Registration for the Online Winter Conference Now Open! |
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Portion of banner art by Jennin Mohammed |
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If you thought the Summer Spectacular was spectacular, you’ll be amazed at what we are offering for the annual Winter Conference taking place live on ZOOM February 19-21, 2021! The conference includes the dynamic keynotes and industry panels you’d expect from our international events, plus special New York insider publishing offerings, such as a behind the scenes tour of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, a mock acquisition meeting from the team at Delacorte Press and a book design meeting from the team at Scholastic. This is a rare opportunity to have a fly-on-the-wall look at all that goes into acquiring and producing children’s books. Come see how your fate is decided in the halls of New York publishing houses!
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New Recommended Reading List LaunchesThis Month |
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SCBWI’s first themed Recommended Reading List launched yesterday with the November theme of Celebrate Kindness. All of the books on this consumer-focused list involve some form of empathy, warmth, and compassion. Invitations for our next list, Holiday Celebrations, will hit your mailboxes on November 9, so get your Holiday books (published by PAL publishers) ready to submit! Future lists will include Family Time for January, Black History Month for February, Women’s History Month for March, and Celebrate the Earth for April.
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2020 BookStop Surpasses 2019 Results |
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BookStop has taken off with total pageviews of your books already approaching last year’s final total. Your wonderful writing and brilliant illustration are leading book readers to your pages.
As of press time our BookStop numbers look like this:
– Total pageviews: 46,508
– 1,282 pages have been created by 770 independently published members and 512 by traditionally published
– 657 picture books, 224 middle grade, 143 YA, 82 nonfiction, and 61chapter books among the many entries with audiobooks, levelled readers, resource books, board and novelty, and graphic novels all making good showings, too.
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SCBWI Connects for the Holidays |
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We’re one month away from the start of free, great content! Thanks to our PAL members, the holiday edition of SCBWI Connects will be gifting the public with some great educational material that highlights the diversity of the holidays. Starting December 1, caregivers, educators, and students looking for a port to learn and connect will have access to member-created resources that include a poetry lesson and interview with award-winning author Irene Latham, a STEM exploration activity that nurtures motor skills by author and dance educator Connie Bergstein Dow, and a slew of in- and outdoor activities that share Christmas stories, Hanukkah traditions, secular teachings, and Buddhist values. And this is just the beginning!
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Why I Vote
by Brandy Colbert
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In my latest young adult novel, The Voting Booth, protagonist Marva Sheridan has been waiting for Election Day her whole life. At eighteen, it’s the first time she can vote, and she’s been working to get out the vote for years, text-banking, phone-banking, and going door to door to talk to constituents.
However, the other protagonist, Duke Crenshaw, only heads to the polls before school because his mother insists on it—and because he’s pretty sure his late activist brother “will haunt the shit out of [him]” if he doesn’t vote.
I’m often asked by readers if I identify more with Marva or Duke, and the truth is, I’m a little bit of both.
I don’t remember a pivotal moment when I realized the significance of voting; really, I grew up just knowing it was something I had to do when I turned eighteen. My civic responsibility; one I should commit to for the rest of my life. A right my Black Southern ancestors continued to fight for decades after women won the vote in 1920.
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October Award Winners
2020 Sue Alexander Award
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Earlier this month, SCBWI announced the winner of the Sue Alexander award, a promising manuscript chosen from those submitted for individual critiques by editors and agents at the SCBWI Summer Spectacular.
This year's winner was Kristen Kiesling for "If I Tell", a Young Adult mystery novel, described by the author as "Dear Evan Hansen meets Big Little Lies. When a sixteen-year-old is involved in a hit-and-run, she embeds herself in the victim’s family only to discover they have secrets of their own."
The Honor winner was Brenda Scott Royce for "Janet of the Apes", a YA contemporary summarized here: "Working with chimpanzees was not on Janet Rhodes’ summer agenda, but an urgent request draws the teenager back to an Africa she doesn’t remember, a mother she barely knows, and the apes she blames for tearing her family apart."
Kristen Kiesling's synopsis and first ten pages will be presented to an esteemed group of hand-selected editors and agents. To learn more about the Sue Alexander Award, visit the official award page.
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The SCBWI is also thrilled to announce the first ever winners of the New Voices in Nonfiction Scholarship, This scholarship, which grants free tuition to the SCBWI/Smithsonian Nonfiction Online Workshop (November 6-9), was intended for BIPOC creators who have never published a nonfiction book in the children’s book market.
