CBC Diversity
Month
The Sydney Taylor Book Award
External imageThe Sydney Taylor Book Award, established by the Association of Jewish Libraries in 1968, honors new books for children and teens that exemplify the highest literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience. The award memorializes Sydney Taylor, author of the classic All-of-a-Kind Family series about a Jewish family with five sisters growing up on the Lower East Side of New York City in the early 1900’s. Gold medals are presented in three categories: Younger Readers, Older Readers, and Teen Readers. Honor Books are awarded Silver medals, and Notable Books are named in each category.
While returning the dead man to his family doesn’t come without its disappointments, the most challenging portion of their trip comes on their attempt to return home to their mother, when they must defeat a witch, a nagual (warlock), a chupacabras, and a coven of lechuzas while navigating the desert of northern Mexico on foot. Can the Cinco Hermanitas truly stay “together forever, no matter what” through these challenges? Can they face the ultimate real-world challenge once they make it home, where La Llorona and other magical means can no longer assist them?
I really thought the photo of a teenage boy looking out onto his neighborhood would attract the attention of the audience I had in mind when I was writing the book — teenagers, especially boys, who don’t usually find a book that speaks to them. And I’ve since heard from lots of teens who tell me that it was the cover that initially drew them to the book.
I can’t tell you how many libraries I’ve been to where my books are not even shelved in the mainstream YA section. They are relegated to the shelf labeled “Street Lit” where the books about black people live. The same is true in some bookstores where a black person on a book cover means it’s no longer YA; it’s “Urban Fiction”.
I’m here to tell you, when it comes to books, segregation is alive and well in America.
For sixteen years, I’ve been a bookseller in small-town, semi-rural Vermont, in a region that is progressive but fairly homogenous. I spend a lot of time introducing people to new books I think they might love, and over the years, I’ve encountered the usual range of responses from white customers to books with brown faces on the covers. Many of these responses are positive; some are reluctant or downright resistant, and represent mistaken assumptions about these books, that they are limited in focus and applicable only to a narrow, nonwhite audience.
The simplified truth to the quandary about book covers is that good covers sell books, and bad covers hurt book sales. A good book with a bad cover may overcome it, but it will not reach the sales potential it could have had with a good cover. A mediocre book with a good cover will increase sales. The marriage of a good cover and a good book is what I am going to showcase.
A side lesson…
The Role of a Sales Team
A great sales team has the ability to position a book for optimal sales and builds a strategic plan around longevity of an author. A great sales team is a consultant, an educator, and a partner internally and externally. A great sales team identifies trends and/or creates them; a great sales team can make a book. A great sales team is focused on reaching the end user.
On the matter of selling content that reflects diversity…well there are as many questions as there are answers. But as in all selling, it begins and ends with the consumer, and the question, “Is what I have ‘in my bag’ as a sales strategist relevant to the consumer?”
An It’s Complicated! — Book Covers guest post by Laurent Linn, Art Director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
When looking for books, we like covers that have attractive/intriguing images and type, suggest genres we like, resemble books we’ve already enjoyed (but don’t resemble them too much as to feel derivative), and look new/current. Also extremely important is, for young readers, “Is this book about someone like me?” One little cover must carry a lot of weight.
With so many wonderful books published about kids of all types, it’s very possible for diverse kids to discover characters that resemble them. For this connection to happen, the cover design becomes incredibly important. But a cover doesn’t only need to appeal to kids (whose tastes and visual language are as diverse and evolving as they are), it has to meet the approval of art directors, editors, authors, agents, publishers, sales and marketing departments, book buyers and sellers, librarians, reviewers, parents, etc.—all of whom are adults, with their own ideas about what works. An interesting challenge, yes?
