Celebrating I'M NEW HERE

The September 19 launch party and film preview for I'm New Here was wonderful. Master-minded and MC-ed by the ever brilliant and resourceful Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, the event drew some 70 people, including this crew from the filming at Hall School:

 

Hall School Community Coordinator Tina Mikkelson (l), with student video stars, teacher Anne Nordstrom, 

me,  filmmaker Fred Ben, and Kirsten Cappy (background)

I read the book and we shared Fred's video of students talking about being new and being welcoming: 

and his interview of me talking about creating the book:

Read a post about the making of the video.

People wrote messages about what it feels like to be new and how to welcome...

 

And shared welcome signs in our photo booth.

My Charlesbridge editor, Julie Bliven 

Our official paparazzi, Pious Ali, who in a former life was a fashion photographer in Ghana

Thanks to my hardworking intern, University of Southern Maine art student Caitlyn Hubbard, who greeted everyone at the door.

I'm New Here RELEASED

My latest book, I'm New Here, launches into the world today! Though it's brand new, some exciting things are happening with it already:

• A starred review in Kirkus! - "heartfelt and poetically rendered" (see 5/24/15 post)

• In June,  children's book advocate extraordinaire, Kirsten Cappy of Curious City and I presented a workshop, "New Immigrants, New Approaches: Serving Your Community's Deep Diversity with Programming and Acquisition," at the American Library Association conference in San Francisco - and just received the report that we got stellar evaluations! We introduced I'm New Here as we talked about the stages of adjustment for immigrant children and our project about children's literature featuring new arrivals, I'm Your Neighbor Books.

Our entire presentation is available as a pdf here.

•  In late July, marvelous videographer Fred Ben (above, with me), Kirsten Cappy (below, R), and I met with 25 fabulous children - including Fatho (below, center) - and their wonderfully supportive teachers (thanks for making it happen, Tina Massa Mikkelson!) at Hall School in Portland, Maine.

I shared the book and we talked about being new, being different, and being welcoming. Each child drew pictures and made posters of their thoughts and feelings. The next day, we got to interview the child individually as they talked about their work. So delightful; I fell in love with every single face.

The footage from two days of filming will be shaped into a short book trailer and a longer teaching tool, to spark discussions about immigration and welcoming at schools across the country and around the world, available for the September launch.

• On Saturday, September 19, I'm New Here will be launched at an all-ages event at Portland Public Library, Portland, Maine, 2:00-4:00 p.m., during National Welcoming Week.

• On October 22, I'll be presenting this workshop at the "Language, Culture & Identity" conference of the Multilingual & Multicultural Center of Portland Public Schools, Maine:

Immigrant Children in Picture Books

A review of recent, recommended titles featuring refugee and immigrant children, focusing on the countries of origin of those currently settling in Maine. We'll explore how these books can be used to support students - and their mainstream classmates - as they move through stages of adjustment.

• On November 7, I'll be presenting I'm New Here and many other titles in a workshop for K-12 teachers entitled, "'That’s My Story!' Young Refugees and Immigrants in Children's Books," at the Northern New England TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) conference at UNH in Durham, NH.

Black Lives Matter

Those of us who create and share children's books don't do so in a vacuum. This has been a heartbreaking year of growing awareness of and horror at the depth and pervasiveness of violence directed at the African American community. The frequency of the news stories and the terrible circumstances and outcomes can overwhelm any viewer with a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

But as advocates for children, when events shake our nation, we don't have the option of being paralyzed. We are compelled to respond, to try to do something - anything - to make the world better for our children. All of our children.

With that challenge in mind, here are some links to some of the most compelling ideas that I've seen in the last several months, ideas to propel us one step forward in what many people are calling the civil rights movement of our time:

• Robin DiAngelo, Associate Professor of Critical Multicultural and Social Justice Education at Westfield State University, has coined the term "White Fragility" for the ways white people respond to racial stress:

"Our socialization renders us racially illiterate. When you add a lack of humility to that illiteracy (because we don’t know what we don’t know), you get the break-down we so often see when trying to engage white people in meaningful conversations about race... 

"This systemic and institutional control allows those of us who are white in North America to live in a social environment that protects and insulates us from race-based stress. We have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives. Further, we are centered in all matters deemed normal, universal, benign, neutral and good. Thus, we move through a wholly racialized world with an unracialized identity (e.g. white people can represent all of humanity, people of color can only represent their racial selves). Challenges to this identity become highly stressful and even intolerable."

• Ta-Nehisi Coates' brilliant, much-talked about new book, Between the World and Me, written as an extended letter to his teenage son, is a searing, penetrating read, the cumulative effect of which is to catch a glimpse, at a visceral level, of the reality of living in a black body in America:    

"The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one's eyes and forgetting the work of one's hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning towards something murkier and unknown. It is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But this is your work. Its must be, only to preserve the sanctity of your mind."                                                                         

• In a Brown Bookshelf post, "We Need NEW SHOES, More Than We May Know," children's book advocate Kirsten Cappy of Curious City poses this question:

"If books and stories change lives, if diverse books allow children of color to be seen and validated, then why is book purchasing not a major charitable action?"

In the face of hundreds of years of race-based dehumanization and violence, institutionalized racism and white supremacy, I may feel paralyzed. But I can take the next step in educating myself. I can start conversations about race with any and everyone I come into contact with. And I can keep figuring out ways to get more books featuring Black lives into the hands of all our children.