The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.”

  Maya Angelou

I do hope your new year is off to the most auspicious of beginnings! Two weeks off in mid-winter, packing away Christmas to make what’s old new again, reflective hours inside a warm home all help make it feel like a year of new beginnings. So does MotherReader’s Comment Challenge. In commenting on five blogs each day, I’m finding many new blogs devoted to reading which have been created by artists, authors, librarians and teachers from which I’ve culled a few new ideas for myself!

One is to take a word rather than an action into the new year. My word is ‘tenderness’. I’ve written it on a polished rock I got in Brazil and plan to make a few decorative signs to hang with quotes about tenderness. I’ve thought about doing something along the lines of The Happiness Project but, that’s a bit much for me! I’ll probably put some things to do along the lines of tenderness into my phone’s calendar so that I don’t forget my Tender Project come March or July or September. I see myself working to use fewer exclamation points and more descriptive terms in writing, tempering my voice and creating and finding a kinder and gentler workplace.

Have you noticed I’ve given my blog new dressing for the new year? I’ve also put a new button on it! I’m working on the Birthday Party Pledge project which simply asks any and everyone to pledge to give multicultural books as gifts to children in their life. The grand lauch is coming soon!

As part of my work for the project, I compiled a list of multicultural graphic novels. I found this section of books to be heavy on non-fiction books with works of very few authors of color being reconstituted into the graphic form. One exception would be Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Tantalize. Two well reviewed GNs have actually gone out of print, The Zambine Sisters and Namaha: Shekhar Kapur’s Devi. Please visit the site to see the full list, as well as books in other categories as well.

Jeff Gottesfeld (author of the Superfan series) recently announced on the YALSA listserv that he and playwright Elizabeth Wong (Kimchee and Chitlins) will be collaborating to do the stage adaptation of Randa Abdel-Fattah’s amazing and acclaimed 2007 novel about a modern Muslim girl who makes the choice to wear a hijab full-time, Does my head look big in this?

Most important to my readers, I’ve gotten back to my Sunday morning posts!

Here’s wishing you a most tender of weeks!