I can’t tell you much about this book, because just about anything I say will be a spoiler. I’m not going to tell you much more than the jacket does. Micah tells us immediately that she is a liar. She tells us that she is going to tell us, the readers, the truth. She promises. She says she means it.

She lies.

Or does she?

Micah’s boyfriend is brutally killed, and the series of lies that she has spun over the course of her life begin to pile up on top of her. She tells us a series of stories, each one beginning with a promise that this is the truth this time – yes, it really is.

You are constantly torn between believing her and not believing her. Between loving her and hating her. And while you are torn, you are turning pages like a giant freak, racing and racing and racing to get to the end. Racing to try to figure out what is true and what isn’t.

This book? Is (insert massive string of expletives here) awesome. This book is everything everyone has said it is. This book, with its much more accurate cover, is sitting on the shelf at my store waiting for me to sell it. Now that I have finally read it, I shall.

A couple of quibbles. The profanity is extremely erratic, and seems to show up mostly in the last quarter. I wish it had just been left out altogether OR been more consistent throughout. Also, just a few different word choices when describing sexual acts would have allowed me to handsell this to more teens; as it is it definitely skews to the upper end of the YA range. (At least in an independent bookseller handselling category.)

Those quibbles are entirely from a bookseller perspective. As a reader?

I wouldn’t change a word.

Larbalestier is doing a signing at my former employer, and I am incredibly sad that I won’t be there for it. (Come to St. Louis!) But I’m definitely getting a hardcover copy signed, because I want this one on my shelf for keeps.

It is easy, as a white bookseller in a predominantly white community, to look at the shop shelves and not see much of a problem when there are very few faces darker than your own staring back at you.

It is easy to look around at your own diverse bookshelves and know that you yourself are openminded, and believe with your optimistic liberal heart that the tides are turning, the winds are changing.

But they’re not, really. Not enough. Not fast enough and not deeply enough. And we’re all complicit. Every single one of us.

There is huge outrage over the issue of Bloomsbury’s cover for Justine Larbalestier’s LIAR.  And there should be.  It was a stupid decision to take a book about a biracial girl and slap a picture of a white girl on it.  It was a shameful decision. It was a wrong decision. And the publisher’s response to the outcry is, frankly, a pile of shit:

“The entire premise of this book is about a compulsive liar,” said Melanie Cecka, publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA and Walker Books for Young Readers, who worked on Liar. “Of all the things you’re going to choose to believe of her, you’re going to choose to believe she was telling the truth about race?” (from PW, here)

Since the author herself has specifically stated that Micah (the main character in LIAR) is black, and if readers believe otherwise, it undermines her entire book, then YES I BELIEVE SHE IS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT RACE. And I think it’s pretty lucky for the publisher that this book is about a liar, because it allows them to craft this supposed truth about why they chose this cover (against the strong objections of the author), when it looks like nothing more than more of the same crap I have been hearing for years: books featuring black faces on the cover don’t sell.

Bull.

But what, exactly, have we done to change that? I’m not talking about the people at The Brown Bookshelf or Color Online. I’m talking about us – the great whitewashed book community. The publishers, the booksellers, the librarians, the bloggers, the reviewers. What have we done? Sure, there are pack leaders among us, people fighting against this stuff every day – but the greater majority of us have been pretty complacent. And many of us have admitted in our blogs this week (as I am doing, right now) that we haven’t been reviewing many books about people of color. I just looked back at my review posts, and since I started this blog there have been exactly three books reviewed featuring POC on the cover. Three. And of those, two of them (CHAINS and FLYGIRL) are historical fiction.

The third was SUGAR PLUM BALLERINAS, about which I wrote the following:

This book is so, so charming, AND the little girl is African-American as are some of her new friends but it is not remotely about that. It is just what we keep wishing for – a lovely little book about a black child where race isn’t an issue at all. Every child likes to read books about kids who look like them and guess what, publishers? Every child isn’t white. I hope this becomes a series.

