Mitali Perkins is the author of several books for young people, including SECRET KEEPER (Random House), MONSOON SUMMER (Random House), RICKSHAW GIRL (Charlesbridge), and the FIRST DAUGHTER books (Dutton).
I've made plenty of missteps as I journey along with the rest of my author friends to include and describe characters of different races, but I featured a particular error in my article on stereotypes in children's and YA literature for School Library Journal:Overexoticizing a nonwhite character to appeal to white readers can happen inside a story as well as on a cover. Take my book The Sunita ...
From The Paper Tigers blog which can be found here: http://papertigers.org/personalViews/archiveViews/MPerkins4.html Ethnic book awards are designed to encourage writers from underrepresented communities and to bring overlooked literary gems into the light. But do they accomplish their goal?In the children's literature world, we have our fair share of ethnic book awards. We have the Pura ...
I've heard three kinds of complaints about the Oscar-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. Here's my rebuttal to each criticism, because guess what? I liked the film.(1) "Unrealistic."Of course it was improbable, Mr. Rushdie. Escapist fantasy mandates good triumphing over evil. One can survive a crawl from a toilet through excrement thanks to the power of love, while the love of power ...