Out of 200 applicants from both SCBWI members and non-members, the judges chose 25 lucky winners:Tonya Abari, Marzieh Abbas, Ugochinyelu Anidi, Frances Cha, Cassandra Etienne, Sophia Ezomoghene, Yoly Mancilla Fernandez, Geronima Garza, Laurie Goodluck, Sanjeevi Gunarathna, Jorge Inzunza, Meenakshi Khanna, Denise Lajimodiere, Latarsha Lytle, Nkuchia M'ikanatha, M McDaniel, Ana Otaru, Ainissa Ramirez, Maria Rodriguez, Vaishali Shroff, Rey Sirakavit, FB Smit, Meliné Topouzian, Linda Washington, and Karen Yin.
SCBWI is happy to provide an opportunity for these talented writers, and hopes to see many new books come from this inaugural program
CLICK HERE for more information about the New Voices in Nonfiction Grant.
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Giving Tuesday with SCBWI |
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For the first time ever, we will be participating in Giving Tuesday (December 1) in order to benefit creators with disabilities. Between now and the end of December, we ask that any donations you give to the SCBWI be tagged with #GivingTuesday (in the PayPal or check memo) if you’d like them dedicated to scholarships, grants, and accessibility resources for people with disabilities. While we gratefully accept donations any time of year, we know that 2020 has been particularly challenging for many of us. If giving financially isn’t feasible for you right now, we hope that you will consider many of the other options on the Giving Tuesday website, like giving your voice, time, talent, extra belongings, teamwork, and kindness.
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Nurturing the Creative Spirit
by Donna Gephart
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Having a hard time focusing and feeling productive these daze, er days? Who isn’t? Here are some ways to connect with your bookish community, and your own creative soul, that help me be productive during these challenging, distracting times.
1. Check in with an accountability buddy. Angela DeGroot and I begin each workday with an email sharing our goals for the day and catching up on each other’s lives. Sometimes we end our workdays with a quick email to say whether we reached our goals on not. During National Poetry Month in April, Angela includes a new poem with each daily check-in.
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SCBWI Illustrator Day: How I Learned the Trade
by Rebecca Jordan-Glum
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It’s registration time for the SCBWI Winter Conference, which will surely be as wonderful as every conference SCBWI has ever held, including the most recent all-virtual summer one that I found especially inspiring. And SURE, the conference speakers will make us want to laugh and cry as they share hard truths and poignant insights.
You will also, no doubt, laugh out loud and perhaps even find yourself dabbing an actual literal tear from your eye when you recognize yourself in the stories of struggle and inspiration, like when Justin Chanda tells you with all certainty that “Your talent is nothing short of alchemic and mystical!” or Susan Rich conspiratorially shares about reading art notes from illustrators —“I can read smudge marks on a dinner napkin.” Or when Melissa Manlove emphatically states “The lightening bolt hits the person who’s been crankin’ the generator.” And especially when Judy Blume gently reminds you that “When you write for kids, you have to be on their side, no matter what story you’re telling.” If you’ve ever been to an SCBWI conference, you know exactly what I’m talking about and if you haven’t, I’m sure your twitter feed was overflowing with gushy posts during conference time every year.
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SCBWI Exclusive With...
Chad Beckerman
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This summer Chad W. Beckerman joined the CAT agency. He brings over 20 years of illustration and design experience to the agency. After studying illustration as an undergrad at RISD, Chad went on to be a Designer at Scholastic, a Senior Designer at Greenwillow Books, and then became the Creative Director at ABRAMS Kids and Comic Arts, where he spent 13 years overseeing the design of 250 books a year–from picture books, to novels, to graphic novels and art and entertainment books. Chad is behind the aesthetic of over forty New York Times bestselling and award-winning books including the blockbuster Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney; the Caldecott honor and Coretta Scott King Award winning Trombone Story, illustrated by Brian Collier; and the Newbery Medal honor books El Deafo and Heart of the Samurai.
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There are still a few more days until the SCBWI/Smithsonian Online Nonfiction Workshop (November 6-7, 2020) which means there's still time to register! CLICK HERE to sign up. |
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Draw This! is our monthly prompt word for illustrators. Artists can post their DrawThis! entries on Twitter and Instagram.
There is no longer a gallery for DrawThis! View the October entries by searching the tag #SCBWIDrawThis.
Congratulations to the October winners! The prompt word was "VOTE"
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Due to Instagram's freeze on all general tags, we are unfortunately unable to see all of the Draw This! entries. Once the freeze ends (after the election), we will post the October winning entries on our social media channels. We apologize for the inconvenience! |
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The November prompt word is: "SNEAKY"
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Want to appear in the next issue of INSIGHT? Post a picture to social media and tag it #FacesofSCBWI |
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Digital Workshop with interpreter Brian Truitt, author Elana K. Arnold, and
author Brandy Colbert.
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Digital Workshop with SCBWI Associate Executive Director Sarah Baker, interpreter Jennye Kamin, and author/illustrator James Ransome. |
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