BTW News Briefs

International Literacy Association Releases Flier of 2016 Notable Books for a Global Society

The Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group of the International Literacy Association has released a downloadable flier of its 2016 Notable Books for a Global Society.

The list features 25 titles for children from pre-K through grade 12 that reflect diversity in the broadest sense and celebrate a wide variety of voices and topics.

The flier can be downloaded here.

50,000 Books Go to Children in Need Through PRH #GiveaBook Campaign

Through it social media-based campaign #GiveaBook, Penguin Random House has donated 50,000 books to children in need over the holiday season. There were nearly 50,000 uses of the hashtag #GiveaBook on Twitter and in posts to the GiveaBook, Penguin Random House, and Givington pages on Facebook from November 16 through December 24, 2015. Each use of #GiveaBook as a tweet and post triggered a book donation by Penguin Random House to the literacy nonprofit First Book.

#GiveaBook was created in 2014 by the Penguin Random House Sales team to promote books as gifts and to make books available to children in need. The heart of #GiveaBook has been online participation.

PEN America to Honor J.K. Rowling, Michael Pietsch

J.K. Rowling will receive the 2016 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award at PEN America’s annual Literary Gala on May 16 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. PEN said, “As violence from Mexico to Russia and China to France this year has forced many to consider compromising democratic values in a shortsighted bargain for security, Rowling and other writers … have joined PEN in defending freedom of expression and the free flow of ideas." Rowling’s charitable trust, Volant, supports causes in the U.K. and abroad that alleviate social exclusion, with particular emphasis on women and children, and Lumos, a nonprofit she founded in 2005, works to help the eight million children institutionalized around the world regain their right to a family life. As her own work has become the target of censors, PEN said, “Rowling has emerged as a vocal proponent of free expression and access to literature and ideas for children, as well as incarcerated people, the learning-disabled, and women and girls worldwide.”

PEN will also honor Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch for his leadership in the fight against censorship. PEN noted that in his 30 years as an editor, “Pietsch has championed the power of the unrestrained word. In 2015, Pietsch helped galvanize American publishers in a PEN initiative to resist official censorship in China, leading to a pledge by top houses to address unauthorized changes in translations. This year, Hachette published Charlie Hebdo editor Charb’s posthumous anti-censorship work, Open Letter. Pietsch has also contributed vocally to the conversation about publishers’ roles in the changing landscape for writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers."