Posted on October 18, 2019 at 12:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Children’s lit never fails to bring a nostalgic smile to our faces.

(Remember how you could spend all summer reading back then? Yeah, we miss that too.)

So here are two updates from the children’s section, to perk you up.

Actress Lupita Nyong’o has joined the ranks of entertainers-turned-kids-authors, with her new release, Sulwe.

Nyong’o, whose breakthrough roles came in 12 Years A Slave and Black Panther, didn’t always have the confidence that success has brought her now.

She tells NPR’s Noel King that even at age five, she envied her younger sister’s much-lighter complexion and the praise it received.

That, plus other external messages about the value of light versus dark skin, ultimately inspired her to write Sulwe, about a little girl just like herself, who learns to see herself as beautiful.

You can read Nyong’o and King’s conversation on NPR or listen to it below.

And in other kid-lit news, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award — the most lucrative children’s literature prize, with a purse of nearly $516,000 — has received 237 nominations.

The Guardian reports that twenty British authors/illustrators are on the list, followed by thirteen Swedes, twelve Australians, and eleven Americans.

The Guardian highlights a few well-known and less-famous nominees in its article, but you can see a full list on the ALMA website 

Categories: Today in Books

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