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books

#1000BlackGirlBooks Donation Fund Drive Book List

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Black Girls

 

In Mid-January, a story about 11-year-old Marley Dias and her quest to collection 1000 books about black girls hit the internet. Or maybe the correct phrasing of that is that it hit the internet in a way where it picked up attention and got spread far and wide in the book community. Almost immediately, I knew I wanted to do what I could to help this fabulous girl collect the books she wanted to meet her goal.

Like last year, I thought putting it out there that I’d take up donations would work. But unlike the Some Girls Are drive, rather than collect books and send them to Marley, I opened up my Paypal account to accept donations, which I’d then funnel into sending her book after book after book.

Nearly $3000 came in from the drive, which is fabulous and powerful. I still have a couple hundred dollars left to spend, and it’s my idea to get in touch with the people behind this project and help fill in any additional holes.

One of the fun, frustrating, and challenging elements of this drive was selecting the books to send. I let anyone who donated choose a title or two (or ten, it didn’t matter!) to send, but I limited to one copy of each title. I did this knowing that some titles, like brown girl dreaming and Pointe would be requested again and again and be sent again and again. There’s nothing wrong with that in the least, especially for a library like the one Dias is working toward, but I wanted to offer a further range of titles, too. Thanks to the hard work of dedicated people like Zetta Elliott and Edi Campbell, I was able to really dig deep into the world of kid lit featuring black girls at the center of the story. In addition to utilizing their incredible resources, I tapped into the brains of Sarah Hannah Gomez, Justina Ireland, and Anne Ursu, who all provided a wealth of title ideas for sending.

Justina further pointed something out to me that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about. It only took $2500 to collect nearly every black girl book in children’s/middle grade/YA/crossover adult. These books have limited shelf lives, as numerous titles were tough to track down or required me going through third parties to collection. Do you know how sad it is to think that that amount of money is all it takes to buy nearly everything?

I’m thrilled we could do this, but it didn’t hit me how difficult finding black girl books truly was until I’d exhausted the obvious, exhausted the less obvious, and still have some money left over to find further titles.  I am eager to see how Marley completes this dream of hers, as well as what her library will look like, but I’m also saddened to see so clearly the very thing she was talking about (and that so many others have and continue talking about): these books are not out there, not obvious, and that needs to change. I also ran into seeing just how few graphic novels offer black girls at the center of the story.

As promised, here’s a round-up of nearly everything I purchased for #1000BlackGirlBooks. This list is so long and took a long time to compile, so forgive any errors or mistakes. I’m doing what I can to designate titles by category — picture books and early readers, middle grade, YA, adult, and graphic novel. I’ve starred titles within each of those categories that are non-fiction, and all links will take you to Amazon. I’m choosing to do it that way because I’m using Amazon as my way of gauging ages for some of the titles, and it’s where I made my purchases for Marley because of the ability to track purchases and ensure quick delivery.

I used my librarian brain when buying these, knowing these will be used in libraries. That means there are award winners here, as well as popular books, as well as pop culture leaning title. This is a mix of a little of everything, just as it should be.

Ready? Here we go.

 

Picture Books/Early Reader Titles

 

 

Middle Grade (some are higher level and some lower)

 

 

Young Adult

 

 

Adult (with crossover appeal)

 

 

Graphic Novels

 

 

All The Rage by Courtney Summers: Blog Tour and Giveaway

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I’ve talked a bit about All The Rage by Courtney Summers here prior to its release. Now that it’s out, we’re taking part in the blog tour for the book — because Courtney is a friend, I won’t review the book, but I wanted to talk about why it’s one you need to read and talk a bit about the quote above.

One of the big images throughout the book is that of red lipstick and red nail polish. They’re the main character Romy’s armor; they’re a way of her having a ritual and control in a world where

There’s a moment when the pair of school mannequins, which are there for school spirit, become a means for Romy’s peers to bully her. In one scene, the Jane mannequin has her lips colored in red, so there’s no doubt she’s being used as a means to mocking Romy. When Romy sees this — and she anticipates a certain level of being made fun of and ridiculed because she’s the girl who dared speak up about the school’s golden boy who raped her — she tries to scrape off the color.

Romy’s former best friend Penny watches this happen, and it’s when Romy catches her watching on, she feels not only betrayed, but she feels a thousand knives of betrayal. She decides then and there she can’t handle being at school any longer, so she leaves and goes home.

The quote above, “It all feels too close,” is when she gets home and she can’t make up her mind about what to do. Everything claws at her at once: wanting to hide away in her room — one that doesn’t feel like hers yet, since she and her mother have just moved into a place with Todd, her mother’s romantic other — and wanting to flee and put space between her and the world she inhabits. Here’s the entire passage:

I stand in the sun porch and the quiet pulls at me, and different parts of me want different things. There’s the part
of me that wants to go inside and sleep. There’s the part of
me that wants space, distance, because it all feels too close.

The part of me that wants to go is louder. 


This may feel small, but it’s a huge piece throughout the book and ultimately, swings back to the conclusion of the book, too. What Romy feels is this constant push and pull, but it’s the desire to go — to step outside her own situation and her own skin and her own place of hiding — that seems to be louder.

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The biggest theme running through Summers’s book is the importance of believing girls. By believing them, we let them speak their truths. We hear their stories, however raw and painful they may be. And the more we hear them, the more we let their voices stand. The more we then, in turn, believe their voices even more.

To celebrate the release of All The Rage, Courtney created a hashtag campaign aimed at offering insight, advice, and voice to girls everywhere in #ToTheGirls. For those who may have missed it as it trended worldwide, there have been nice write ups in the New York Times, BlogHer, the Huffington Post, MTV, and a shout out on The Today Show. This is well-worth sharing with teenagers, as the advice shared here is powerful, moving, and could be life-changing. I ended up dropping off the spare ARC I had of the book into the local Little Free Library, which is located between the middle school and high school, with a note about the hash tag, hoping a girl sees it, reads it, and is moved by it.

This month, I had the honor and privilege of having Courtney Summers in conversation with the legendary Laurie Halse Anderson on the topics of feminism, sexual violence, and the importance of girls’ stories. Please read this — both women are phenomenally passionate, well-spoken, and what they have to say can, and will, change lives.

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Thanks to St. Martin’s Press, I’ve got a copy of All The Rage to give away to one lucky winner in the US or Canada. Here’s the official description:

The sheriff’s son, Kellan Turner, is not the golden boy everyone thinks he is, and Romy Grey knows that for a fact. Because no one wants to believe a girl from the wrong side of town, the truth about him has cost her everything-friends, family, and her community. Branded a liar and bullied relentlessly by a group of kids she used to hang out with, Romy’s only refuge is the diner where she works outside of town. No one knows her name or her past there; she can finally be anonymous. But when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing after a party, and news of him assaulting another girl in a town close by gets out, Romy must decide whether she wants to fight or carry the burden of knowing more girls could get hurt if she doesn’t speak up. Nobody believed her the first time-and they certainly won’t now-but the cost of her silence might be more than she can bear.

With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women in a culture that refuses to protect them.

I’ll select a winner on or around May 5.