Eleanora E.Tate, author of eleven contemporary fiction, biographies, and historical fiction, brings an authentic “neighborhoods and communities” perspective to her middle grade novels. Briefly describe the impact racism had on you as a young person.   It’s not "had" – it’s HAS. Racism is not dead at all. I still confront it more often than I care [...]

Janet del Mundo, a sales and marketing manager from Children’s Book Press sent the following e-mail to me: Amy, One of our books/authors immediately came to mind as I was reading your WAR series.  Malathi Michelle Iyengar wrote a poetry collection entitled "Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown": The book was a very personal [...]

Kelly Starling Lyons is the author of One Million Men and Me (Just Us Books, 2007), NEATE: Eddie’s Ordeal (Just Us Books, 2004) and two forthcoming picture books with G.P. Putnam’s Sons.  Briefly describe the impact racism had on you as a young person.   I grew up in a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood in [...]

Paula Chase’s Del Rio Bay series helped launch Kensington Books YA line in 2007.  It’s among the first of a growing number of pop fiction YA targeted to multi-culti suburbanite teens.  Briefly describe the impact racism had on you as a young person. It might be easier if I snatched a few memories from childhood so [...]

Where are the authors of color?! Not a fair question, since there were two I received the Square Fish Winter 2010

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich’s debut novel, 8th GRADE SUPERZERO,  is out January 1, 2010 (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic).   Briefly describe the impact racism had on you as a young person. Briefly, huh?  My most vivid early memory of racism is of a suburban New York community in which we lived, where a cross was burned on the [...]

"I want to create a change, to show the publishing companies that we want to see more YA books about people of color with colorful faces on the cover!" (Teen Writer, Arianna aka Miss Attitude) "I believe we need to always engage in literature throughout our entire careers and lives, so that we have our [...]

This is the first installment of quotes from the W.A.R. series. There is MORE (much more) to come… These quotes serve as great talking points and discussion starters. “In this regard, literature not only humanizes, but brings people closer together to show the commonalities we have, as humans trying to understand ourselves and our place in the world.” [...]