Great Ladies of Caribbean Children's Literature: Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson

The essay below is a part of our 'Great Ladies of Caribbean Children's Literature' series. During Women's History Month, and in celebration of Anansesem's 10th anniversary, we're publishing essays by or about 10 female trailblazers whose labors, writings, editorial work and foundational research created the growing field of Caribbean children's and young adult literature.

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It seems as if being a scholar of children’s literature was written into my genes; I became hooked on books from the moment I learned how to hold one in my hands. Throughout my childhood, my thirst for books kept growing; as a child, I was always reading and writing stories. In high school, I was sought out by my peers whenever they wanted to know which book to read next. I attended a boarding school and had lots of time on my hands; during that five-year period, I systematically read through my school library. This was when I first encountered British and American classics like Gulliver’s Travels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Black Beauty, as well as series books likes Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven series, Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings books, the Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene, Frank Dixon’s Hardy Boys series, and Richmal Crompton’s Just William books. These early reading experiences fed my imagination and embedded the literary conventions of story in my mind. All of this was preparing me for my future career as a children’s librarian, university lecturer and writer of stories for young people.

I was eighteen years old when I got my first job at the St. Ann Parish Library. There, I was introduced to the wider world of children’s literature when I was put in charge of Children’s Story Hour. It was my responsibility to select suitable stories to share with the children on Saturday mornings under a huge Poinciana tree on the library grounds. I embraced the opportunity to read as many children’s books as I could. This was when I discovered I really enjoyed reading children’s books. I knew I was naturally inclined towards the humanities but had no idea where this would take me, until I stumbled across the world of children’s books: suddenly my path became clearer.

As an undergrad, I majored in English literature. In 1974, I formally studied children’s literature for the first time while earning my postgraduate diploma in librarianship at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus. I became completely immersed in the field and went on to pursue it as my specialization when I did my PhD at the University of Toronto. My dissertation, which I completed in 1997, was titled “The Voluntary Reading Interests and Habits of Jamaican Sixth Graders.” Since then, the main thrust of my writings and research has been the need for more indigenous Caribbean children’s literature and for our Caribbean realities to be authentically portrayed in books for young readers. It was daunting, but also exciting, to produce scholarly work on Caribbean children’s literature at a time when hardly any research in this area existed.

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson receiving
an award from Kingston Bookshop in 2002
for her outstanding contribution to children’s
literature

In 1986, I began lecturing on children’s literature at the Department of Library and Information Studies at UWI, Mona where I taught for the next twenty-two years. When I took over the course, its major emphasis was on British and American books, and I expanded the syllabus to include more Caribbean books. To support this shift, I set out to identify and acquire as many Caribbean children’s books as my budget would allow; my book purchases over the years have resulted in one of the largest collections of Caribbean children’s books, currently housed in the Main Library at UWI, Mona. In order to accomplish this mammoth task, I travelled to libraries and bookstores in most of the Caribbean countries as well as to Toronto, London, Washington, D.C, and even to the International Youth Library (Internationale Jugendbibliothek) in Munich, Germany.

One of my most memorable book collection trips was my lecture tour to the UK in 2006 where I delivered several public lectures to librarians and teachers in London and Birmingham. My objective was to educate them about the range of Caribbean children’s literature being published and how these works fitted within critical scholarship in the field. I also spent some time at BookTrust which houses copies of almost every children’s book published in the UK within the last two years; there, I searched through thousands of titles to identify, read and record the Caribbean ones. I then went on to the University of Roehampton’s special children’s literature collection to do the same for all those from the previous years. It was hard but rewarding work as I unearthed many titles most of us in the Caribbean did not even know existed. One of my greatest delights was visiting the British Library and finding a book called Mamma's Black Nurse Stories: West Indian Folklore, one of the earliest Caribbean children’s books published in Britain and written for use in Jamaica.

Before going to work at the University, I was a school librarian at the Camperdown High School from 1972 to 1978. There, based on my strong belief in the power of reading in the lives of children, I started a library club that met for seven years. This was but one of the many kinds of programmes I developed to promote childhood reading. In the process, I became a mentor to two of my students who also became school librarians. At the University, most of my students were teachers, and I hope that I was able to transmit to them some of my passion for children’s literature and also motivate them to develop meaningful literature programmes to touch the hearts and nourish the minds of their students. I know that at least two of my students have gone on to become authors, one of whom won a CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature.

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson conducting a workshop in 2000

Another aspect of my lifelong involvement in children’s literature has been my own writing. In the early 80s, I wrote hundreds of children’s short stories over a ten-year period for weekly broadcast on Radio Jamaica Rediffusion Limited (RJR). My picture book Manny and the Mermaid, illustrated by Irene M. Huber, was published by the Children's Writers Circle in 1987. My first children’s novel, Jojo’s Treasure Hunt, was published by Carlong Publishers in 2003 and was the runner-up for the Vic Reid Prize for Young Adult Literature in the Lignum Vitae Writing Awards presented by JAMCOPY (Jamaican Copyright Licensing Agency) and the Jamaican Writers Society (JAWS). It also won the Carlong Award for best children’s book. Jojo’s Treasure Hunt tells the story of a twelve-year-old boy who decides to search for fabled treasure after his family is threatened with eviction. I was one of the contributors to the children’s short story anthology Tek mi! noh tek mi!: Caribbean Folktales published by Carlong Publishers in 2008. I self-published my second children’s novel, Tara’s Family Secrets, in 2019.



I have also been a publisher; from 1997 to 2004, I single-handedly edited and published a magazine for Caribbean children called Scribbles. After seven years, I finally had to give this up (much to my regret) because of problems with distribution and sales. I started Scribbles because I felt strongly that Caribbean children needed to see themselves positively portrayed in their reading materials. I have been a strong advocate for this all my life and many of my scholarly papers were written within this context.

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson (far right) at the launch of her children's magazine, Scribbles, November 1997

Over the years, I have been granted many opportunities to share my knowledge and expertise in the field. I have served as an occasional children’s editor for Carlong Publishers, and as a judge for national and regional children’s book awards. I had the honor and pleasure of serving as one of the judges for the CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature in its inaugural year, and I have also served as an adjudicator for the Lignum Vitae Writing Awards. For my lifetime work in librarianship, including my contribution to children’s librarianship and literature, I was awarded a bronze Musgrave Medal (an annual award presented by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature) in 2001.

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson (front row, fourth from left) at the Musgrave Medal award ceremony in 2001

My many years in the children’s literature field have been extremely rewarding ones; I have enjoyed reading and writing children’s books, researching and producing scholarly articles, conducting writing workshops, interviewing authors, and sharing my knowledge at conferences and in other public spaces. I believe with all my heart that exposure to literature from an early age plays an essential role in developing our creativity and imagination. Above all, literature humanizes us, giving us valuable insights into our own lives and that of others, a process that should start when we are children. I cannot imagine a world without children’s literature in its many genres and formats. I am now retired, but my enthusiasm has not waned; I still continue to read, write and edit stories, conduct workshops, and make public presentations.

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson delivering a presentation on Caribbean children’s literature at the International Association of School Libraries conference in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, 1996

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson as President of the Library and Information Association of Jamaica, presenting a plaque to a colleague in 2000

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson with her trophy for Distinguished Librarian of the Year, awarded to her by the Librarian and Information Association of Jamaica (LIAJ) in 2006

SLIDESHOW

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Scholarly Books and Articles by Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson

“Training Paraprofessionals: a Cooperative Venture.” IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) Journal, vol. 12, no. 4, 1986: 285-7.

“Windows on the World: Jamaican Literature for Children.” The School Library: Window on the World: 15th Annual Conference Proceedings of the International Associations of School Librarianship, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1987, pp. 99-112.

“Indigenous English Language Books for Caribbean Children: A Historical Perspective.” Jamaica Library Association Bulletin, 1989/90: 38-46.

“The School Library: a Valuable Partner in the Search for Educational Excellence.” Proceedings of the 1990 Cross-campus Conference on Education, 3rd-6th April, 1990, Kingston: UWI Faculty of Education, 1991, pp. 291-296. (Comps. E.P. Brandon and P.N. Nissen)

“Coming of Age in Caribbean Fiction for the Young.” Bridging the Gap Between Nations: Conference Proceedings of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL), Kalamazoo, Michigan: IASL, 1991, pp. 191-207. (co-authored with Amy Robertson)

“Sexism in Children’s Books.” In Libraries, Learning and Literacy (ed. Ken Ingram). Kingston: Jamaica Library Association, 1994, pp. 193-221.

“Cyril Palmer: 1930 – (Children’s Writer).” In: Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. London: Routeledge, 1994, p. 1195.

“Children’s Literature (The Caribbean).” In: Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. London: Routeledge, 1994, p. 234-236.

“Approaches to Researching Children’s Reading Interests.” In School Librarianship: International Issues and Perspectives (eds. Ken Haycock and Blanche Wools). Seattle: International Association of School Librarianship, 1997, 13 – 17. (Also published in: School Libraries: Imperatives for the 21st Century: Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of IASL, Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Seattle; IASL, 1997, 84–89.

“The Role of School Libraries in Quality Education.” In Quality Primary Education: A National Challenge (Jamaica Teachers' Association Report on JTA National Education Conference, May 28 & 29, 1997). Kingston: JTA, 1997, 38 – 39.

