Media Decoder Blog: First Book Gives 2 Awards in Stories for All Project

A month ago a nonprofit called First Book, which promotes literacy among children in low-income communities, announced the Stories for All project, a program intended to prod publishers to print more multicultural books. Kyle Zimmer, First Book’s chief executive, says that part of the motivation was the “chasm” between the number of people who want such books and what is available.

On Wednesday, First Book will announce that awards of $500,000 will go to two publishers for their proposals for the project: HarperCollins, the big publishing house owned by News Corporation, and Lee Low, a minority-owned independent publisher.

In a 2012 study, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison evaluated some 3,600 books, looking for multicultural content. Of the books examined, 3.3 percent were found to be about African-Americans, 2.1 percent were about Asian-Pacific Americans, 1.5 percent were about Latinos and 0.6 percent were about American Indians.

Some 24 publishers responded to the competition, Ms. Zimmer said, and First Book felt that the submissions were so good that it decided to give two awards, instead of one. As part of the arrangement, First Book will add nearly 500 new books to an online store for purchase at a low cost by its member organizations, which all serve children in low-income communities.

Money for the grants comes from donations and the proceeds of sales by First Book to its members.

Ms. Zimmer said that because of the short lead time for the competition, not all of the books submitted were by new or minority authors. She said those would follow as the award and related market became better known, likening this phase to the first step in a marathon.

First Book serves people whose incomes are in the bottom third of Americans. It says that while there is great interest within low-income communities for high-quality books featuring diverse characters and cultures, publishers have not served them well because they are unsure of the market. Ms. Zimmer said that in challenging economic times, publishers “make very conservative decisions and revert to market strategies that have served them historically, but the problem is that they are missing the larger market.”

First Book argues that it is in a position to cater to that larger market and make it a force. In the last year, it has grown from roughly 23,000 member organizations, including schools, churches and shelters, to more than 50,000.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/2-awards-given-to-promote-multicultural-childrens-books/?partner=rss&emc=rss