learn what Juneteenth is all about and what the day symbolizes for our country, take a look at these booklists and lesson plans.

Booklists

The New York Public Library

Feminist Books for Kids (Blog)

Harper Collins Publishers

Teaching for Change (multiple booklists arranged by category)

From the Mixed-Up Files …of Middle-Grade Authors

Lesson Plans

The National Museum of African-American History and Culture

Brave Writer (Blog)

We Are Teachers

Care.com

 

text Juneteenth in red black and green with flying birds graphic underneath

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