“Love and Sex in Rosa Guy’s Trilogy: The Friends, Ruby, and Edith Jackson.” In The Women, the Writer and Caribbean Society (ed. Helen Pyne-Timothy). Los Angeles: Centre for African Caribbean Studies, 1998, 186 – 198.

“Priorities and Strategies for the Twenty-First Century: The Need for Information Literacy.” In Integrando el Centro de Recursos para el Apprendizaje al Curriculum. Semanario Internacional de Bibliotecarios Escolares. Santiago de Chile: Ministerio de Educacion, 1999, pp. 186-198. (Also on CD-ROM)

“El Libro para Ninos y Jovenes en el Caribe Ingles: Entrevista.” Educacion y Biblioteca: Revista Mensuel de Documentacion y Recursos Didacticos, vol, 12, no. 1, 2000: 58-63.

“Black Like Me: Ethnicity and the Child Reader.” Obsidian, vol. 111, no. 1, 2001: 100-114

“The Voluntary Reading Interests of Jamaican Sixth Graders: a survey.” School Libraries Worldwide, vol. 7, no. 1, 2001: 72-81.

“Are You Information Literate?” Daily Gleaner, August 31, 2001, Col. 9

“Finding a Place in the Sun: the Immigrant Experience in Caribbean Children’s Literature.” Children and Libraries, vol. 3, no. 1, 2005: 14-20, 62.

"Children’s Literature in the English-speaking Caribbean.” In Encyclopedia of Caribbean Literature (e.d. D.H. Figuero). Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006, pp. 165-167.

“School Libraries in the Caribbean: A Jamaican Case Study.” In Caribbean Libraries in the 21st Century: Changes, Challenges and Choices (eds. Cheryl Peltier-Davis and Renwick Shamin). New Jersey: Information Today, 2007, pp. 95-117.

The School Library as a Learning Resource Centre: a Course For Teacher Librarians. Volume 1: Presenter’s Guide. Kingston: Published for OAS by the Department of Library Studies, 1989.

The School Library as a Learning Resource Centre: a Course for Teacher Librarians. Volume 2: Participant’s Text. Kingston: Published for OAS by the Department of Library Studies, 1989.

Sunscapes: A Select Bibliography of Caribbean Literature for Children and Young Adults. Kingston: Jamaica Information Service, 1998.

About the Author

Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson is a retired Jamaican librarian, scholar and university professor based in Jamaica; she is also a children's author. Between 1972 and 1979 she worked as a teacher and school librarian at Meadowbrook High School and Camperdown High School, both in Kingston, Jamaica. For twenty-two years, she lectured on children's literature and library education in the Department of Library and Information Studies at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. She has served as President of the Library and Information Association of Jamaica, as Chair of Jamaica's National Information Literacy Initiative, and as Regional Director of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL).

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Great Ladies of Caribbean Children's Literature: Julie Morton

The essay below is a part of our 'Great Ladies of Caribbean Children's Literature' series. During Women's History Month, and in celebration of Anansesem's 10th anniversary, we're publishing essays by or about 10 female trailblazers whose labors, writings, editorial work and foundational research created the growing field of Caribbean children's and young adult literature.

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One of the unhappy memories of my first teaching appointment was of five-year-old children in my charge without books or paper, some with pencils no more than two inches long. I had to tear paper into small squares so they could write the alphabet and math sums. The results were not collectibles, needless to say. Perhaps it was there that the germ of an idea for publishing entered my head, although I did not initially recognize it as such. The year was 1957. What if children could have copybooks of their own, designed to save their work and show their progress throughout the school term?

That thought must have lodged in a remote corner of my brain as over the next few years I went from one teaching appointment to another, off to Toronto where I earned a degree in Fine Arts at York University, and back to Trinidad no longer wanting to teach in a classroom. Instead, I went into commercial advertising and it was then that I became involved in publishing of annual reports, newspaper ads and television ads. I learned about pre-production, how to lay out a page, and how to write copy. I filled in a lot of blanks myself in an effort to become more knowledgeable about publishing.

I founded my publishing house, Morton Salvatori Publishers Limited (later renamed Morton Publishing), in Port of Spain in 1974. The first book we published was a book by John Newel Lewis, a well-known English architect, artist and illustrator who worked in Czechoslovakia and London before migrating to Trinidad in 1953. The book was called Nobody In His Right Mind (1974) and it recorded his illustrations of Carnival as he experienced it during his years as a Carnival judge. I think I can say that we were pioneers in the publishing business. We started publishing books at a time when publishing activity in Trinidad and Tobago was limited to leaflets, tracts, posters, cards, and a few annual reports.

Morton books at the printery being packaged for export to Jamaica

Then came a series of books for children which I published for advertising clients to promote various products for children, mainly for Nestlé Trinidad and Tobago Limited, a food and beverage company. Among the first of these was a colouring book to promote sales of Pink Panther chocolates, a strawberry flavoured pink candy bar made by Nestlé in the 70s. Those books for children produced for Nestlé were followed by a range of cookbooks aligned to their products, including milk, pasta etc.

