On June 8, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Impact and Legacy Fund put on a virtual conference, “Children’s Book Changemakers,” devoted to the freedom to read and social justice. SCBWI executive director Sarah Baker announced that the event would include “luminaries of children’s literature,” and civil rights leader Ruby Bridges and author Henry Winkler were among the headliners.
According to SCBWI founder and ILF managing director Lin Oliver, approximately 900 people attended the live Zoom event and an additional 500 streamed the recording. (The recording is still available, minus Bridges’s conversation with Oliver.) In addition to author talks, the event included award-winning essays by two teen freedom to read activists, introduced by the National Coalition Against Censorship.
‘I Like to Say I Was Born for This’
Oliver spoke with Bridges, who has taught young readers about civil rights in her middle grade reader This Is Your Time and picture book I Am Ruby Bridges. Her forthcoming picture book, Dear Ruby, Hear Our Hearts (Scholastic, Jan. 2024), is a collection of letters from young people along with her responses.
Bridges told Oliver that she used to resist writing or speaking about her place in history, but now feels more accepting of her public role: “I like to say I was born for this.” She attributed her circumstances in part to “fate. Sometimes destiny, the path for us, is already chosen and laid out. Because it’s not a path that I would have chosen for myself and didn’t for a very long time.”
Bridges was six years old in New Orleans’s Lower 9th Ward in 1960, when the NAACP asked for volunteers to integrate two segregated Louisiana schools. “When that knock came at the door, my mother jumped at the opportunity,” Bridges recalled, although her father, a sharecropper and a Korean War veteran, hesitated. “My parents would say that if we, as African Americans, wanted to see change, [we] had to step up to the plate to make that happen.” Of 150 children who signed up for the NAACP project, all but six were disqualified by a racist testing practice designed to restrict school admission. On the November day that Bridges and two other girls were to integrate William Frantz Elementary, the other two dropped out, “and I went alone,” Bridges said.
“It’s important for our listeners to understand that what protected me was the innocence of a child: being six and not having a clue as to what was really happening around me,” Bridges said of the vitriol she faced as a first grader. She now considers herself “a peacemaker. I will never attack—that’s not who I am. But I will fiercely defend. You do need to stand up for what’s right.” She says she considers herself “a vehicle” for making change and establishing peace, through her written words and lectures.
“You are the total deal, a complete role model for all of us,” Oliver told Bridges, calling her “a radiant force.”
Reaching Young Readers
Oliver next spoke with her co-author, actor and director Henry Winkler, who she deemed a changemaker for his commitment to writing about learning disabilities in a way that reaches young readers. Oliver and Winkler co-wrote the Hank Zipzer series, and Winkler’s forthcoming memoir Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond (Celadon, Oct.) describes his childhood and his successful media career.
Over the years Winkler has been surprised by how his middle grade fiction resonates with families and children. “I would always mention my dyslexia because it was part of me,” he said, but other people “wouldn’t mention it at all. Parents would come up to me and go, ‘I am so ashamed because I treated my children as if they were lazy, not trying as hard as they could.’ You write what you know. It’s OK to mention it.”
He advised listeners to look beyond personal shortcomings. “Change is hard and change is slow,” he said. “Change in the way you feel about yourself is so painstakingly slow. But it’s a must, and it is achievable.” When Oliver asked him how to effect positive change when communicating with children, Winkler responded, “The more you write your truth, the more magnetic it will be.” He also advised using humor: “If you can add a sense of joy to your writing,” conveying the fun of storytelling, “I think you’re ahead of the game.”
Student Activists Take the Mic
The Impact and Legacy Fund also invited two teen free speech advocates to read short essays about banned or challenged books they’ve found unforgettable, underscoring the message that young readers need books that inform and provoke. NCAC youth free expression director Christine Emeran brought student writers Neve Bonura-Learnard (Newbury, Ma.) and Harsidak Singh (Arlington, Va.) onscreen to talk about their chosen novels.
Bonura-Learnard said John Green’s debut novel, Looking for Alaska, became a lodestar when her mental health was at a low point. While reading the roman à clef, “I forgave myself for hurting,” Bonura-Lerneard said. “I’m not exaggerating when I say this book pulled me out of a dark place.”
Singh selected another stellar debut, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. “As a South Asian male, I had always struggled with feeling disconnected with my heritage, constantly struggling to find stories and characters that truly represented my experience,” Singh said. “But when I read The Kite Runner, it was like a piece of me had been unearthed and brought to light. For the first time, I saw a depiction of my culture that was authentic and unapologetic.”
After the young writers shared their work, they discussed book banning with novelist Ellen Hopkins, whose books What About Will and Crank, among others, have stirred controversy. Bonura-Learnard expressed a belief that literature should be about connecting readers across diverse experiences, to “inspire social justice and change.” Singh said teens value complex discussions about books with “no right or wrong answer” and seek literature that challenges world views.
“Both of you have been nominated for public office” by people in the Zoom chat, Oliver told the teen participants.
In the second half of the event, ILF previewed a coming series of author interviews, available to all audiences, starting in July with a talk by 2022 Sydney Taylor Award recipient Jane Yolen. Three ILF-sponsored awards—including the Stephen Fraser Encouragement Fund, the Russell Freedman Award for Nonfiction, and the new Charlotte and Wilbur Award for Compassion for Animals—were announced. And after an introduction by anti-bullying activist and mental health specialist Tara Michener, Tami Charles read her picture book All Because You Matter, illustrated by Bryan Collier.
The multifaceted presentation highlighted how ILF plans to deploy awards, grants, and programming in support of diverse creators and the children’s book community.
