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Emergent Readers Dive Into Books With A Character-Cast Reflecting Cultural Diversity

4/11/2016

6 Comments

 
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(c) Shirley Ng-Benitez, Lee & Low 2016

Lee & Low Books, in February 2016, launched Confetti Kids--a series designed to make the youngest of readers from diverse backgrounds feel right at home. The series' debut titles, LILY'S NEW HOME and WANT TO PLAY?, bring to life a cast of diverse characters--boys and girls living in an urban setting--all getting along together. These first chapter books are sure to be a big hit with all kinds of kids from all kinds of backgrounds who are ready to Dive Into Reading. I am pleased and honored to present to you the super-talented creators of these titles, author Paula Yoo and illustrator Shirley Ng-Benitez.             

Welcome, Paula, Shirley & 
Lee & Low Kids!

​Henry

Lily

Mei

Pablo

Padma


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(c) Shirley Ng-Benitez, Lee & Low 2016

  Paula Yoo     


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Tell us, how did your titles, LILY'S NEW HOME and WANT TO PLAY?, come into being.

This one I can’t really answer because our Lee & Low editors came up with the titles.

Why do you think a book's characters, even in those for the earliest of readers, should reflect the diversity seen in real life settings?

​Diverse characters in real life settings are very important for young readers to see at an early age because they can identify with these characters on a universal level. Of course there are important children’s books that deal specifically with issues of diversity and discrimination and racism, but it’s also equally important to show diverse characters dealing with universal stories so children of all backgrounds can identify and relate with them.

Did you create character sketches for Lily, Henry, Mei, Padma and Pablo? If so, what distinctive qualities did you created for each one?

The characters already existed from the Lee & Low series template. They hired me as the writer for the first two books in the series (there are other authors also involved with different books in the series). I was honored to be selected for the first two books, so I was very conscientious of making sure we knew each character’s personality right away. 

I was given brief descriptions of each child--Lily is very inquisitive and compassionate, Pablo is a shy bookworm, Mei is an active yet clumsy girl, Henry is an enthusiastic musician who likes to get everyone involved in projects, and Padma is a strong and outspoken girl.

In trying to show these characters, we brainstormed scenes and storylines in which these qualities could shine and push the story and character relationships forward. For example, when Lily moves to her new home, she notices Pablo loves to read. So she visits the local library and quietly joins him on the steps to read books with him. To me, story IS character. All story plots are inspired by the characters’ personality traits and motivations. It was fun to imagine what these kids would do next!

What was your reaction when you saw your characters and their world illustrated to life by Shirley Ng-Benitez? 

For a lot of books that are heavily illustrated, it’s always such a joy and surprise to see the final art work. Some authors and illustrators work closely together, especially if they are a team, but it’s standard to have the writer and illustrator work separately. I assume this is so the writer can focus on the words and the artist can concentrate on the art! :) But when I saw Shirley’s work, I was so touched by her playful and gentle style. She’s incredibly talented and there’s a warmth and emotional glow to her art. I felt I had known these character forever when I saw her illustrations--she truly captured their essence!

What factors must you keep in mind while crafting an enjoyable story for emergent readers?

I am first and foremost a novelist and a screenwriter and then a picture book author, which means I write A LOT of words. My picture books are unusually long for the genre because they are non-fiction biographies geared to an older elementary school audience. So when I was invited to write the first two books of the Confetti Kids series, I thought it would be fun. But I had no idea how much WORK it would be. The writing is like mastering the art of haiku poetry. You have a VERY limited amount of text to write, so each word has to shine like a jewel. Just like in haiku, not one word can be wasted.

​With early emergent readers, you are also writing with an educational angle to teach the process of learning how to read. So there is also a strict vocabulary and sentence structure you must use. Compound and complex sentences are too complicated for this age group. I had to learn how to STRIP DOWN my writing and get to the very essence of the story--the bare bones, if you will. And yet at the same time, I also had to make sure the characters were compelling and the plot exciting and engaging.

In a nutshell, writing these books was THE HARDEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE. LOL! Oh the irony! :) But I’m grateful for the experience because I learned so much and it actually had a great influence on my other areas of writing. I became a much tighter writer as a result. Lesson learned--not one word wasted. :)

What do you appreciate about publishers like Lee & Low Books?

I have been with Lee & Low Books since my first picture book, SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIXTEEN SECONDS: THE SAMMY LEE STORY (illustrated by Dom Lee) was published in 2005 after winning the 2003 New Voices Award. I love Lee & Low’s mission to raise more awareness of diversity in children’s literature, to promote diverse stories AND diverse authors and illustrators, and the incredible quality of their work. It’s no surprise this publisher’s books have won many prestigious awards over the years--getting published here is a big deal. The editors are impeccable with their insights and editorial advice. These books are carefully constructed and edited and revised before hitting bookstores. Us writers are put through the wringer! But it’s worth it because you can stand by your book when it finally launches!

