If 2014 harlem book fair panel on multicultural book publishing. My name is weighed hudson and i am president and ceo of just us books, independent Childrens Book co. My wife cheryl and i started in 1988. We established just us books to addressing the needs to reflect our societys diversity. I will moderate the discussion but before we starts i would like to pay a little homage to a great writer we lost last week. Walter myers, winner of many of the awards for children and young adult literature produced a body of work that included more than 100 books for children and young adults. He often wrote about younger africanamericans who battled troubles in the streets, in school and at home, giving them a voice. Also a leading advocate for diversity in childrens literature. We will all miss his outstanding and wonderful writer and human being. Those interested in recognizing walter by making a donation may do so by contributing 2 two of his favorite causes, the Children Defense Fund and a literacy for incarcerated youth. You can go to the web site at www. Justusbooks. Com for information about these two institutions. It was walters article titled where are the people of color, and Childrens Books which appeared in a march 16th, 2014, issue of the New York Times that brought renewed focus on an issue, lack of diversity in books with children that received the spotlight from time to time, then slide underneath the coverage again until another clarion call for change is voice. The article was followed by an Online Campaign calls we need the first books, took the internet by storm with more than 116 million impressions in just one week. A number of africanamerican books creators also undertaking initiatives to address the problem. The lack of diversity issue seems would not go gently into that good night. Harvesting of the wealth in multicultural publishing will examine the issue of diversity in childrens literature but we will do so recognizing complexities involved. Does this represent a crosssection of people and organizations that must and do play roles in finding solutions. Brown king is director of the Public Library in new york. He is also former editor of School Library journal, raise your hand. Ted cummings is an Award Winning author and illustrator whose career spans decades. Publisher of vision works publishing, independent book publisher made him and rolled into the educational market. This e o of the literary media publishers consultant, founders of the africanamerican Childrens Book project and she is seated next to brian. And we have the director of marketing, one of the nations leading independent publishers of books for young people and veronica creech, director of markets at first books in nonprofit organizations that connect Book Publishers and Community Organizations to find access to new books for children and Young Readers particularly those who are in need it. We start our discussion by giving each panelist a few minutes to share information about their organization, their company and their program and follows that with questions and we will start with brian. Can everyone here me . I am a lifelong librarian. Two of our core values in terms of working with kids are to engage children as readers and key element of that is to find books that reflect the diversity of the community that you represent. I began my work in the early 1980s in brooklyn, new york working for brooklyn Public Library, coming out of an optimistic period in publishing and on this lucky enough to working branches with the Virginia Hamilton, walter myers, that previous generations and previous decades did not have access to. We really thought back then that the world was going to change. Walter myers in 1986 wrote an essay that said we are going to change the industry. Since then the industry has changed but in many ways not as fast or as strongly or comprehensively as many of us would like. Good morning. I am the ceo. The world of publishing. I sort of stumbled into the world of publishing in the 90s because africanamerican Fiction Books had taken this country by storm and publishers did not understand how to market and promote these books and my company, literary Media Publishing consultants was created. We did a lot of work in that area and was so fascinating to be on the cusp of all the wonderful authors and most were no long serbian published. Terry mcmillan was at the top of the food shane making people understand reading, there was a joy in reading. Subsequently as the Publishing Industry developed, Fiction Books especially for women i started to see a void in the world of Childrens Books and 23 years ago, i found in an Organization Called the African AmericanChildrens Book project. That cold frosty morning, the beginning of a novel, over 250 people came to a Childrens Book fair. This past february, 3500 people attended a when they book event. In two hours we sold 25,000 worth of books. People come from all across the country hungry for books that reflect their images and i continue to say this to people, if you give it to the community they will come and they will respond. All across this country you see a full lead in books in our community not because people dont want to buy them, they just cant find them. I will be talking a little bit about these africanamerican Childrens Book classics and the success as well as the things we can do as consumers to keep publishers producing great books. I am thrilled to be here, this is an excellent resource, when i started in Childrens Book publishing way back, in 1975, everybody that i had as a teacher, everybody