Odd E-Mails
Infographic-in-progress. Note HUGENESS of the Black Death.
Sometimes when you take a step or two back from a project, you can’t quite believe you are writing serious, professional e-mails to a colleague that go like this:
The page looks empty and the pandemics themselves seems kind of inconsequential in all that space. I mean, the Black Death should be HUGE…. We do need to do something about the circle for COVID…. Right now it’s about the same size as the 1918 Influenza, when it should really be between the Third Bubonic Plague and Ebola, closer to Ebola.
This is what it looks like when you’re finishing up a picture book on pandemics and you need to get the final infographic just right.
Read MoreJust How White Is Publishing?
Bearded dslr photographer with tattooes on his arms over school desk background.
So very, very, white.
This article from the New York Times is worth reading in its entirety, but to sum up a few key points: Of fiction books published by one of the large houses between 1950-2018, the author’s race/ethnicity could be identified for 7124 books. 95% of those were written by white people. In 2018, 11% of the books in the sample were written by authors of color. According to a 2019 survey, 85% of the people who acquire and edit books are white.
It’s not a perfect study (the authors of the article freely admit) because nobody actually tracks this stuff. How many books this year were written by African-Americans? How many last year were by Latnix writers? Nobody knows. Nobody’s counting.
I particularly appreciate that this article points up the whiteness of the editorial profession as one of the roadblocks to publishing book by writers of color. (Unmentioned is the fact that publishing is so poorly paid…if you want to start out as an editorial assistant, it helps immensely to have no student loans or family who can give you a boost when it comes to renting a studio in New York. And of course there’s a correlation with race.) I also appreciate calling the tendency of publishers to underpay non-white authors and illustrators (although, to be frank, I’m reeling at the advances some writers of adult books get.)
It’s a valuable article. Go read it.
And I’ll add one thought of my own: the article looks at authors (they forgot illustrators, but there you go…a lot of people, when writing about publishing, forget the younger end of things), editors, publishers…but they didn’t mention readers.
Readers have been eating up books by authors of color–Stamped, The Hate U Give, Booked, All-American Boys, and I could go on. If you’re reading this? Don’t stop. If the demand for these books stays high, publishers will keep buying them, and they may start paying the creators what they are worth.
(Oh, and for the record: $10,000 for A Pandemic Is Worldwide, $14,000 for Deadly Wish, $7000 for Brown Is Warm, Black Is Bright. #publishing paidme)
Read MoreTaia Morley to Illustrate A PANDEMIC IS WORLDWIDE
Delighted to announce that the talented Taia Morley will be illustrating A Pandemic Is Worldwide! I love Taia’s work; it’s warm and rich and childlike. I thinks she’ll bring a nice balance to this serious topic.
The Real Heroes
Jennings inoculating his first patient, eight-year-old James Phipps (who deserves a statue, too)
We put up statues to politicians and generals, but in a just world, people like Edward Jennings would have a statue on every corner. He created a true vaccine for smallpox, and the more I research pandemics, the more I understand how amazing his achievement was. This disease had been with us since ancient times and was capable of wiping out civilizations. Now? It’s gone. (Except for a few samples in laboratories which should be destroyed yesterday, if you ask me.)
Interestingly, he based his work on folk medicine practiced in Asia, where patients were immunized with pus taken from smallpox sores (it worked, though it was risky) and from the folk knowledge of farmers near his home, who insisted that, if they’d had cowpox, they were immune to smallpox (they were). So it was not just an individual epiphany, but an achievement built on observation and experimentation by countless others whose names science and history do not remember.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews