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• Our first two books will be fantasy or science fiction, and I’ll specifically be looking for books that feature characters of color, characters from minority or non-Western cultures, and/or non-Western/minority cultures. That’s pretty broad–it could be Japanese or Jamaican, Alaskan Inuit or African American settings and/or characters, and I’m not looking for books where race is necessarily the issue–just really great stories that will entertain readers from 7 to 18 (and up, if you count me and all you folks like me!). So if you’ve got a children’s or YA novel that you think will fit this criteria, if we make our Kickstarter goal I’ll be acquiring manuscripts beginning January 1. That means you’ve got just over three months to whip that manuscript in shape! I’ll be posting more specifics for our submission guidelines as that time comes closer, so keep an eye on the Tu Publishing Submission Guidelines page. As you can imagine, just as with the critiques, during this transitional period to my day job, these website changes will be coming along sporadically. I’ll post about them here as well to alert you.

• Here’s a place to learn more about Kickstarter, if you’re interested. I think it’s providing a great service to the arts community.

• In addition, several people have asked that instead of giving them the incentive, that I give it to their local libraries, which is completely doable. If we reach the goal, I will be contacting everyone to get their mailing information to send them their rewards. At that time, if you want me to send it to your local library instead of you, all you’d need to do is let me know their address. Full books will be sent later, of course, when the first season’s books are printed.

• I’m hosting a book club tomorrow, where we’re going to discuss Justine Larbalestier‘s How to Ditch Your Fairy. The book is a fun read so far, but I need to finish it tonight! If you’re local and can’t make it tomorrow, feel free to go ahead and send your suggestions for what to read next month, so that we can have plenty of time to decide and prepare. If you can come tomorrow and need to know where to go (7 pm, my house), please drop me an email and I’ll give you the scoop.

• The new job is becoming quite fun. In my off time, I’ve slowly been getting back to authors on their critiques, so thanks again to everyone for all your patience as I transition and finish up those critiques while starting a new full-time job. Now, if I can just get health insurance going, life would be just about perfect (it’s a small non-profit based in California that uses Kaiser Permanente, which means that here in Utah I’d have no coverage with that, which means that I have to get an individual policy, which is really, really complicated when you have chronic conditions like asthma). If you’ve been wondering why I twitter so much about health care, it’s because I have a personal interest in the health care crisis, seeing as how I’m having my own personal health care crisis. Hopefully, by my talking about it openly, it will put at least one face on the discussions out there–the face of a self-employed (and now employed by a small nonprofit) worker for whom taking care of something as simple as an asthma condition becomes out of the question due to the cost of health care and insurance.

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So with this in mind, what other books am I missing that are the kind of read for kids ages 7-10, with a concentration on the 8 and 9 year olds that Wimpy Kid really hits on target? It’s an interesting niche, because it hits slightly younger than the all-prose books in the same middle grade section of the bookstore, yet slightly older than the kids reading chapter books like Magic Treehouse.

I doubt we’ll find quite as many books in that range that are as highly illustrated as Wimpy Kid, but I am looking for books with illustrations.

I’m going to start compiling a list of all the suggestions from people in various places (Facebook, Twitter, this blog and its LJ mirror):

• Supernatural Rubber Chicken by D.L. Garfinkle (except that it’s a chapter book for a slightly younger age, so perhaps it *doesn’t* meet the narrow criteria?)
• The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman (except that it doesn’t have *as many* illustrations… you get the idea. Let’s be broad for the original list so I can go check the books out and narrow things down)
• The Dork Diaries
• Dear Dumb Diary
• Flat Stanley
• Ellie McDoodle

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This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, as we’ve already discussed, but let’s talk about books I’ve already read in which the main character (not a supporting character) is a person of color. Obviously, a lot of the manga I’ve been reading lately features people of color — at least, the ones set in Japan can reasonably be assumed to be people of color. (There’s an ongoing discussion among people who know more about manga than I do that addresses this, because many people unfamiliar with manga assume that the characters are white because of the range of hair colors and because eye shape isn’t characterized with the fold that is so common to Asian people, but from what I understand, it’s just an artistic choice, not a statement on the race of the characters. It certainly makes it easier to distinguish different characters when you’ve got a range of hair colors, especially in black-and-white manga. But that’s not what this post is really about.)

So what science fiction and fantasy — specifically, for young readers — have you read lately that feature a main character of color? Here’s my list (note that even though this is a “multicultural” list, I’m deliberately leaving out fantasy inspired by Celtic culture unless it features a character of color, because such fantasy is usually the most predominant in the market. I love it, but it’s not what this list is for):

SFF books for young readers that feature multicultural characters that I’ve read

• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, 2009, by Grace Lin. I’m still working on reading this fairy-tale retelling-like tale, but so far it’s beautiful.
• Wildwood Dancing, 2007, by Juliet Marillier. This one’s a little bit of a stretch, but it is set in Romania, which is a culture we don’t see too often in non-vampire stories.
• Book of a Thousand Days, 2008, by Shannon Hale. Mongolia-inspired. Lovely, lovely fairy tale retelling. My favorite of Shannon’s books (and that’s saying something, because she writes some good books!).
• The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, 1994, by Nancy Farmer. Set in Zimbabwe in the year 2194.
• The House of the Scorpion, 2002, by Nancy Farmer. Set in the zone between the U.S. and Mexico, main character is Latino.
• Flora Segunda, 2007, by Isabeau S. Wilce, and its sequel Flora’s Dare. Set in a fantasy world inspired by a fun mix of medieval, fashion-forward, and Spanish-inspired cultures (Spain-Spanish, given how the language is used, I’m thinking, but I could be wrong).
• Little Sister,1996, by Kara Dalkey, and a sequel for which I’ve forgotten the name. Japanese folklore. This is actually one of the first multicultural fantasies I discovered way back in college, and I loved it so much, but at the time couldn’t find many more books like it.
• Magic or Madness, 2005, and its sequels by Justine Larbalestier. Reason Cansino, the main character, is an Australian of mixed race.
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin. This one has had a lot of misunderstanding over the years due to publishers in the 60s and 70s putting a white Ged on the cover, when in fact Ged and many of the other characters are dark-skinned.
• Eternal, 2009, by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Miranda is Chinese-American.
• Tantalize, 2007, by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Main character Quincie is English-Italian-Texan, and non-POV character (but featured in a graphic novel sequel) Kieren is Mexican-American. (This one’s kind of a stretch, because Quincie isn’t technically a person of color–unless that Texan part is Latino?)

ETA: How could I forget Lawrence Yep? I have one of his books, but I’m not sure where it is. The ones I’ve read of his feature Asian characters in Asian settings (Chinese? I can’t remember off the top of my head). His books are great reads.

SFF books written by authors of color (where I’ve been able to identify them) in which characters may be of ambiguous ethnicity, or ethnicity simply not mentioned

Sucks to Be Me, 2008, by Kimberly Pauley

Multicultural science fiction and fantasy on my TBR pile

• Silver Phoenix, 2009, by Cindy Pon. Set in ancient China.
• Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008, by Nahoko Uehashi, and its sequel, Moribito II. Written by a Japanese author (originally published in Japan and translated to English) and set in a culture inspired by medieval Japan.
• The Shadow Speaker, 2007, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. Set in Niger, 2070. I’ve had the ARC of this since 2007, and have been wanting to read it for forever, and keep misplacing it when I actually think of it! It’s an oversight I need to correct.
• Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu.
• Extras, 2007, by Scott Westerfeld. Main character, Aya, is Japanese, I believe. I LOVED the first three in the series (and somehow have misplaced my signed copies of the first two books ) but haven’t had a chance to catch up with this one.
• How to Ditch Your Fairy, 2008, Justine Larbalestier
• Tantalize: Kieren’s Story, by Cynthia Leitich Smith–the above-mentioned sequel to her Tantalize.
• The Animorphs series
• Chronus Chronicles by Anne Ursu
• Doret says that she’s been told the Pendragon series apparently has a black girl protagonist, despite the white boy on the cover? I’ll have to investigate that–perhaps it’s alternating viewpoints, or perhaps she’s introduced at a later point in the series? I know there is a follow-up series once the main boy protag grows up, so perhaps she’s in that?
• Devil’s Kiss, by Sarwat Chadda
• Libyrinth, by Pearl North
• The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
• Sword and Wandering Warrior by Da Chen

Multicultural fantasy that never came to be, and I lament it

Books 7 and 8 of the Hallowmere series by Tiffany Trent, which was canceled at book 6. I was so looking forward to editing Mara’s story (former slave, probably the most interesting of the Hallowmere girls because of her backstory) in book 7 and Chumana’s story (Hopi girl who Mara was going to meet in her travels through the raths) in book 8.