I wrote that over a year ago, and wow, just LOOK at all I did to try to get this point across to publishers!

Oh wait. No, I really didn’t. I haven’t, really, and not enough of us have. Not loudly enough, not often enough, and not together enough.

If we HAD been, if we has a book community had truly been focused on this, it wouldn’t have taken until now for a major author in a major publication to ask why the Caldecott Medal has never been won by a single African-American illustrator. (Leo and Diane Dillon, an interracial married couple, have won twice.) And the author? Nikki Grimes. A black author herself. She shouldn’t have had to point this out, and it shouldn’t have been a shock to any of us. It certainly was one to me, though. Because just stop and think about this for a few minutes. Stop and think about the people who you probably assume have won a Caldecott, but in truth have not:

Jerry Pinkney

Brian Collier

Kadir Nelson

E.B. Lewis

Ashley Bryan

Donald Crews

And if they’ve never won, how are Don Tate and Floyd Cooper and Sean Qualls and Brian Pinkney and Nina Crews and Leonard Jenkins and Shadra Strickland (and, and, and, and) ever supposed to do it?

I look at these names and I cannot believe that FREIGHT TRAIN wasn’t a Caldecott winner. Or LET IT SHINE. Or THE OTHER SIDE. Or ROSA. Or WE ARE THE SHIP. My daughter and I both love THE HOUSE IN THE NIGHT, but just open WE ARE THE SHIP and look at the way Nelson plays with light and tell me that it didn’t deserve to be recognized. Or open MOSES and explain to me why FLOTSAM won instead. Do not misunderstand me: I think FLOTSAM is an incredible piece of work, and David Wiesner is a fixture at my old shop and a lovely and extremely talented man, but the art in MOSES is also extraordinary.

And how many Caldecott committees can possibly look at Jerry Pinkney’s work and put him on the Honor list…again? I do not care how many Coretta Scott King awards these artists have won. I DO NOT CARE. Jerry Pinkney’s won five. It doesn’t equal a Caldecott.

After I’m done thinking about this, I move on to thinking about related things that have bothered me that I never addressed with a publisher or a sales rep. The book BASS ACKWARDS AND BELLY UP and its sequel, FOOTFREE AND FANCYLOOSE, feature four girls – 3 white, 1 biracial. The covers? Three girls, all white.This particular slap is one I see over and over and over again: a book features characters of more than one race, but the cover only pictures white kids. So not only do white people only buy books with white people on them, they only buy books with ONLY white people on them?

The picture book TEN LITTLE FINGERS AND TEN LITTLE TOES is one I love and have sold many copies of, but why, in a book celebrating the sameness of all of us despite our skin color/nationality/place of residence, does the final baby and mother – the true subjects of the book – have to be white? Don’t we already have enough new baby books that feature little white babies? (There are some good ones featuring black babies, but not enough, and in those books all of the other people pictured are black too.) Do all of the books about Asian babies have to be about adoption or food or Chinese New Year?  (Are there even any books about Hispanic babies?)

Why aren’t there more books like CORDUROY, where the little girl just happens to be black and that’s just that? She just IS. It’s not part of the story. It’s not a slave narrative or a book about surviving a crack house or a book where every other character is also black. It’s a sweet book about a little bear and the girl who takes him home, and she isn’t white, and you know what? White people have been just fine with that since 1968. White people have also been purchasing the work of Mr. Ezra Jack Keats for decades, and oh look – what’s that on THE SNOWY DAY? A little black boy! When GRACE FOR PRESIDENT came out a couple of years ago, I was so happy to see that Grace was black and her classmates were a motley assortment of races. And guess what? We sold a whole lot of copies of that book because it was a good book and good books sell. Crap doesn’t sell no matter who’s on the cover.

And if there aren’t covers with black faces on them, then of course they don’t sell. But there aren’t any on covers because those covers don’t sell (supposedly). And around and around and around we go.

