New New Crayons

New Crayons is a meme hosted by us, Color Online. To participate in this meme, tell us what new multicultural books you got for the week (or leave a link to the blog post that tells us).

Oh and I just want to share that the covers of the Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart are un-whitewashed! Huge thank yous and lots of hugs to everyone who expressed outrage at their whitewashed covers.

Back to New Crayons

Ari received

Boy vs. Girl by Na'ima B. Robert

Farhana swallowed and reached for the hijab. But then she saw with absolute clarity the weird looks from the other girls at school, and the smirks from the guys. Did she dare? And then there was Malik... What should she do about him?

Faraz was thinking about Skrooz and the lads. Soon he would finally have the respect of the other kids at school. But at what price? He heard Skrooz's voice, sharp as a switchblade: "This thing is powerful, blud. But you have to earn it, see? Just a few more errands for me..."

They're twins, born 6 minutes apart. Both are in turmoil and both have life-changing choices to make, against the peaceful backdrop of Ramadan. Do Farhana and Faraz have enough courage to do the right thing? And can they help each other - or will one of them draw the other towards catastrophe?


Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species. In WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES, Dr. Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr. Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

Doret got

The Broken Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy) by N.K. Jemison

In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a strange homeless man on an impulse. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. And Oree's guest is at the heart of it. . .




Nathalie got

Giveaways: An ABC Book of Loanwords from the Americas by Linda Boyden

Did you know that the okra plant and the word okra were introduced to the Americas from Africa? Or that squash was first a word from the language of the Narragansett tribe of New England? According to etymologists people who study words, languages, and word histories many languages grow by adopting words from other languages, or loanwords. American English is a giant stew, simmering with loanwords like okra and squash.

In her latest book, Linda Boyden shares an alphabet list of indigenous loanwords from North, South, and Central America that have found their way into common usage either nationally or regionally. From abalone to zopilote, Boyden celebrates the cultural diversity of American English while her brilliantly colored collage illustrations and simple, direct text reveal the flexibility and adaptability of language to young readers.

Vasilly has

Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza

Opening dramatically at Sweet Tamarind, a rice and cotton plantation on an island off South Carolina's coast, we watch as recently emancipated Bette Mayfield says her goodbyes before fleeing for the mainland. With her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow, she heads to Charleston. There, they carve out lives for themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Dora will marry, the Mayfield line will grow, and we will follow them on an journey through the watershed events of America's troubled, vibrant history—from Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam and the modern day. Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and blazing ahead.


Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

"When I first got to Progress, it freaked me out to be locked in a room and unable to get out. But after a while, when you got to thinking about it, you knew nobody could get in, either. "

It seems as if the only progress that's going on at Progress juvenile facility is moving from juvy jail to real jail. Reese wants out early, but is he supposed to just sit back and let his friend Toon get jumped? Then Reese gets a second chance when he's picked for the work program at a senior citizens' home. He doesn't mean to keep messing up, but it's not so easy, at Progress or in life. One of the residents, Mr. Hooft, gives him a particularly hard time. If he can convince Mr. Hooft that he's a decent person, not a criminal, maybe he'll be able to convince himself.

Bayou by Jeremy Love

South of the Mason-Dixon Line lies a strange land of gods and monsters; a world parallel to our own, born from centuries of slavery, civil war, and hate.

Lee Wagstaff is the daughter of a black sharecropper in the depression-era town of Charon, Mississippi. When Lily Westmoreland, her white playmate, is snatched by agents of an evil creature known as Bog, Lee's father is accused of kidnapping. Lee's only hope is to follow Lily's trail into this fantastic and frightening alternate world. Along the way she enlists the help of a benevolent, blues singing, swamp monster called Bayou. Together, Lee and Bayou trek across a hauntingly familiar Southern Neverland, confronting creatures both benign and malevolent, in an effort to rescue Lily and save Lee's father from being lynched

So tell us. What books did you get this week?

Letter to Borders

This letter was originally posted at my blog, Reading in Color

To Whom It May Concern,

I am a regular customer at Borders. As a teenager I don’t have as much money as I would like to spend on books, but I’m there at least once a month and I always buy something because I love books. My experience at Borders has been mostly positive. The sales people are very friendly and the overall atmosphere is very welcoming. My only negative experience is the lack of diversity on the bookshelves. Specifically, I would like to address the lack of diversity in the Young Adult section.