And books to add to my TBR pile thanks to shweta-narayan

• Across the Nightingale Floor and its sequels, by Lian Hearn. Japanese historical fantasy. I had a copy of this in Seattle, and I’m not sure where I put it. I think I must have lost it in the move to Utah.
• Annals of the Western Shore series by Ursula K. LeGuin. I remember the controversy over this cover, too–originally when Gifts came out, they’d put a white kid on the cover, too, and given LeGuin’s long history of having the cover of Earthsea whitewashed, that was a pretty big fight, and the final book ended up with I believe an Indian or Pakistani boy on the cover instead.
• Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I keep forgetting to read this one, though people keep recommending it to me. I even have a free copy from ALA a few years back.
• The Two Pearls of Wisdom (or Dragoneye Reborn as it’s known in the US) by Alison Goodman. I’ve been meaning to pick this one up. The whole mythology is inspired by Asian culture (Japanese? I can’t remember which one).
• Lavender-Green Magic, by Andre Norton.
• A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith. (Is this YA?)
• Stormwitch, by Susan Vaught
• The Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson
• A Girl Named Disaster, by Nancy Farmer
• The Wizard series by Diane Duane
• The Green Boy, by Susan Cooper
• Jin Shei trilogy by Alma Alexander
• The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, by Virginia Hamilton
• Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed, by Virginia Hamilton
• 47, by Walter Mosley
• Pemba’s Song, by Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
• The Icarus Girl, by Helen Oyeyemi
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie
• The Night Wanderer, by Drew Hayden Taylor

There are also books in which the ethnicity of the character is neutral/unclaimed, as in The Hunger Games, in which most of those who work in the Seam are dark-skinned, but of an unspecified ethnic origin (Mitali Perkins discussed this on her blog a while back), so I’m not counting it on this list but it’s still a great book.

As you can see, there are some really great books out there already, but the list is still pretty short. Can you guys help me add to it? Especially the TBR pile, though I know I’m also forgetting books that I’ve read that I just don’t have copies of. What am I missing?

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I’m trying out this “insert gallery” option. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try individual pictures. We’ll see!

ETA: Whoops! I’m fixing it!

Okay, to purge the photo files, before we get to the festival, here are some shots from the recent book signing by Carol Lynch Williams, at which she read a portion of her book, The Chosen One, as well. I have an ARC and can’t wait to read it. Just have to catch up on work first!

Notice how Cheri Earl (Carol’s partner in crime on many endeavors, most notably the BYU Writing for Young Readers conference every June) must either make a face at me for taking her picture, or turn away. It’s all a ploy to show off her cute hair.

Mogget likes to read, too.

Now, on to the festival! They had a puppet show for the kids (the farmer’s animals kept making all the wrong noises! cats baaing, cows meowing–what is a poor farmer to do? turns out he forgot to read their owner’s manual.) Shannon and Dean Hale performed an interpretive dance of their collaboration project, and authors who signed books all afternoon include Emily Wing Smith, Aprilynne Pike, Brandon Mull, Brandon Sanderson, James Dashner, Carol Lynch Williams, Mette Ivie Harrison, Jessica Day George, Shannon and Dean Hale, and many, many others.

The end. Say good night, Mogget.

Good night, Mogget!

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• Halfway through Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce ([ljuser]tammypierce[/ljuser]). I liked her Alanna series, but I LOVE this latest series in the Tortall world featuring Beka Cooper, one of Alanna’s ancestors. The narration on the audiobook of the first book, Terrier, was just awesome–I’m not sure where the narrator’s accent was from, but it fit the story perfectly. I’m a slow reader in print, though–probably because I do so much reading for work–so I’ve had it for a week and I’m only about halfway through, like I said. But so far, that halfway part is good stuff.
• ARC of The Maze Runner by James Dashner, which I had a little tiny bit of a hand in, so it’s excited to see the end product. (True story: I wanted it. Couldn’t acquire it for a multitude of reasons, had to say no. A week later, James sold it to Delacourt. Delacourte! [picture me there, fists to the sky, like Stephen Colbert] I’m really glad to see he found an editor who saw the vision of the book and took it probably farther than I could. So far, everything about the book is far and beyond better than what I read in manuscript form. Which it should be! That’s what the editorial process is for.)
• ARC of I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells. He’s big in Europe. Seriously! His first YA thriller came out already in England, though it won’t be published here until next year. The concept: a kid who is a sociopath but is trying not to grow up to become a serial killer. Creepy stuff! I haven’t read this book yet, but I’m excited for Dan, who is a personal friend, and looking forward to the read.
• ARCs and full books of How to Ditch Your Fairy, Graceling, Skinned, Wintergirls, Skin Hunger, The Thief, Nightmare Academy, Kiki Strike, The Lightning Thief… the list goes on and on. Actually, all in that list were final books–I’m way behind, still, on my reading. I thought going freelance would give me more time for reading, but instead I find that I spend even more time working just to make ends meet, so when I’m done working I just want to do something else! Hence the anime craze lately.

What are you reading lately?

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YA Literature and Mormon Literature
UVU Library
2:30 p.m., Feb. 28th

I’ll be the moderator, and several LDS authors who write for young adults will be there (I was told who some of them were verbally, but I don’t have a list), as will the teen librarian from the Orem Public Library. Should be a really good panel!

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