This year’s theme was “You’re Reading WHAT?!?!” Students age 19 or under were asked to create a short video about a time when an adult tried to censor something they were reading, or about a book-banning incident in the news that involved young people. There are 12 videos among the semifinalists, and voting is easy. The video with the most “likes” will be declared the People’s Choice winner. The deadline for casting votes is February 15 at 5 p.m. EST. The People’s Choice Award-winner will receive a Certificate of Free Expression Excellence from the NCAC.

While the public is choosing their favorite, a stellar panel of judges will be hard at work choosing the grand prize, second place, and third place winners. This year’s judges include Kirby Dick, a documentary director and Academy Award-nominee (The Invisible War), National Book Award-winner and frequently challenged author Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown, 2007)), Cecily von Ziegesar (author of the oft-banned “Gossip Girls” series (Little, Brown)), Onion AV Club National Associate Editor and pop culture maven Tasha Robinson, Kristen Fitzpatrick of Women Make Movies, and 2011 YFEP Film Contest winners Jake Gogats and Caitlin Wolper. Winners will receive $1,000, $500. and $250 respectively and a trip to New York City to attend the Youth Voices Uncensored event. All winners will be announced by the end of February, so check NCAC.org for updates. Get voting now!

Books for GLBTQ Youth

A Rainbow: Forty-nine books from 31 publishers have been selected by the Rainbow Project for their 2013 Rainbow Book List, a project of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT) and the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) of the American Library Association. To make the final selection, the committee evaluated over 150 books for youth, from birth to age 18, published between July 2011 and December 2012. The titles run the gamut from science fiction to fiction to graphic novels, among other genres. The committee notes that there is a dearth of nonfiction titles for any age being published, “including memoirs and history so vital to tying a culture together.” The complete list can be accessed at the GLBTRT website.

The following are the top ten titles: Starting from Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow (Amazon, 2012), Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills (Flux, 2012), The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth (HarperCollins, 2012), Ask the Passengers by A. S. King (Little, Brown, 2012), Adaptation by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown, 2012), The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Ecco, 2012), The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves edited by Sarah Moon (Scholastic, 2012), Chulito: A Novel by Charles Rice-Gonzalez (Magnus Bks., 2011), Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saénz (S & S, 2012), and Drama by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic, 2012).

Publishing News: New Imprints

Algonquin Young Readers is a new imprint being created by Algonquin Books for readers ages 7 to 17. The books will run the gamut from short illustrated novels for beginning readers to topical young adult novels. The first list will launch in Fall 2013 with five novels. There will be three title for middle grades—The Time Fetch by Amy Herick, Three Ring Rascals, Book 1: The Show Must Go On by Kate and M. Sarah Klise, and Anton Cecil: Cats at Sea by Lisa and Valerie Martin. If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan and Hollis Seamon’s Somebody Up There Hates You are the two young adult titles. The imprint plans to grow to the point where it will publish 15 titles each year and include some nonfiction books with their primarily fiction list, according to Elise Howard, editor and publisher of Algonquin Books for Young Readers.

Amazon Children’s Publishing is launching two new imprints—Two Lions and Skyscape—in Spring 2013. Picture books, chapter books, and middle-grade fiction will be published under the Two Lions banner, with Margery Cuyler as editorial manager, while Skyscape will focus on young adult titles under the leadership of Tim Ditlow.  According to Amazon, Two Lions—one representing the past and the other the future—“is committed to forming strong, creative relationships with authors and illustrators to bring originality of design and literary quality to readers.” Skyscape plans to bring “a wide range of stories with unique voices, compelling narratives, and intriguing perspectives to readers.” Two Lions’s inaugural titles Ininclude Gandhi: A March to the Sea by Alice B. McGinty, Poco Loco by J. R. Kraus, and Slugger by Susan Pearson. The titles for teens are Me & My Invisible Guy by Sarah Jeffrey, Reason to Breathe by Rebecca Donovan, and You Know What You Have to Do by Bonnie Shimko, among others.

Ebook Lending

A new model: Ingram Content Group has added a new content access model to its MyiLibrary e-content platform. The Access Model, designed to help libraries make their ebook lending more flexible, lets libraries “purchase a set of access credits for an ebook and lend it simultaneously to multiple patrons for a set cost and lending period.” This multi-user platform assures library patrons that they will have access to popular titles. “Patron usage of ebooks continues to climb,” noted Dan Sheehan, vice president and general manager, Ingram Content Group Library Services, “and the addition of our new multi-user concurrent Access Model gives libraries the flexibility to meet the content requirements of their patrons and manage budgets effectively.”

The MyiLibrary platform currently offers nearly 40,000 titles from leading publishers and can be accessed 24/7. Random House has just announced that it will be adding more than 36,000 frontlist and backlist titles to MyiLibrary from all Random House Inc. imprints and their publisher-distribution clients, including National Geographic, Smithsonian Books, and Wizards of the Coast, and others.

Watch Nathan Water’s video on textbook censorship, a book banning for the modern era. Nathan’s short film is one of the semifinalists in the National Coalition Against Censorship‘s 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest.

Newbery medalist Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was honored at the NCAC’s annual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defenders ceremony.

New York Times best-selling author Ellen Hopkins, Newbery medalist Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, and First Amendment activist Chris Finan were all recognized by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) on November 12 for their work defending free speech.

