Goodbye to Poetry Workshops (for now)

I posted a while back about the fact that the Imagine series has no people of color in the illustrations–not a single one in three books. And about the fact that I didn’t notice this until my daughter pointed it out.

(I’m still pretty embarrassed about that.)

After thinking it over, I’ve decided that I won’t be offering school visits or poetry workshops using these books anymore. I can’t change the artwork or the fact that the books are on the shelves, but I can decide not to actively promote them.

I’ll be sorry to take these poetry workshops out of my repertoire. I’ve always had such a good time encouraging kids to look deeply at and react to Rob Gonsalves’s innovative, intricate art. I’ve had teachers actually blown away by the poetry their students produced. But I just don’t feel right about using books that offer such a narrow vision of the world.

I do hope that my new book, Brown Is Warm, Black is Bright, will be the basis for some excellent poetry workshops when it comes out from Little, Brown. I’ll just have to wait until then.