I recently noticed that Borders had expanded its YA section. This excited me because I knew it meant Borders would be able to offer more books. Unfortunately, the books offered were not what I was looking for. I’m looking for books written about people who look like me or differ from the white norm that I see on TV and in magazines. I’m tired of wandering the bookshelves of the YA section and only seeing a handful of titles with brown faces on the cover. I started my blog, Reading in Color, in order to find more titles by and about People of Color (PoC) as well as to promote them. I knew that I couldn’t possibly be the only teenager of color looking for books that were about teenagers like me and not about white people.

Borders has provided me with some great books; Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves, It Chicks by Tia Williams, Hotlanta by Denene Millner and Mitzi Miller and many others. These are all books that I really enjoyed (Bleeding Violet is now one of my favorite books). However, Borders lack of diversity in its books also forced me to look for certain books elsewhere, namely; Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins, Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger, We Were Here by Matt De La Pena and Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon. To be fair, I was able to order a copy of Silver Phoenix while I was searching for it in Borders, but I was immensely disappointed that it wasn’t on the shelf.Admittedly, Borders does a decent job of showcasing titles by and about African Americans, but other minorities are barely represented. As a half Black, half Latina teenager, this saddens me. It’s hard enough for me to find a large number of books with a Black main character. It’s harder still to find a book with a Latina main character. Why? Before I started blogging, I assumed the books simply weren’t being written, thus Borders obviously couldn’t stock them. I’ve since learned otherwise. Through my blog, I’ve received countless recommendations of titles of books by/about Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. The books are being written. Yet if I was to rely solely on Borders, I would never know this. I would continue to only see books with white faces on the cover, being written by white authors. Without my blog and Internet book browsing, I might have never discovered the enticing world of Xia (Silver Phoenix), how hard life is for Sikhs post 9/11 (Shine, Coconut Moon), met the most interesting teenage criminals who are so much more than criminals (We Were Here) or learned about what life was like in India in the 1970s (Secret Keeper). These books have all taught me something, some lessons bigger than others, but all important in their own way. In addition to teaching me something, they have entertained me immensely and some have even brought me to tears. These are all books I couldn’t find at Borders and it pains me to think of all the people who might be missing out on such wonderful stories.

I presume that since you work at Borders, you love books. Let me remind you of why people love books; books transport us to new places and experiences and (this is especially true for teenagers) they show us that we are not alone. Books can also promote tolerance. Why would you deny the joy of opening up a new book and discovering a new world to any child? Why are you permitting a generation of children to grow up knowing very little about cultures that are not white or American? Let me be clear, there are certain experiences in life that are universal (parenting struggles, peer pressure, falling in love) and it doesn’t really matter what the cultural background of the main character is. There are also certain experiences in life that not everyone will have to go through (racism and prejudice being the most obvious, although at some point, most people will experience prejudice of some kind). However what message are you sending by only selling stories about white teens? Borders may not realize this, but the reason many children of color do not read is because they feel that the books being written by white people, about white people, are not for them. They do not believe they can relate. Or worse yet, they begin to accept the subtle message sent by rows upon rows of books with white faces on the cover; YOU ARE WORTHLESS, NOT WORTH WRITING ABOUT OR SHOWING ON A COVER, YOU ARE ALONE. In short: YOU ARE INFERIOR. I’m sure I’m not the only one when I say that I don’t want to spend my money at a store that doesn’t value or respect me or my needs.

Case in point is Silver Phoenix. I was horrified when I discovered that the beautiful cover of Silver Phoenix was being changed. I’m aware that covers are sometimes changed for the paperback editions, but in Silver Phoenix, the change is drastic. It goes from having a Chinese girl on the cover, to having a racially ambiguous girl on the cover. The most obvious way of determining if the girl on the cover is Asian (by looking at the eyes) is covered up. Borders may take the position that it’s the publisher’s fault, not Borders. That would be convenient but wrong. The publishers are wrong for removing the Asian main character from the cover and replacing it with a girl who is racially ambiguous at best, whitewashing at worst. BUT the publishers (Greenwillow Books) are sticking with the author, they want to see her book reach a wider audience. In a way, they were forced to make this awful cover change because of Borders. You refused to even stock Silver Phoenix, based on the cover alone. Borders prevented thousands of readers from reading a book about someone who is different from them, and yet the same. Borders prevented Asian readers from seeing a strong and determined Asian girl on the cover of a book. As pointed out by blogger Ah Yuan at Gal Novelty, you wouldn’t refuse to sell a book based on the cover alone if there was a white girl on it. Borders wouldn’t blame the low sales on the white model on the cover of the book, but if a book with a PoC on the cover doesn’t sell, it’s because of the brown model on the cover.