I also appreciate and admire Lee & Low’s recent activism in raising awareness about diversity issues in the media, especially with their famous surveys and statistical reports that have gone viral and actually caused huge waves in the publishing industry and influenced future changes in policy and editorial decisions regarding more inclusivity for multicultural stories and writers. They were ahead of their time and only now is the rest of the country catching up to their mission statement! It is truly an honor and privilege to work with this ground-breaking publisher.
​
Paula Yoo is not only a children's book author and novelist, she's also a TV writer and producer. Her newest titles, LILY'S NEW HOME and WANT TO PLAY?, are both Junior Library Guild selections. Her picture-book biographies include: TWENTY-TWO CENTS: MUHAMMAD YUNUS AND THE VILLAGE BANK, a 2014 Junior Library Guild selection that is illustrated by Jamel Akib (Lee & Low Books 2014); SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIXTEEN SECONDS: THE SAMMY LEE STORY, an IRA Notable non-fiction title (Lee & Low Books, 2005); and SHINING STAR: THE ANNA MAY WONG STORY (Lee & Low Books, 2009), a winner of the 2010 Carter G. Woodson Award from the National Council for the Social Studies. Her young-adult novel, GOOD ENOUGH (HarperCollins 2008), was a 2009 Honor Book of the Youth Literature of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Paula is currently adapting the popular Israeli teen drama, THE GREENHOUSE, for Netflix. Her other television credits include NBC’s THE WEST WING, SyFy’s EUREKA and DEFIANCE, and Amazon’s MOZART IN THE JUNGLE. When she’s not writing, Paula teaches, plays her violin and hangs out with her three cats. You can find her online at paulayoo.com and Tweeting @PaulaYoo.

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LILY'S NEW HOME
Lee & Low's Catalog Description: "Lily and her parents move from their suburban neighborhood to New York City. Lily is used to living in a house on a quiet street. When they arrive at their new apartment, Lily notices the amount of activity all around. Kids play jump rope on one corner. Buses and taxis zoom by. Lily feels like a small ant on such a busy block and worries that she’ll never feel at home. As she and her parents explore their new, multicultural neighborhood, Lily discovers that sometimes change can be a good thing."


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(c) Shirley Ng-Benitez, Lee & Low 2016

 Shirley Ng-Benitez   


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While you were reading Paula Yoo's text for the first time, what did you imagine regarding the illustrations? What happened next in your creative process?

The first time I read Paula’s manuscript, I pictured Lily in her new environment and how worried she must have been. Lily moves from the suburb to a big city, and I put myself in her shoes as I read. I thought of Lily’s worried face, so I started to sketch Lily, first and foremost, and then the images of her new city surroundings. Maria Mercado, a freelance book designer who works with Lee & Low, gave me wonderful art direction, and through two or three iterations, we came upon the exact Lily character, as well as Lily’s new neighborhood friends. Developing New York’s avenues and apartment buildings and stores were next. The buildings and details of the apartment buildings were challenging to create, but I had great fun researching “New York apartments” and “New York streets” and seeing the details on doors and banisters to try to give the book authenticity.

Did you create character sketches for Lily, Mei, Pablo, Henry, and Padma? If so, do tell us about each one.

Yes, each character came with art direction from Lee and Low. 

Lily is an African-American girl and an only child. She's a little shy at first, but once she's comfortable, she likes to ask a lot of questions. Pablo is a Latino boy and a New York native, he's the only boy in a family of three sisters. He's a bit of a bookworm and can often be found sitting on a corner reading a book. Mei is a Chinese-American girl, and much to her dismay, she's a bit klutzy. She has an older sister and lives with her parents and grandmother. Henry is a Caucasian boy who, like Lily, is an only child. He likes to play sports, play the drums, and motivates others to participate in different local events. Padma is a South-Asian girl, who's a bit sassy and outspoken. She lives with her parents, older sister, and younger brother.  

In Lily's New Home, your urban setting seamlessly reflects diversity, both in the people and in the places depicted. How do you go about creating such authenticity in your drawings?

I am so grateful to Maria and to my Lee & Low editor, Jessica Echeverria, for such great art direction and guidance. I sketched neighborhoods, buildings, street scenes, and even a map of where the characters lived in relation to one another. I believe this greatly helped my thinking about all of the kids and their relationship to the city. I loved the scene of the community garden and enjoyed thinking about how the kids could pass by it on their way to school. Research on the internet helped as well and I was able to further develop Lily’s new neighborhood which is patterned after a borough in New York. 

What medium did you use in creating the art for Lily's New Home and Want to Play?

I used a mixed-media medium consisting of pencil, watercolors, gouache, colored pencils, and final highlights and small details in Photoshop.  

Why do you think emergent readers should see characters in books that look like they do or come from similar cultural backgrounds as they do?

I feel that emergent readers would absolutely love to see themselves reflected in books they’re learning from. If there were many, many books from which to choose, all the better in my opinion! As my children were learning to read, there were very few books with cultural-specific hero characters. More often than not, the heroes were animals or Caucasian. Along with those heroes, I think that it would’ve been exciting and inspiring for them to have a selection of books with heroes from diverse cultural backgrounds, so that they could envision themselves or their friends as heroes in the books that they were learning from.  
   
What do you love about working with publishers like Lee & Low?

