The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators has launched its inaugural micro-grants program with a school library grant; author Stephen King testified about the negative impact the merger of Penguin Random House and S. & S. would have on writers, and it's time to vote for a library to get a makeover in this edition of News Bites. 

SCBWI launches school library grants and author award

The new Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Impact and Legacy Fund (ILF) has officially launched its first two programs—the ILF Monthly Micro-Grant Program and the Russell Freedman Award for Non-Fiction for a Better World.

The inaugural micro-grant is the School Librarian’s Mini-Library (SLML) Grant, which will offer three school librarians $500 each to purchase books from a curated list of more than 300 titles from authors, illustrators, and translators from underrepresented or marginalized communities. Each of the three librarians will also choose an independent bookstore that will benefit from their purchase on Bookshop.org. The selection process is fast, as applications could begin being submitted on August 1 and the winners will be announced in mid-August, according to SCBWI.

Legendary horror author Stephen King took the stand as a witness on Tuesday for the U.S. Department of Justice against the $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, King’s own publisher.

“My name is Stephen King. I’m a freelance writer,” King began his testimony, according to ABC News.

Stephen King. Photo by Shane Leonard

The government is bidding to convince a federal judge that the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and rival Simon & Schuster, two of the world's biggest publishers, would thwart competition and damage the careers of some of the most popular authors.

“I came because I think that consolidation is bad for competition," said King, who noted that it is “tougher and tougher for writers to find money to live on.”

“The Big Five are pretty entrenched," he said. King was skeptical of the publishers’ claims they would continue to bid on books separately after the merger.

The Cloud Cuckoo Land Library Makeover Campaign is open to public and school libraries located in the continental U.S. Public libraries must be operating in an area that is historically under-resourced and/or has a median area income below that of the greater state. School libraries must serve K-12 students in a school where the majority of students are eligible for free and reduced meals.

Pandemic Journaling Project to include Connecticut kids

The University of Connecticut and Brown University have created the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP) in an attempt to create a historical archive about COVID-19 and its impact. The project aims to capture the experiences and perspectives of a wide range of people living through the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Participation is voluntary and anonymous. Participants answer a set of survey questions and a few open-ended journaling questions and are asked to follow up by answering a new set of questions every week. To date, there are more than 14,000 submissions from over 45 countries.

Throughout August, the PJP will collect children’s perspectives at various branches of the Hartford (CT) Public Library with “Picturing the Pandemic,” which will offer journaling sessions with children ages 6-12 to capture their thoughts and feelings about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their lives.

Participants will look at photos and drawings from the PJP, listen to a read-aloud of Amanda Gorman’s picture book Change Sings, and create their own representations of their lives during the pandemic.

In the fall, Hartford Public Library will display a collection of images submitted to the PJP by both adults and children. The exhibit will be accompanied by the Hartford History Center’s Hartford 2020 collection: photographs of daily life in Hartford during 2020—COVID testing sites, protests, outdoor events and more—shot by three local documentary photographers.

LYRASIS and The Palace Project have launched a year-long pilot initiative to expand digital access for 10 libraries located across the U.S. and in American Samoa.