Then came my foray into publishing my own fiction books for children- very risky business! I self-published a few of my own children’s stories as picture books: The House of Gold (1988) about a young girl lured from her home on a hillside by the mesmerizing sight of a golden house beyond the rainforest; Looking for the Pawi (1988), illustrated by my daughter Leigh Morton, in which four children and their grandfather journey through the forests of Trinidad in search of the rare bird; an abecedarian picture book titled A Wacky, Wonderful, West Indian Alphabet (1992) that I illustrated myself; A Turtle Called Phil, illustrated by Canadian artist Phil Barber, about a shy turtle who dreams about being an artist and gets his wish with the support of his friends; and Snailblazer about a young boy, Miren, his pet snail Hercules, and the race to become the fastest snail in the valley.

The first children’s book I wrote and self-published, however, was called The Magical Mystical Ibis (1981); it was illustrated by Lisa Henry Chu Foon, a Swedish artist who moved to Trinidad in 1971. This picture book invites readers to travel with the Scarlet Ibises (the national bird of Trinidad and Tobago) through storms and mystical swamplands to the lush, green Caroni Plain and experience their joy and fear in the land they have learned to love and must leave. The printer and I tried for hardcover, but let’s call it an experiment; it didn’t look so good. Nevertheless, we were brave enough to launch it formally and were very encouraged by the response from the public.

It was a learning experience for the printers and for me. Things improved after that and the quality of our books got better. We started to publish the works of other Trinbagonian children’s writers. The Lights of Divali (1988), written by Amina Ibrahim Ali and illustrated by Richard Ackoon, tells the story of a young boy, Suresh, and his family’s preparation for the Hindu festival. The Call of the Wild (2002) by Vilma Dubé, illustrated by Leigh Morton, is a story in verse about Myrtle, a leatherback turtle, who journeys to the shores of Trinidad to lay her eggs. Legend of the Pitch Lake, written and illustrated by Leigh Morton, recounts the legend of an Amerindian village that was punished by the gods for killing the sacred hummingbirds for their beautiful feathers. Treasures of the Caribbean, illustrated by Leigh Morton and Nicole Leotaud, is a storybook-colouring book combo featuring stories about real and mythical Caribbean sea creatures. We also published many colouring books, activity books and school readers, including the New Century Readers for children ages 7-11 which focused on Caribbean life studies and environmental themes.

We would have continued indefinitely except for the fact that no bank would fund us. That has not changed. There is so much more we could and should do in this field. Credit has to be given to Caribbean Paper and Printed Products Limited, founded in Aranguez, Trinidad in 1993, for their interest in developing and finessing book publishing. Needless to say, hardcover books are now a breeze.

Then came computers, specifically, in our case, the Macintosh. My then business partner became very excited about the possibilities after reading about it in Time magazine. We acquired two of them and they changed the face of our fledgling operation.

CAPNET, the Caribbean Publishers Network, was a brilliant initiative started by Ian Randle of Jamaica, along with Ken Jaikaransingh and Jeremy Taylor of Trinidad. I joined the network later on and subsequently became Secretary and then President. Many good things came out of CAPNET. The first project I was involved in as Secretary was a very successful week-long book exhibition and seminar, called Bookfest, that was held in Trinidad. It was international in scope: we had exhibitors, writers, speakers and publishers from all over the world. The event was well attended and all publishers recorded good sales.

Subsequently, CAPNET took part in the Frankfurt Book Show, the Canadian/American Library Conference in Toronto, the Zimbabwe Book Show and the London Book Show, among others. CAPNET also had its own conferences and book events in Curacao, Jamaica, Cuba and Barbados. At every event the Caribbean exhibited as a unit and was well represented by most of the publishers with their publications. I wish I could say that we made lots of money. We didn’t. But it was a very interesting time in my life.

Leigh Morton and Nicole Leotaud discussing illustrations for children's books during a CrossCulture Programme (CCP) seminar sponsored by UNESCO

In August 2014, I opened Morton’s Bookstore, which I believe was the first children’s bookstore in Trinidad. Unfortunately, in November 2019, I had to close the bookstore due to high rents and the fact that many parents can barely afford to buy books for their children, aside from school books. We do however maintain a space for storage and distribution of our preschool range in Port of Spain. I may reopen the bookstore in the future. Running it was a good experience. Adults came in with kids and stayed to talk and ask advice on choosing books; in the case of preschoolers, many customers wanted to talk about how to approach reading. The store was an open space with book shelves lining the walls, and an alphabet/number mat made in a hopscotch design in bright colours, on which kids could jump and count. We carried books for children up to age 12.

Old article on Morton's Bookstore
in the Trinidad Express newspaper

Because of financial challenges, Morton Publishing has had to limit our publishing output. For the last four years we have concentrated solely on educational books for kids. I have gone back to the original reason I became interested in publishing- developing and publishing a range of books for preschoolers. The pre-school age, between 2 and 6 years, is when children develop and learn faster than at any other time in their lives. There is so much research on child development to back this up, so it is amazing that many "First World" countries are still debating this concept. The range of preschool books is incomplete, and may never be completed, because as I go on, I am finding new ways to teach children. There is no need to explain how difficult it was breaking new ground as a local children’s publisher; we had some hostile reactions to our work and it has taken more than 20 years to reach this stage of success, but now schools all over Trinidad and Tobago are using our preschool range of books and bookstores purchase wholesale for redistribution. In fact, our preschool range is distributed only through booksellers. We have just a small portion of the market, but that is slowly increasing.

Aside from books for preschoolers, I have always been interested in publishing children’s stories that address environmental concerns. In 1993, I wrote and published a series of reading books with workbooks for primary schools. Called the Green Readers, these books all focus on the environment. Now more than ever there is need for a series like this that integrates into the story information about climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases, epidemics like CORVID 19, and other prevailing concerns. We are revising and redoing artwork to re-publish the Green Readers for schools later this year. In 2009, I served as the Art Director for another environmentally-themed picture book, Shaggy Parrot and Reggae Band, illustrated by John Mendes and written by a team of Jamaican children's writers which included Jana Bent, Rupert Brent III, Nicole Hoo Fatt, Kellie Magnus, Rebecca Parker and Veronica Salter.

There are so many beautiful and important Caribbean children’s stories yet to be published; I hope I can find a way to get back to that soon.

About the Author

Julie Morton was born and raised in Trinidad where she has lived all her life. She studied at Naparima Teachers' College, entered the teaching profession and graduated with a Diploma in Education. During a four year stay in Toronto, Canada, she attended York University to study Fine Arts and Ryerson College where she did courses in Fashion Art among others. She is the founder of Morton Publishing, based in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Morton Books, a children’s bookstore also based in Port of Spain, which she ran for 6 years. She consults with and offers advice for young authors who wish to publish.

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Celebrating 10: Great Ladies of Caribbean Children's Literature

Children's literature is a field that’s held my fascination for over a decade now (to tell the whole truth, I’ve been fascinated by children’s books since I was, well, a child reading them). I've loved delving into its history, and within arm’s reach of my desk I always keep a couple of texts I consider staples on craft and foundations: the classic Children and Books by Zena Sutherland; Gates of Excellence: On Reading and Writing Books for Children by Katherine Patterson (gifted to me years ago by a neighborhood friend I co-led a teen girls book club with); Joy Cowley’s Writing from the Heart: How to Write for Children (I had her sign it when I attended one of her Highlights Foundation workshops); The Potential of Picture Books: From Visual Literacy to Aesthetic Understanding by Barbara Kiefer (purchased for a course back in grad school and then couldn't bear to part with it); Charlotte Huck's Children's Literature: A Brief Guide by Barbara Kiefer and Cynthia Tyson (in which my “ten tips for selecting multicultural literature” appears); Bridges to Understanding: Envisioning the World through Children's Books by Linda M. Pavonetti (one of several books gifted to me by Rowman & Littlefield in return for peer-reviewing a proposal for a multicultural children’s literature textbook; it's a useful annotated bibliography sponsored by the USSBY); and Multicultural Children's Literature by Donna E. Norton. They're well-thumbed books that have traveled with me across oceans, surviving house moves and country moves, and they’re all written by women.

When it comes to the history of the field, the 'Great Lady of Children's Literature' tradition in the USA has been firmly established. The American women whose seminal work created and shaped the field as we know it are legends in the children's literature world and their contributions have been richly memorialized (see "New England Book Women: Their Increasing Influence" by way of example). Reading and learning about what they accomplished, and their strong quirky personalities, has inspired and instructed me over the years.

There's Anne Carroll Moore who, in the early 1900s, helped make libraries all over the world a welcoming place for children at a time when boys under 14 years old and girls of any age were forbidden to enter them, and whose set of standards for children's literature, "The Four Respects," still guides us. There’s Ursula K. Nordstrom, who did groundbreaking work during her run as editor-in-chief of juvenile books at Harper and Row from 1940 to 1973. Louise Seaman Bechtel was the first person to head a juvenile department at a major American publisher. Margaret K. McElderry was the first children's book editor to be given her own imprint (I'm putting it out in the universe that I want my own imprint one day, because hey, why not?). Caroline Hewins was an influential children's librarian responsible for instituting children's rooms at libraries. Bertha Mahoney was the founder of Horn Book Magazine, one of the field's most distinguished journals (in whose pages I've been honored to have my own writing on Caribbean children’s literature appear). There’s also Elinor Whitney Field, co-founder of Horn Book Magazine; Alice Jordan, who headed children's work at the Boston Public Library from 1902 to 1940; and Clara Whitehill, who opened Brooklyn's first children's public library in 1914, and was one of the first people to design children's rooms at libraries and train children's librarians.

These remarkable women were all white and American. Over a decade ago, during my graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, while taking a course on multicultural children’s literature taught by a wonderful professor named Dr. Susan Browne (the only black professor I had at UPenn), I also learned about American women of color whose contributions to children's literature were just as prolific and revolutionary. There’s Augusta Braxton Baker whose library work, advocacy and bibliographic studies from the 1930’s onward catalyzed the ongoing humanization of the image of black people in children's literature. There’s Dr. Henrietta Mays Smith, who was an early proponent of noisy, interactive children's libraries and advocated tirelessly for quality and diversity in children’s literature. Pura Belpré was the first Latinx librarian at the New York Public Library; she pioneered bilingual children's library programs and is the namesake of the prestigious Pura Belpré Award. Dr. Rudine Simms Bishops, still very much alive, has become known as the 'mother of multicultural children's literature' and her groundbreaking research and much-cited 'mirrors, windows, sliding glass doors' metaphor has virtually come to define the field. Virginia Hamilton, an African American woman, broke racial barriers by winning every major national and international prize for children's writing. My advisor at UPenn, the late great children’s literature scholar Lawrence Sipe, spoke as highly of these American women of color as he did about their white counterparts whose biographies are more widely known.

In every country, women have been at the forefront of every children's literature-related field, from children's publishing to children's librarianship to children's book-selling, and yet when they’re women of color, their work has too often been under-recognized to the point of being diminished and dismissed.

I find the stories of how all these legendary women made a life and an entire field out of their love and respect for children's books, and their devotion to the children who read them, deeply engrossing. As pioneering children's librarians, esteemed children's book reviewers, brilliant researchers, influential writers and tone-setting children's editors, these women found useful work for their hands and supported themselves financially during an era in history when women were expected to devote their lives entirely to domestic pursuits. They understood that work with children and books was both a profession and higher calling, and they gained respect for children’s literature at a time when many people and institutions didn’t take it seriously. The women listed above are inspirational, aspirational figures, to say the least.

The 'Great Lady of Children's Literature' tradition isn't just an American phenomenon though. In every country, women have been at the forefront of every children's literature-related field, from children's publishing to children's librarianship to children's book-selling, and yet when they’re women of color, their work has too often been under-recognized to the point of being diminished and dismissed. That's certainly been the case in the Caribbean. Well, at Anansesem, we’ve always tried to do our part to fix that.

As Anansesem celebrates our 10th anniversary, it's fitting then that we celebrate the trailblazers whose labors, writings, editorial work and foundational research created the still fledgling, but increasingly growing, field of Caribbean children's and young adult literature. Most of these Caribbean women of color you won't hear nearly enough about at Caribbean literary festivals and little has been written about most of them; yet, without their remarkable wayfinding, none of us working to elevate Caribbean literature for the young to the status it deserves would be where we are today, and anyone seeking to understand the trajectory and role of children's literature within Caribbean societies would have little material to work with. The names and contributions of these Caribbean women (all of whom are now in their swanky 60s or older!) deserve a place in the international 'Great Lady of Children's Literature' pantheon. As “minders of make-believe” (to borrow Leonard S. Marcus's term) they’ve set the stage for the cultural and commercial burgeoning of a distinctive Caribbean literature for the young.

That's why we're celebrating 10 of them during Women's History Month and as part of Anansesem's ongoing 10th anniversary celebrations. They are Dr. Cherrell Shelley-Robinson (Jamaica), Diane Browne (Jamaica), Franck Paul (Haiti), Hazel Campbell (Jamaica), Jessica Huntley (Guyana/the UK), Jocelyne Trouillot-Lévy (Haiti), Julie Morton (Trinidad and Tobago), Lucía Amelia Cabral (Cuba), Margarita Luciano López (Dominican Republic) and Tere Marichal-Lugo (Puerto Rico). Each week, we’ll post essays by (or about, in the case of those deceased) these Great Ladies of Caribbean Children's Literature looking back at their remarkable pioneering careers. We're beyond honored to be able to share their stories. Stay tuned!

About the Author

Summer Edward is the Editor-in-Chief here at Anansesem. Her writing and art have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her home on the web is www.summeredward.com.

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Celebrating 10: Introducing Anansesem's New Publication Model

We're pleased to announce that Anansesem will start using a new publication model in 2020, to mark the beginning of our tenth year of existence. In summary, the ezine will move away from a submission-based model and towards a citizen journalism model of regional and international news-gathering.

Since our founding in 2010, the number of submissions to Anansesem has become unmanageable for our small team of volunteer editors. The move to a citizen journalism model will allow the ezine to continue achieving its mission ("fostering a vibrant community around Caribbean children's and young adult [CHYA] books and broadening public, literary and artistic awareness, and critical appreciation, of Caribbean CHYA literature") without sacrificing editorial quality and efficiency.

Starting in 2020, we are piloting having Country Correspondents in as many countries as possible, who will send us information about going-ons in their country related to Caribbean CHYA literature. Country Correspondents are savvy writers who are highly knowledgeable about CHYA publishing issues and who are dedicated to championing people whose voices and experiences are rarely seen in "mainstream" media coverage of CHYA literature. Country Correspondents are responsible for collecting stories and then reporting the news in writing, to be published on our website. The post is unpaid, as are all advisory board members. If you would like to become a Country Correspondent and we have a vacancy for your country, please contact us.

Our editorial teams of past and present are extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with an incredible, talented body of approximately 200 contributors over the last ten years. We will continue to champion their work, even as we discover new voices and talent. We will also continue to advocate for operational funding for small Caribbean literary arts publications like ours, in hopes that Anansesem may one day be able to pay staff, writers and illustrators for their invaluable work.

Stay tuned for an introduction to our new, fast-growing team of Anansesem Country Correspondents!

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Celebrating 10: Anansesem's 10 Most-Read Articles

The year 2020 is a year of celebration and nostalgia for us at Anansesem, as we pause to reflect on our decade-long run. Founded on May 24, 2010, Anansesem remains the only publication devoted exclusively to giving children's and young adult literature from the English-speaking Caribbean the critical attention usually reserved for adult work.

The just over 250 articles Anansesem has published have probed the role of children's/YA literature in Caribbean societies, examined children's illustration, and shone a light on the finest Caribbean books for young people. Our articles have been quoted in the media and freely cited by scholars of children's literature. They reflect a variety of voices in the children's book world, from booksellers and publishers, to librarians, authors and illustrators.

Today, we launch our "Celebrating 10" feature, a biweekly look at highlights from the Anansesem annals. We start by looking at the top 10 most-read posts (we're counting creative writing, and not just nonfiction, as 'articles') on our website, according to web analytics data. It's always interesting to note what readers are most drawn to. The fact that a bedtime meditation is the most-viewed post in the magazine's 10-year history indicates that publishers should be looking at publishing more Caribbean bedtime stories.

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Bedtime Meditation for Children

Published in our May 2011 issue, Dominican writer Grethel Joseph's "Bedtime Meditation" is the only material in the vicinity of the bedtime story that we've ever published. Some of the language of the piece is above the target age group, but we still chose to publish it since there was something in the gentle, comforting and innocent tone of the writing that we hadn't seen in any of the submissions we'd received up to that point. Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné's whimsical illustration of a sleeping apsara (as we'd like to think of the fairyesque creature) was the perfect fit.

[Book List] 2018 Releases- Caribbean Children's & YA Books

Every January, Anansesem publishes a preview of the upcoming season of books. Our 2018 list is the second most-read post, probably due to the truly fantastic books that we're published that year. After we published the list, which includes Junot Diaz's children's book debut, Islandborn, allegations of sexual misconduct were brought against him and we were faced (like many in the children's book world) with the dilemma of whether Islandborn should be promoted. Diaz was cleared of the allegations by both MIT and the Pulitzer Prize committee, and in the end, we axed the review of Islandborn planned for our May 2018 issue, but left the book on the 2018 list.

[Book List] Back to School After an Environmental Disaster: Teaching Hurricane Irma

When Hurricane Irma struck on August 30, 2017, many of us felt helpless looking at the destruction, particularly the damage in Barbuda. One of the ways we responded was by providing a list of fiction books and nonfiction resources that could help children process and respond to the traumatic event. Bibliotherapy is a proven, low-cost mental health treatment and most of us instinctively understand the healing power of story. This list was shared far and wide on social media when we first published it, and remains relevant; after Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas in August 2019, we shared it with individuals and groups who reached out to us looking for bibliotherapeutic and educational resources for their healing work with Bahamian children.

[Interview & Submissions Call] Anansesem's Special Issue On Puerto Rican Children's Literature

Speaking of hurricanes, it seems facile to say that the devastation Hurricane Maria wrought in Puerto Rico had some positive consequences, but it's true in the children's literature world at least. After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rican literature for young people has come to the forefront of a lot of people's consciousness, particularly in the States, in a way it never has before; the work of rebuilding Puerto Rico's damaged bookstores, schools, libraries and morale is providing the opportunity to re-envision Puerto Rican literature for the young. In 2019, Anansesem published a Special Issue on Puerto Rico which Dr. Marilisa Jimenez Garcia, writing for the Social Justice Books website, described as follows: "Not since the 1983 bulletin on Puerto Rican materials by the Council on Interracial Children’s Books came out has a single, readable, and accessible issue on Puerto Rican youth literature been more timely and important."