This was my first opportunity to work with Lee and Low, and it has been an incredible honor and delight. From the initial stages of sketches and tight layouts, to the final printing and then marketing of the books, I received great art direction, editing, production guidance, and marketing & promotional insight. Their commitment to publishing contemporary diverse stories that all children can enjoy, and their pledge to make a special effort to work with unpublished authors and illustrators of color, is admirable and inspiring and I’m proud to have worked on this new line of books. I am very excited to have another opportunity with Lee & Low, and am currently working on two new titles in this series.

Shirley Ng-Benitez loves to draw! Nature, family, and fond memories of her youth inspire her mixed-media illustrations. Since ’98, she’s owned gabbyandco.com designing, illustrating, and lettering for the technology, greeting card, medical, toy, and publishing industries. She’s living her dream, illustrating and writing picture books in San Martin, CA with her husband and two daughters. Shirley is honored to have illustrated Paula Yoo’s Dive Into Reading early emergent readers, LILY'S NEW HOME, and WANT TO PLAY? (Junior Library Guild Selections for 2016), published by Lee and Low Books. You can find her online at shirleyngbenitez.com and Tweeting  @shirleysillos.

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WANT TO PLAY?
Lee & Low's Catalog Description: "It’s a warm, sunny day, and the gang heads to the neighborhood playground to play. What should they play? Henry wants to play basketball, and Padma wants to play Follow the Leader. Finally Pablo comes up with a great idea: to play pretend. It’s a game that everyone can do easily. They can pretend to be archaeologists, astronauts, and explorers. There’s no limit to what they imagine they can be!"


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(c) Shirley Ng-Benitez, Lee & Low 2016

​Illustrations used with permission. (c) Shirley Ng-Benitez and Lee & Low Books, 2016.

6 Comments

Spelling Pocks: Why? The Doctors' Answer.

4/9/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture(c) Cliparts.com
As I was reading one of my published projects, something jumped off the page and made me break out in a head-to-toe rash! It was the word POCKED! Don't get me wrong. Pocked would've been a perfectly fine word if what I meant was marked with pits from pustules. BUT NO! The definition I was going for was "pushed, prodded, jabbed"--POKED!  

How had I missed this obviously misspelled word? Hadn’t I poked around in my draft double-checking for spelling pocks? Is it possible that my brain read POKED even though POCKED was typed out on the page? Doctors can you tell me? Can you offer me an excuse? 

Doctor Mary C. Potter, professor of psychology with the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had this to say of my theory-query: “Your hypothesis sounds reasonable, because it fits with evidence that your expectation about what word comes next (as you read) will result in overlooking errors.”  

Doctor Alice F. Healy, professor with the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, had this to say: “I don't know of any research on your theory, but it does seem reasonable to me.” 

Ah, ha! I’m feeling less-itchy already. 

Both Healy and Potter, along with numerous other neuroscientists and psychologists, have done quite a bit of research in the area of proofreading psychology, and have learned much about the way the brain processes words (and spots misspellings) while reading. What they have discovered from their decades of research is interesting, indeed. 

One conclusion they made is that, when we read, our brains often employ “automatic processing” of words. That is, our brains recognize words as entire units rather than as individual letter strings. Thus, misspelled words, especially those that contain the same letters, make the same sounds, or look similar to the correctly spelled word are often overlooked as being misspelled, even though subjects are specifically looking for misspellings.  
For example, one experiment noted that when a letter within a word is replaced with a similar looking and sized letter, creating a misspelling--thc instead of the for instance--more often than not the misspelling is not discovered. 

Another experiment explored the idea that our brains use “lexical priming” while reading. This experiment concluded that if a word such as duck is misspelled dack within a sentence where the context makes it clear that duck is meant, our brains will read duck though dack is written! And if the nonsensical dack appears in a list of real words like deck and duck, its appearance as nonsensical is not clearly revealed to the eye as nonsensical. 

So what’s a girl to do when she wants to find a misspelled word like POCKED if her brain reads POKED while proofreading?

Healy replies: “As for suggestions on how to see your spelling errors of this type, I recommend that you simply proofread more slowly, reading each word aloud as it is written. Or better yet, ask a friend to proofread your material before sending it off someplace where the errors might be critical.” 

Potter suggests that “If you have the time to wait a day or two before re-reading, that might help.” 

As for me, next time I’m proofreading, I think I'll re-read every sentence from right to left. Maybe then my brain will neutralize all spelling pocks. And if that hypothesis proves false, then I'll just have to wait for researchers like Healy and Potter to discover a surefire cure for all spelling pocks. 

1 Comment

    About Me

    Dionna is a spinner of children's yarns, a weaver of nonfiction, and a forever-learner enrolled in the Institute of Imaginative Thinking. Her kidlit work has appeared on the pages of  Cricket, Spider, and Ladybug. As a work-for-hire author, she's written projects for Scholastic, Lerner, Capstone, Little, Brown and other educational publishers. Her middle-grade, MAMA'S CHICKEN & DUMPLINGS, will be released by Holiday House come 2024. An SCBWI member since 2005, Dionna is represented by ​Kelly Dyksterhouse and 
    Jacqui Lipton of The Tobias Literary Agency.


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