I don’t know what to do about this, except to start speaking up. Loudly. Persistently. Often. Speak up until I’m heard. Until we’re heard. I’ve been sleeping for too long, and I’m ready to help change this. I don’t know if I can, but I know I can’t look past it for another minute.

And I’m taking the August Color Me Brown Book Challenge. I’ve got a whole lot of books that are going to have to wait awhile longer. The brown books have been waiting long enough.

Lucinda Chapdelaine was born wealthy and upper-class, but one day, when she was five years old, her parents went off to a ball at the palace and that was the last she saw of them, therefor she was raised in poverty, a drudge for her kind but weak uncle and his cruel second wife.  After many years of misery, one day a mysterious woman leaves a mysterious jewel at Lucinda’s uncle’s goldsmith shop and that’s when Lucinda’s adventures begin.

The jewel is lost, found, stolen, sold, stolen back again, she discovers a mystery involving her parents’ death ten years before, she goes from the dungeon to the ball at the palace and everywhere inbetween, and no-one she meets along the way is quite what they seen, not the mysterious lady, known as the Amaranth Witch, not Peter the thief, not Prince Gregor, not even her aunt can be accepted on face value.  The author takes what could have been one or two-dimensional characters and gives everyone just that little bit of extra life to make them seem like actual people.  Actual people, in a fairy tale!  What will they think of next?

Lucinda has to go through an awful lot to reach her destiny, and she has help along the way, but mostly this is a female hero story, a fairytale about the girl using her own wits to find the end of the story.  If you or your child likes Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones or Gail Carson Levine, this book should be right up your alley.  This is Julie Berry’s debut novel, I flat out loved it, and I am really looking forward to reading more from this writer.

Order the book from an independent bookseller!

Jessica Day George’s website says that the upcoming DRAGON SPEAR is the last of the books she will write about Creel and her dragon friends, and now I am VERY VERY MAD at Jessica Day George. Stop writing if the books seem in danger of starting to suck, yes, but THAT IS NOT THE CASE HERE.

Creel’s story begins in DRAGON SLIPPERS, with her aunt deciding that she can’t/doesn’t want to support her anymore, so she takes Creel and leaves her outside of a dragon’s cave. Her aunt hopes that a noble lad from the village will come in and rescue her niece and marry her AND distribute the treasure around, thus making them all rich. Unfortunately for her aunt, Creel bargains with the dragon (who, in truth, couldn’t be less interested in eating her) and ends up setting off for the Big City to become a dressmaker, an odd pair of shoes in her hands, and a giant adventure (with still more dragons!) in front of her. The story continues in DRAGON FLIGHT, the second book. I don’t want to say too much about the two plots because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I need to tell you: these books are awesome. They’re funny and really well-plotted and Creel is spunky and smart and the kind of character you wish you could know. The dragons are almost better than she is; instead of collecting treasure they all collect something different. Seriously, one dragon collects DOGS. One collects stained glass windows. It’s so ridiculously great. And they all have wildly different personalities, each one so distinct and so well-drawn.

So because I don’t want to spoil anything for you, I really can’t tell you anything about DRAGON SPEAR either, except for this: it is too good to be a series ender. I mean, sure, if Jessica Day George (I just like to type her whole name) insists on ending it here, it has a satisfying closure to it. Unless you define “satisfying” as “clearly paving the way for thirteen or fourteen more books about Creel,” which I do.

I love this series NOW. I can only imagine being lucky enough to have it when I was ten or eleven or twelve (or, frankly, eight or nine, because I was a very advanced reader).  When I read that the series was ending I wanted to (as my toddler daughter would say) “cwy and scweam.” I am very, very, very sad about this and very, very, very mad at Jessica Day George.

And DRAGON SPEAR is a very, very, very good book; a very, very, very good end to a very, very, very good series and I am very, very, very insistent that if you haven’t read it you go out and start doing so immediately.

Yes, I meant it. Off with you!

Preorder DRAGON SPEAR from Powell’s or find your local independent bookstore.