NCAC’s annual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defenders ceremony in New York City brought together more than 200 authors, publishers, and First Amendment advocates to honor and raise money for the 38-year-old organization, which protects free expression and access to information.

Joan Bertin, NCAC Executive Director, presented awards to the nominees.

Hopkins’s books, including the “Crank” trilogy (S&S), deal with such hard-hitting topic as incest, teen prostitution and drug addiction. Hopkins herself has often been the target of censorship. In 2010, an invitation for her to speak at a Texas teen lit festival was withdrawn after a middle-school librarian voiced concern about her students’ hearing Hopkins’ presentation. The previous year, Hopkins was uninvited to speak at a school in Norman, OK when a parent asked that Hopkins’s novel Glass (S & S, 2007), the story of a girl’s crystal meth addiction, be removed from district middle school libraries—and that no student be allowed to attend Hopkins’s presentation.

In accepting the award, Hopkins expressed her concern that children from conservative regions of the country are not exposed to people who are different from them or disturbing situations like those faced by the characters in her books. “In the red part of this country there are young people who don’t hear the other side,” said Hopkins. She believes that her books give young people a window into the lives of teens grappling with difficult issues.

Author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is no stranger to censorship either. Her “Alice” series (S&S) has attracted ongoing attention from censors due to their themes of teenage relationships, dating and sex. The books have made the American Library Association (ALA) list of most challenged books for several years. Naylor’s 25th “Alice” book, Always Alice (S&S) is due out in 2013.

In accepting the award, Naylor thanked librarians and teachers who fight to keep her books on the shelves. Naylor’s Newbery-winning Shiloh (Atheneum, 1991), about a young boy and an abused dog, was not immune to censorship, either. A principal and librarian in Louisiana had to hire lawyers to keep the book from being banned because of its inclusion of the words “hell” and “damn.”

The NCAC ceremony also recognized Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, who also has served as chairman of the NCAC for over a decade, Finan was thanked for his service to the organization and for being a defender of the First Amendment.

Joan Bertin, NCAC Executive Director, presented the awards to each nominee. The award statuettes, titled Digitus Impudicus, portrayed a hand with a raised middle finger.

Attendees also had the opportunity to bid on controversial book covers created by noted illustrators for the event, with proceeds going to NCAC. Drawing the greatest reaction from the audience were particularly risqué designs, entitled Tommy’s Pussy Wagon by Betsy Lewin, Blow Me: A Book About Whistles by Adam Rex, and Holiday Hummers: A Burst of Christmas Cheer by Tomie dePaola.

Ellen Hopkins

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) will honor award-winning authors Ellen Hopkins and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor next month for their fight to defend free speech.

Hopkins, who writes about addiction, teen prostitution, and other controversial issues in her “Crank” trilogy (S & S/Margaret K. McElderry Bks.), is no stranger to book banning. In January 2010, she and a handful of other YA authors were scheduled to attend the Humble ISD Libraries’ Teen Lit Festival in Texas, but Hopkins was uninvited when a middle school librarian voiced concern over the author “being in the vicinity of her students.”  In protest, five of the seven other festival authors—Melissa de la Cruz, Matt de la Peña, Pete Hautman, Tera Lynn Childs, and Brian Meehl—withdrew from the event.

Hopkins was also banned from speaking at Whittier Middle School in Norman, OK, in 2009, after a parent asked that her novel, Glass (S & S, 2007), a semiautobiographical account of her daughter’s battle with a crystal meth addiction, be pulled from all district middle school libraries—and that no student be allowed to hear Hopkins speak.

For Banned Books Week in September 2009, Hopkins created a “Manifesto” video, in which she recites an anticensorship poem that chides “you zealots and bigots and false patriots who live in fear of discourse.”

“We’re thrilled to honor Ellen as an author who is courageous for the kinds of stories she writes and her willingness to fight for young people’s right to read them,” says Joan Bertin, NCAC’s executive director.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Reynolds Naylor, a 1992 Newbery Award-winner for Shiloh, has published more than 25 books in the often-challenged “Alice” series, which deals with relationships, sex, friendships, life problems, and God—and landed on the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books for several years, topping the list in 2003. Reynolds Naylor is also founder of the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, which annually rewards $5,000 to an author of children’s or young-adult fiction of literary merit to complete a work-in-progress.

NCAC has for years honored authors and journalists among defenders of free speech but began recognizing YA authors annually in 2009, when it highlighted the work of Judy Blume, who has served on NCAC’s board since 2000 and is vocal about her battles against censorship.

Lauren Myracle, a New York Times best-selling author of the “IM” series of books, which include ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r, was honored in 2010. Myracle ranked number one on ALA’s top 10 most frequently challenged books list in 2011 and 2009—and also made the list in 2008 and 2007. In 2011, NCAC honored Laurie Halse Anderson, author of the debut novel, Speak, about rape, and Wintergirls, which deals with eating disorders. Both books are often challenged in schools.

Hopkins, Reynolds Naylor, and Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, will be honored November 12 during NCAC’s annual Free Speech Matters ceremony in New York City.

NCAC’s Free Speech Matters celebration is the only annual event to recognize YA writers and children’s book publishers for their contributions to free expression. If you’d like to attend, sponsor, or donate to the event, there’s still time.