around me was telling me it is impossible to get into Childrens Books, you cant break into the field but i was 27 years old and you dont hear those things so i saw every publisher i could see downtown and none of that worked. The council of innovation book 3 children, this is some place that i believe walter started. I had put some work into that publication and a publisher or had already been to see called me and said they had a book for me to do, not a book they would like me to consider but they wanted me to do it and i was thrilled and i didnt want to act like a didnt know anything about doing books so when the editor said do you know what youre doing i said yes. I didnt have a clue so i went home and i knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, i called and said you have to help me out. Was extremely generous. One thing i found, i came in on a way of, Virginia Hamilton and walter and there was a real interest in growing the number of people of color in the Childrens Book field. The images were so low at the time of all the books that would done, people of color were underrepresented. The numbers havent really changed in all those years, this is 75. I sat on the panel with walter dean myers, Multicultural Panel but we were all black and i thought it is not exactly multi. It has changed, people have become more aware of their needs to be diverse city. One thing the walters said that i carried with me always, it is extremely generous. People help each other. Uconn always find someone to get into the business or assess your work. One thing walter said it has stuck with me is he wants is books to get in the hands of black teenagers and black kids but it is so important in the hands of white kids. There was an article in the New York Times, it is very important to see yourself in books as a child but equally important to see people who are not like you so that you get cal dont have books because it is a question of getting yourself up to speed and finding somebody to help you get into the business. Thank you. Good afternoon. I come to publishing as a wife and mother of eight. When my husband and i started to have a family i was actively seeking culturally diverse literature that i wanted my children to experience and found there was a shortage of that when i went into the typical bookstores. I was disappointed with the quantity of what i was able to find for my children and with the internet and it did allow me to find more things and i was able to water but i grew up in a family where my mother taught me to create the world you want to see sell my husband was a writer as well as myself and we decided a body of Childrens Books that were not just divers in culture but also in gender and physical abilities that told Great Stories of children navigating the diverse world we all share because one of the things i turned was sometimes not children that people fear that which they are not familiar with. I developed the Publishing House our Childrens Books come as an educator, a few years ago i got my masters degree in childhood education. I have worked with teacher development. In schools. I also created a Residency Program so children could learn to communicate more effectively and feel more comfortable in their body and their skin, and the Emotional Wellness workshop that would allow us to work more cohesive lee and that is the universe we all share. Thank you. All right. I am the director of marketing, an Award WinningChildrens Book publisher focused on diversity so we were started in 1991 and we have been publishing multicultural Childrens Books for 20 years. We are now the biggest multicultural Childrens Book publisher in the country. This is familyowned if and completely independent. That is one of the things that makes us different from other publishers out there because most publishers at this point are owned by Huge Companies and because we are so independent it allows us to take risks to publish things we believe in. And they paid in response to the response we have gone from parents, teachers, Young Readers and in terms of major book awards that we have won, we won the major awards and it is really great as a Small Publisher that we are able to compete in the Childrens Book market like this especially with diverse books that we create. So we began by publishing primarily picture books and we expanded to include middle grade books and young adult books as well. We have several in france, we have two books in print which publish middle grade and young adult Science Fiction and fantasy and some a few may knows that these are two sean wrotes that have been extremely white wash so we are trying to add more diverse books. We have our imprint which publishes books for classroom use for beginning readers in english and spanish. And the imprint publishing books that introduce Young Children to the cultures of asia and primarily bilingual english spanish picture books but also some bilingual books in other languages. We have vietnamese, japanese, we have fought whole range and over the last 20 years we have been expanding our definition of diversity to look at what there is a need for and communities and fills that need. We have expanded our definition of diversity beyond racial diversity to also include diversity in terms of abilities, other things like that. We are tuned in to what people looking for and because we are Small Publisher we are able to really answer that need as fast as possible with groundbreaking books of. One of the things that also makes us special is we have always been dedicated to debut authors and