Your SCBWI 2025 Summer Conference "TEAM BLOG" is Jolie Stekly, Justin Campbell, and Sibu T.P. Check in here and on socials at #scbwiNY26 for updates, countdowns, and LIVE BLOGGING from the conference!
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| Clockwise from top left: Lee Wind, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Jolie Stekly, Don Tate, and Jaime Temairik |
"Your dream is worth pursuing!"
Congrats to all the illustrator award winners at this year's conference! Special thanks to Priscilla Burris (Portfolio Showcase Director), TeMika Grooms (U.S. Illustrator Coordinator) and Dana Carey (Global Illustrator Coordinator); do read our recent Behind The Scenes At The SCBWI Winter Conference Portfolio Showcase post for more info and others who help put the Showcase together.
Note to all illustrators: do reach out to your Regional Illustrator Coordinators to ask about local portfolio events. You can find out more about SCBWI's Awards and Grants for illustrators here.
See the previous blog post for info about the other award announcements about other scholarship winners and the 2022 Spark Award winners.
Narrative Art Award Winner:
Student Illustrator Scholarship Winners:
Portfolio Showcase Honor Awards:
Druscilla Santiago - Personal website - Instagram
Heegyum Kim - Personal website - Instagram - Twitter - Etsy
Portfolio Showcase Grand Prize Awards:
Shamar Knight-Justice - Personal website - Instagram
Brizida Margo - Personal website - Instagram
Congrats to all the winners!
So fun to see so many illustrators posting doodles and sketches inspired by the conference! Here are just a few from Twitter....
When Chad is looking for illustrators, he's looking for a unique voice. And one of the best exercises he's found is to make yourself do some fan art of a favorite work, for example designing YOUR version of the Harry Potter cover(s). To Chad, style is just the straight look of your work, it doesn't mean 'watercolor' or 'digital', your brand is your stamp on the work. You can evolve that brand over time but Chad is looking for consistency within those iterations.
Even with fan art you should be thinking about all of the different angles of the package, in this case a hardcover book. How do the cover image, title type, spine, flaps and endpapers all work together? Your brand as an illustrator should be evident on the book as a whole.
When Chad is looking to take on a new client he asks himself what kind of work can he get them—board books, YA covers, etc.?
Chad has his illustrators look through their own online portfolios and Instagram posts and ask themselves if the pieces they are showing look like the work they want to be getting and is 'on brand'.
Every single element can be branded, these thoughtful banner examples below make it clear in one image the voice and style of the illustrator, the subjects that are important to them, and a clear indication of where their work fits in to the children's book industry (board books, comics, YA covers, etc.):
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How do you build your voice? Chad says to focus on you and what is enjoyable to you. He has his illustrators make a list of 100 things that they love to draw (from John Hendrix's book DRAWING IS MAGIC) and then to find a way to include some of those things in all of your drawings, always.
Paula Yoo is a book author, screenwriter, and musician. From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement (Norton Young Readers) was nominated for the 2021 National Book Award Longlist: Young People’s Literature. Her book won the 2021 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and was selected as a 2021 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard and the 2021 Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best YA. It has received 5 starred reviews and national coverage in The New York Times, TIME, NPR, The Today Show, NBC News, and Good Morning America. From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry is also the National Education Association (NEA) “Read Across America” YA book selection for May 2022. Her other books include Good Enough (HarperCollins), Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story, Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story, and Twenty-two Cents: Muhammad Yunus and the Village Bank (Lee & Low Books). Her TV credits range from NBC’s The West Wing to The CW’s Supergirl, and she has sold TV pilots and feature scripts. She is also a former journalist (The Seattle Times, The Detroit News, and PEOPLE). When she’s not writing, Paula is a professional freelance violinist. Website: https://paulayoo.com
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| Paula Yoo, presenting at #scbwiWinter22 |
Paula tells us she never saw Asian American representation in school or books as a child. No AAPI history was taught, and that erasure had an impact: "I felt cheated. I had lost a valuable part of not just my childhood, but my identity."
The Asian stereotypes of martial arts, being whiz kids at math and science are harmful, diminishing individual achievements and de-humanizing people. And Paula explored those ideas in her debut YA novel, "Good Enough."
Researching NF for children and teens. "Go beyond Google," and newspaper articles. For From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement, Paula visited libraries, poured through court records, newspaper articles, letters, flyers for protests, and most importantly, conducted interviews.
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Through those interviews, she met Jared, the son of Vincent's fiancée (who had married someone else after Vincent was killed). Jared's discovering his family's secret became, as Paula put it, "the emotional spine" of her book.
The book has two threads - one the historical retelling of Vincent's murder, the Civil Rights trials, and the start of the Asian American rights movement, and the other Jared's perspective of discovering and uncovering his family's secret history - his Mom's connection to Vincent Chin.
Paula advises that it's really important to try to interview subjects, or people who knew them. When you interview in person, on zoom, or on the phone... you pick up tone, the light in their eyes, their emotions -- and it will infuse your work. For her book Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story, interviewing Dr. Lee showed her his positive spirit which helped him cope with humor rather than anger.
And for her book Twenty-two Cents: Muhammad Yunus and the Village Bank, meeting Professor Yunus in person led to him opening up about his childhood, how his mother would share their food with homeless people, and how that inspired him to come up with his economic theory to fight poverty.
Setting becomes a character. Paula discusses how visiting the sites of her books gives her a visceral sensation to include in the writing.
Paula asks us to consider: What happens when we are erased? In the middle of this pandemic, research is showing that 1 out of 4 AAPI youth say they have experienced racist bullying.
Today's pandemic has seen a parallel pandemic of anti-Asian stereotypes and violence, and Paula tells us of her own experience with racism today and how it motivates her.
"Like history repeats itself, so does hope."
Just like coalitions formed back in the protests of Vincent Chin's killing and the injustice of the killers walking free, Paula cites the AAPI community joining with the Black Lives Matters movement. And today, New Jersey and Michigan are the first two states to mandate teaching Asian American history in K-12 schools.
#StopAsianHate
Finally, Paula puts out a call to our action in writing nonfiction books for kids and teens:
It is more important than ever that we make sure they know the whole truth. What happens in our past, influences our present, and what we do today influences the future - and who better to shape our future than our young readers?
Cecilia Yung is executive art director and vice president at Penguin Books for Young Readers, where she oversees illustration and design for two imprints, G.P. Putnam's Sons and Nancy Paulsen Books.
The majority of Cecelia's work is on picture books, so that's where she'll focus. Picture books are a very particular art form. A picture books is usually 32 to 40 pages long, typically for 4 to 7 year olds--readers who are also learning about life. Books can hep us make sense of ourselves and our world. Pictures become mirrors. We can recognize ourselves and the characters and their situations. Pictures become windows when they portray new characters and new situations and are authentic and believable. And books can introduce new ideas.
Ceclia shares, "You have to see the story and feel the story." And she takes us through the beauty of the following books.
WONDER WALKERS by Micha Archer
IN A JAR by Deborah Marcero
THE CAT MAN OF ALEPPO by Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-basha, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu
NINA by Traci N. Todd, illustrated by Christian Robinson
"Powerful picture book illustration help the reader SEE the idea behind the story FEEL its mind-altering world-changing possibilities."