The Special Issue on Puerto Rico was our first guest-edited issue and having Puerto Rican librarian Sujei Lugo Vázquez, a rising star in the children's literature world, serve as guest editor was a great boon. Our interview with her, in which she discussed her vision for the issue with remarkable clarity, laid the groundwork for what is now Anansesem's most impactful issue to date.

[Book List] Caribbean Carnival in Books for Children

It's not surprising that our list of 30 Carnival-themed books is among our most-read articles. Carnival is one of the things our region is best known for beyond our shores, and for North American readers (who are Anansesem's second largest audience after readers from Trinidad and Tobago) children's books about cultural festivals are, for better or worse, often the first and easiest access point to other cultures. Apart from poviding synopses of 30 books published from the early 1980s onward, this list also includes a few illustrations from the books, provides an overview of Caribbean carnivals for the uninitiated, and links through to other content on our website tagged as Carnival-related. This list, published in 2018, also marked the debut of our orange 'own voices' sticker which we use to identify books written by Caribbean authors.

[Interview] Shining a Light on the Human Condition in Books for Children with Vashanti Rahaman

We have no problem saying that it's a point of pride that we got Trinidadian-born Vashanti Rahaman to give an interview back in 2013. In the 1990s, she became one of the first Caribbean children's writers to author a series of picture book titles with a traditional North American publisher, and she remains one of the few traditionally published Indo-Caribbean children's authors. Up until our interview with her, she had retreated from the public eye for almost a decade; no one in the children's literature world had heard from her in years and it took some doing to track her down. Her career, as she describes it in the interview, is a valuable template for any Caribbean children's writer seeking to walk the path of traditional publishing. Her haunting admission that "navigating the publishing world [in the 90s] was like backpacking through a foreign country without a map" is part of the reason Anansesem has, over the years, sought to demystify the process of traditional publishing.

[Interview] Carol Mitchell-Ottley: Awakening an Interest in History

Carol Mitchell-Ottley has made significant contributions to Caribbean children's and young adult literature. She's published about 40 books for young readers through her publishing house, CaribbeanReads, has written and self-published her own well-received children's and YA books, and served as Anansesem's first Kids Editor, responding to and editing submissions from child and teen writers. When we published this wide-ranging interview with her in 2013, she'd just been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Working for over a decade in a field that's severely under-recognized and under-resourced in the Caribbean, her longevity and dedication is admirable and instructive.

May 2019— Special Issue: Puerto Rico

The Table of Contents for our Special Issue on Puerto Rico, published in 2019, is the eight most-read post on our website. The Special Issue on Puerto Rico marked a few milestones for Anansesem: our first bilingual issue; our first guest-edited issue; our first issue officially endorsed by a TESOL organization; our longest issue; our top-selling issue. It still resembles all of our other issues in one key way: the contributors are mostly women of color. With its focus on the "Maria generation", the Puerto Rico issue is the most topical one we've ever published, which partly explains it success. We sent a copy of the issue to Loida Garcia-Febo, the Puerto Rican American librarian who served as president of the American Library Association from 2018 to 2019. Although she couldn't endorse any publications in her official role, she was [quote] "delighted to see an entire issue devoted to sharing publications and news from libraries from Puerto Rico."

[Book List] 2019 Releases- Caribbean Children's & YA Books

Our 2019 preview list is notable because 2019 was a notable year for traditionally published Caribbean books for young readers. You can find every kind of book on the list: the debut author book; the well-known-writer-for-adults-turned-children's-author book; the won-a-writing-competition-in-the-manuscript-stage book; the bilingual book; the written-by-a-celebrity book; the developed-by-a-book-packager book. The fact that Caribbean books for young readers, though still grievously under-published, are finding their way into the traditional publishing pipeline in all these different manifestations, and via a number of different routes, is promising.

Picturebook Love: 5 Caribbean Children's Authors on Helping Kids Choose Love Through Stories

Every child deserves to snuggle up with loveable picture books, and it just so happens that the most loveable picture books are the ones that offer themes and images of love. We don't often think of love stories as compatible with children's literature, but many of the finest children's books are, in fact, love stories. Making love a literary universal in Caribbean children's literature is so important one could consider it a high calling for the region's children's authors. For our Special Issue on Love published in 2017, it was a delight to feature five authors expounding the message of love at the heart of their picture books.

About the Author

Summer Edward is the Editor-in-Chief here at Anansesem. Her writing and art have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her home on the web is www.summeredward.com.

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