ACHUKA Children's Books UK

children's & YA recommendations on the go

You are here: Home / Archives for youth

I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes ill. Gordon C James

By Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 17 Feb 2021

Waterstones
Amazon
Bookshop

“Gordon C James’s painted portraits brim with spirit and dignity. The result is a truly special book by an American author-illustrator duo at the top of their game…” GUARDIAN

“Barnes and James provide us with a range of powerful, positive names to call Black boys as they urge us to see them, to love them, and to let them live their lives as they deserve….” Horn Book

Selected by Oprah Magazine as one of its ‘essential books for discussing racism with kids’.

I am a non-stop ball of energy.
Powerful and full of light.
I am a go-getter. A difference-maker. A leader.

Step inside the mind of the confident narrator of this book! He is proud of everything that makes him who he is. He’s got big plans, and will see them through. He’s creative, adventurous, smart, funny. A good friend. A superhero. Sometimes he falls, but he always gets back up. And other times he’s afraid, because he’s often misunderstood. So, slow down, look and listen as he shows you who he really is …

Follow Derrick Barnes on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorderrickdbarnes/
Follow Gordon C. James on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gordoncjamesfineart/

Amanda Gorman: Youngest Inaugural Poet In History

By Leave a Comment

Amanda Gorman read her poem The Hill We Climb in front of a sea of masked Americans during Joe Biden’s Presidential Inaugural Swearing-In Ceremony. She stood in the U.S. Capitol on January 20th, 2021, to recite a poem about hope and change, echoing some of the messages Biden has used during his campaign…

This amazing young poet is  (b. 1998) comes from Los Angeles.  Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. 

Gorman grew up it with limited television access and had a speech impediment as a child. She has said she was something of a “weird child” who enjoyed reading and writing and was encouraged by her mother, a teacher. She graduated from Harvard last year with a degree in sociology.

The Hill We Climb is a poem fresh off the page, most of it written while watching pro-Trump extremists storm the Capitol on January 6th. A debut poetry collection is due to be published this autumn (2021), as will a children’s picture book, Change Sings, A Children’s Anthem, llustrated by Loren Long.

Follow Amanda Gorman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandascgorman/

 

Francesca Simon On How Being Denied A Barmitzvah Still Rankles

By Leave a Comment

jewishchronicle

Francesca Simon is irritated. It may be more than four decades ago now, but it still rankles that she was denied a batmitzvah. After all, she was a Jewish girl living in California – why did she have to miss out?
"It made me very angry," the author, most famous for creating the best-selling Horrid Henry series, admits, from the calm surroundings of her publishers in London. "We lived in Malibu and neither of my parents wanted to drive me to the synagogue. That was the reason. They drove my younger brother, of course, for his barmitzvah, but not me."
The 61-year-old does not appear to be the kind of person to bear grudges. But this was important then, and clearly still matters now.

via I’m drawn to characters who don’t care | The Jewish Chronicle.

David Sexton: Zoella’s mega-seller represents the future of youth publishing – London Evening Standard

By Leave a Comment

Zoella’s mega-seller represents the future of youth publishing, says the ES headline above David Sexton’s review of Girl Online:

It’s a moment. Apparently from nowhere, a Young Adult novel, Girl Online (Penguin, £12.99) by 24-year-old Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, has shot to the top of the bestseller lists. It shifted 78,109 copies in its first week of publication, making it the fastest selling debut ever, outdoing J K Rowling, Dan Brown and E L James. It seems a cert to head the charts for Christmas.

It’s not from nowhere, though. Zoella already commands audiences other authors can only dream of. She’s the queen of vloggers, the role model of her generation. In her shows, made from her home in Brighton, she talks about clothes, make-up, relationships and her life — and receives substantial advertising revenue for product-placement, for she reaches young consumers on an astonishing scale.

She has 6.3 million subscribers on YouTube and more than 12 million views a month. On Instagram, she has 3.3 million followers and on Twitter (@ZozeeBo) 2.59 million. Taking into account the devotion she inspires in her girl fans the book sales don’t look so remarkable.
…
As for that sales record, it doesn’t tell us anything new about publishing, which has abjectly depended upon spin-off sales from other media for many years. What it tells us about is the dominance of new media over old-fashioned television for Zoella’s generation — they’re “like 70-30 YouTube”, she reckons. She should know. Clever girl.

via David Sexton: Zoella’s mega-seller represents the future of youth publishing – Comment – Comment – London Evening Standard.