specifically working with doctors and illustrators of color. They are extremely underrepresented in publishing. It has been that way for many years and if you look at the statistics it is not getting any better. We make a special effort to work with authors and illustrators of color especially new offers to help them break into publishing and hopefully start very long successful careers or in the publishing book world. If you look at our 2014 titles we have 7 new titles so far out this year. 3 of the seminar by debut office and five of the seven are by either authors or illustrators of color or both so were sticking to that mission we had since the beginning. We have two book awards specifically for authors of the unpublished authors of color. Our new voices for picture books and new visions award for middle grade and young adult books and we give those away annually and the winner gets a contract with us as well as a cash prize and that is one of the ways we are trying to up the numbers of diverse people, having divers books is important and having divers sought this industry is telling their stories is important. We are an activist company so one of the things we are constantly trying to do is push the conversation forward. Why dont we have more diverse books . What is holding is that . How can we get past those challenges. We illustrated the lack of diversity in a number of industries. We are trying to understand the problems in Childrens Book publishing exist everywhere, in movies, tv and politics. There not isolated and we want people to see the numbers starkly and be able to think about some solutions to these problems. We have been releasing the course of the past year they have done really well. A couple of gone viral and picked up by the New York Times, and a way to continue to push the conversation and do that in other ways as well. A lot of other panelists said statistics are not changing, they are tracked by cooperative Childrens Book center every year and numbers of not gone up in 20 years. I hope five years from now we will be looking at different numbers that we are seeing in 2015 and hopefully it will be better. Good afternoon. Malaika adero 11, i am senior director at a global nonprofit social enterprise working to lower the barriers of access to highquality new titles for our kids. First book has been around 23 years. In that time we have distributed 118 million titles. We work with 130,000 teachers, educators across the country to work to make sure they have access to the books they need with their kids in the classroom and their programs and we are creating across 130 member base the opportunity to learn from educators and teachers what you need in the classroom and what your kids are drawn to and what books i kids picking up on the bookshelf and that is the laboratory which we realize the research comes to life. Kids pickup books they see themselves on the cover, in the stories. That feedback is 130 member base which is growing by leaps and bounds every month. It helps us to work more closely with our Publishing Partners and we have been around 23 years and really strengthened the ability to provide high quality books, we also have strengthened our distribution in the Market Solution to make the books accessible because what our base tells us is we not only once and need the books but Many Organizations are trying to have lower budgets, lower infrastructures and trying to work on ways to build capacity. Also the teacher, the afterschool programs, we understand from them not only the desire for the books but how do we work with partners who are affordable and that is working with publishers to detract down that costs, but publishing books that are looking for, aggregating the voice of those in the network that says we want the books but you put that buying power together and make a case of publishers and why it is important to have those titles. The way we distribute our books is one of two ways. Working with 8190 publishers across the u. S. We receive a high number of donated books that we read donate to communities for the first book, the National Book bank, and the unfunded enterprise that we take different communities around the country and invite the community to sign up and drive to the distribution for free. The book saying is a good resources to build home libraries and summer programs and books that dont follow a curriculum or that they dont need specifically right now for a particular topic but our base is saying there are times we want to teach about dinosaurs and science and history and we need access to highquality books, but with that curriculum in mind so six years ago our second distribution channel, the first book market place and that is where the work of publishers to have an online resource can go and buy one copy or ten copies or a classroom collection or 10,000 copies of a title that fits with the scene or the curriculum theyre working on today or this summer. And hearing more from the course of our panel today. Thank you, each of you. Now the we know a little more about our panelists we are ready to start our discussion. We want to focus on sharing answers and solutions and not just focus on discussing the problem. What i would like to throw out first to our panelists is this. Sometimes we assume issues we address our clear to everyone but often that is not the case. I am sure there are some, maybe a few who are wondering why is it important that we have more diversity among the books made available to our children. Maybe few people are wondering that so my question to you is why it is importan