Friday, February 12, 2021

Three Interesting Things

Between Lunar New Year Prep and a number of other things that landed this week, I got a bit off schedule.  But here we are in the Year of the Ox.  
1. In what is sadly an unsurprising escalation, a child brought a book in to class for the teacher to read, some parents objected, and as a result a program to provide kid's in that district with kids books that represent a variety of viewpoints and experiences. One of those books in that packet was "Ohana Means Family.  1 percent of the Utah population is Pacific Islander (per the US census) which is the one of the largest percentages outside of Hawai'i.  So we're talking in part about kids not getting to find books about themselves, not just about others.  
2.I felt like this article didn't always mention the costume designers that oversaw the crafting of these garments, but this piece on knitters adoring knits and such in pop culture and working to reverse engineer them was lovely. 
3. I hope NPR is ready for the flood of young listener mail.  But, an 8 year-old called out NPR for having a show called "All Things Considered" that had a shocking lack of dinosaur content.  So they invited said child on to the show to interview a paleontologist.  


Bonus: Also WriteOnCon - which I am helping out with again this week - it's a great kidlit conference with a lot of info applicable to all writers and very affordable.  Schedule is here. Bookshop is here.  (Also, if you have, ahem, another conference that week, there's a pass that gives you extended access so you can catch up at your leisure.)