At our November meeting, we discussed a range of subjects:

 1. Fatima Shaik, Elizabeth Levy, Susan Kuklin, and Mary Ann Hoberman will be visiting the New Orleans' school that our committee has adopted. Elizabeth Levy and Fatima have suggested that we have a fundraiser for our activities with the school, and we all agreed to pursue this idea.

 2. Susanna Reich and Fran Manushkin announced that the three judges of the 2008 Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Award will be Christopher Paul Curtis, Sid Fleischman, and Mitali Perkins. We urge our members to spread the word about this wonderful $5000. fellowship. Information about how to apply are on the PEN Web site.

3. Our discussion about historical revisionism and writing across cultural borders continued with great gusto. Donna Barkman brought in a New York Times article mentioning that Freedom Quilts, widely written about in picture books and novels about the slavery era, may not have been illustrated with maps leading to freedom. Sharon Dennis Wyeth, who has done extensive research on this historical period, said that the quilts' significance was the timing of their appearance on clotheslines and not necessarily their specific design. This led to the subject of all cultural groups feeling a sense of "ownership" of their history and culture and a wariness toward others writing about them.

Several of us spoke about the easier challenge of writing about characters in genre books, when the culture of the characters is peripheral to the main storyline. We agreed that the success of any book is whether the writer has created a narrative voice that is convincing to the reader. Susan Kuklin mentioned that when she worked on her book, The Harlem Nutcracker, she was told by the dancers, "We are entrusting you with a very important part of our culture." Needless to say, Susan felt this added to her sense of responsibiity toward her subject! She also mentioned the richness of the experience the writer receives when working with another culture.

M.T. Anderson's novel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, was praised as a novel that not only creates a convincing portrait of a black child, but also tells its story in a language redolent of pre-revolutionary Boston. Fran Manushkin brought in two excellent new novels by writers about their own culture: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis. Fatima Shaik and Sharon Dennis Wyeth mentioned that the vividness of these narrative voices may have been influenced by dialects the authors have heard for many years from their families and friends.

We'd like to thank Linda Winston for hosting this meeting as well as providing a delicious buffet. Bravo, Linda!

Fran Manushkin

Chair, Children's/Young Adult Committee