Episode # 41: Think Before You Tweet
Alvina and Grace catch up on each other’s lives and talk about the perils of social media this week.
Bulletin board seen on one of Grace’s school visits.
Grace has been traveling all over the country for school visits!
While promoting her books, she ends up not writing and illustrating as much and sometimes struggles with how this feels. “Do people judge me?”, she wonders. She doesn’t want the promotional side to make her look LESS like an author because she’s not busy creating. Both the business and the creative are necessary though to be a successful author and illustrator. Check out the kind of fun promotional projects she has been working on her blog at Gracelinblog.com! She has a special Holiday Promotion going on! She will be autographing a Where The Mountain Meets the Moon boxset that you can purchase through the Eric Carle Museum.
Where The Mountain Meets The Moon Boxset:
For a limited time just for the holidays, order this gift set and get an exclusive, made-just-for-this-box-set map of Minli's land by Grace Lin! This offer exclusive to The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
Another fun side-project that Grace has been working on….a new podcast! This one is called Kids Ask Authors. This will be a weekly 10-15 minute podcast where Grace Lin and a guest author will answer one question from a child reader each week. We hope that this podcast will be useful to all student writers and those helping them on their journey!
Right now, we are collecting questions from kids! If a child you know has a question they would like to ask an author, please submit it! You can send it though the submission forms or, if you are tech savvy, send us an audio file. Go to kidsaskauthors.com!
Meanwhile, Alvina has been busy going to several book events and making sure she gets all of her dr. appointments in by the end of the year! She went to the National Coalition Against Censorship Gala, their art show, then dinner at The Society of Illustrators, and also went to the CBC Diversity panel for their honorees. She also attended the New York Times Best Illustrated Luncheon which was fun because a book she edited was honored; “I Miss my Grandpa” by Jin Xioajing. The debut picture book won the Little Brown Books For Young Reader’s Emerging Artist Award.
The main topic of conversation on today’s episode is about the power of social media. The chat was inspired by a recent event involving author Sarah Dessen. She posted a screenshot of a quote that she was hurt by and what ensued was a total war on twitter. What Sarah didn’t realize is that we don’t realize the power or platform that we have sometimes. Grace and Alvina discuss the responsibility that comes with having such power and influence and how quickly things can downward spiral on the internet. They talked about how to handle criticism, bad reviews, and negative feedback on the world wide web.
As always, the book friends end the episode with sharing what they are grateful for. Alvina is thankful that she lives in a place where she has such easy access to the arts. She recently saw the play, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord! Grace is thankful for her Middle Grade group of writers. They talk about where they are in their careers. She’s grateful that they reminded her that she is a writer first, before a promoter or anything else.
2-Minute Book Reviews by Alison Morris:
Allie All Along- by Sarah Lynne Reul
The War that Saved My Life - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Alison Morris is a nationally recognized children's book buyer with an infectious enthusiasm for reading and 20 years' experience matching books to readers. As the Senior Director of Title Selection for nonprofit First Book, she oversees the curation of children’s and young adult books on the First Book Marketplace, hand-selecting a diverse range of titles that speak to and address the needs of kids in underserved communities, with a keen eye to inclusion, authenticity, and kid-appeal. She previously served as Senior Editor at Scholastic Book Clubs, Children's Book Buyer for Wellesley Booksmith and The Dartmouth Bookstore, and was the founding blogger of the ShelfTalker children’s book blog for Publishers Weekly. She'll be joining us from her home near Washington, DC where she spends LOTS of time discussing books with her husband, illustrator and graphic novelist Gareth Hinds.