I realize that Borders is a business, therefore it’s all about the money. Did you know that studies have shown that Latinos are the biggest minority consumers? If this is the case, why are Latinos not being aggressively pursued by large chain bookstores? If Borders invested a little more money in buying books that are by/about Latinos, they could tap into a huge market. It’s not enough to have a tiny section entitled ‘Hispanic Studies’, we need more bilingual books for young children and books with Latino/a teenage main characters. It’s not Latino buying power that is expanding, all minority consumer power is growing. I understand not always wanting to take a chance on debut authors and I can even understand why you would only display certain books in certain stores. But Borders doesn’t even have that. As a start, try featuring more books for people of all ages (but especially middle school and teenage readers) by/about African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans in stores where there is a large ethnic majority of that particular culture. Mind you, that’s only a start. The end goal is to have multicultural bookshelves. Why is it that the only book I can find in the YA section with a Native American main character is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie? It’s a fabulous book, but there are more books about Native American teenagers out there than just that ONE book. If you need suggestions, do a little research. Check out blogs like Color Online, Multiculturalism Rocks!, theHappyNappyBookseller, Gal Novelty, Voracious YAppetite , Asia In the Heart, World On the Mind and the blogrolls at these blogs for suggestions of more titles. Don’t buy into the myth that minorities don’t read and won’t spend money on books. Maybe, just maybe, we “don’t read” because we are tired of being told that we don’t matter. Maybe, just maybe, once we see more brown faces on bookshelves and realize that we are respected customers, we will want to spend our money on books.

You can ignore this as the rant of a young and perhaps in your opinion, misinformed teenager. That is your prerogative but bear this in mind, I have given this a lot of thought and talked to many teenagers of color as well as blogged about it. I have found an overwhelming number share my opinion and would love to spend more or in some cases, some money at Borders on books that are written by people of color, for people of color, specifically teenagers of color.

Postscript to blog readers: This is the actual letter I'm sending to Borders. To learn more about writing your own letter, check out my post here please also leave links to your own letter in the comments at that post.

Dear Greenwillow Books

Dear Greenwillow Books,

I understand that you are worried about the sales of Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon and the potential sales of its sequel, Fury of the Phoenix. Oh, I know that you are not worried that Asian-inspired YA fantasy will not sell. If that was your worry, then you would never have chosen to publish Silver Phoenix and Fury of the Phoenix in the first place.

The hardcover edition of Silver Phoenix has an Asian model on the cover. The paperback edition of Silver Phoenix and the hardcover edition of Fury of the Phoenix both use a Caucasian model on the cover. I take that to mean that you are worried that American readers will not buy books with Asians on the cover.




Whitewashing a book cover does injustice to the book because it misrepresents the book and misleads readers. Moreover, there is racism at work in the whitewashing of book covers because of the underlying assumption that Asian faces are "not good enough" to sell books, or that Asian faces will somehow "turn off" non-Asian readers and keep them from buying the book.

Honestly? Those assumptions HURT.

Here's an idea, Greenwillow: Worried about the sales of an Asian-inspired YA fantasy novel? Next time try to refrain from whitewashing the book cover, which is morally wrong. Try selling more copies of the book (with an Asian model on the cover of course, or no model on the cover at all) in Asia. There are ONE BILLION children and teenagers in Asia. Worried about having to translate the book? There's no need to worry! There are MILLIONS of Asian children and teenagers who speak, read, and write in English. And try selling more copies of the book to the millions of people who are part of the Asian diaspora all over the world.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Off to buy multiple copies of the hardcover edition of Silver Phoenix,

Tarie Sabido

RAWW: Readers Against WhiteWashing

We're live. Readers Against WhiteWashing is open for business. You'll find links to whitewashing incidents and reactions to them as we learn about them. You'll also find resources for POC books and writers. We intend to eliminate all excuses for failing to promote brown.

Please add our badge to your favorite pages on your FB page and blogs. Become a fan. Tweet about RAWW.

Please alert us to any news related to our campaign. Contact me or Terri of BrownGirl Speaks.

And don't forget to blog brown. Join the POC challenge and look for our new CORA Diversity Roll Call assignment on Monday.