These photographs were taken during a BookUp NYC field
trip on February 28th, when Brooklyn BookUpNYC students
from the CAMBA Renaissance Program in Crown Heights
and Intermediate School 318 in Williamsburg spent their
Saturday touring the main branch of the Brooklyn Public
Library and lunching at the world famous Smoke Joint
in Fort Greene. The day ended with book shopping at
Book Court in Cobble Hill. The Foundation is grateful
to BPL, Smoke Joint and BookCourt for welcoming us!
Earlier this spring,
the Foundation spoke with students in Lissette Norman’s
BookUpNYC class at I.S. 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The students talked about their favorite books read in
BookUp.
BOOKUPNYC AT A GLANCE
The National Book Foundation
is committed to using innovative approaches to encourage
young people to read for pleasure. Recent studies show
that middle school age children are at great risk to
stop reading on their own. Through BookUpNYC, we are
addressing this issue and introducing young people to
America’s rich literary culture. We believe that
if young people aren’t readers, they haven’t
yet found the right books. Working in weekly, after-school
sessions with writer/instructors, BookUpNYC helps young
people identify their interests and guides them toward
finding quality books they will enjoy. BookUpNYC is
an expansion of our settlement house program and builds
on the successes of that program.
Here’s how BookUpNYC
works:
Sessions are held once a week for a minimum of
twelve weeks, allowing for a stronger relationship
to form between resident authors and students.
The primary focus is on reading and creative, reading-related
activities that enhance the appreciation of reading
as an interactive, imaginative pursuit.
Children read from a selection of challenging material
including short stories, books, and literary journals
in addition to books recommended by the resident author.
Participants go on field trips to “reading
hot spots” including libraries, bookstores,
literary organizations, and cultural programs such
as author readings.
Participants are supplied with gift cards to these
bookstores, where they are able to buy their own books,
supervised by the staff of the Foundation and writer/instructors.
Each student receives
a printed map of “reading hot spots” in
New York City, which lists all bookstores, libraries,
and literary organizations in the five boroughs including
their addresses, phone numbers, website, and opening
hours.
About
BookUp NYC Instructors, Fall '08
Elisha Miranda
Elisha
Miranda is a writer, filmmaker and activist who moved
to New York City from San Francisco in 1991. She holds
a dual B.A. in Ethnic Studies and English from the University
of California at Berkeley, and an MFA in Directing and
Screenwriting from Columbia University. In addition
to essays and screenplays, Elisha writes for young adults
under the pen name “E-Fierce.” Her debut
novel The Sista Hood: On the Mic (the first
book in a four part series) about a multi-racial, all
female hip-hop crew, was published in July 2006 by Atria
Books.
Lissette
J. Norman
Lissette J. Norman is the author of a children’s
book, My Feet Are Laughing (Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 2006). Her work appears in anthologies:
Moving Beyond Boundaries, Bum Rush The Page: A Def
Poetry Jam, and Role Call: A Generational Anthology
of Social & Political Black Literature & Art.
She has also been published in Mosaic Literary Magazine,
African Voices, Dialogue, Long Shot and Drum
Voices Revue. Lissette won the Lee & Low Books’
“2003 New Voices Honor Award, the “2007
Original Work” grant from the Council on the Arts
& Humanities for Staten Island, the “2007
Paterson Prize for Books for Young People” (Special
Recognition) from The Poetry Center (PCCC), the “Americas
Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature”
(Commended Title), and the Bank Street Best Children's
Book of the Year. Lissette received her B.A. in English
at SUNY-Binghamton and currently lives in Brooklyn,
NY.
Willie Perdomo
Willie Perdomo is the author Where a Nickel Costs
a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received
a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been
published in The New York Times Magazine and
Bomb and his children's book, Visiting
Langston, received a Coretta Scott King Honor.
He is a NYFA Arts Fellowship winner, Pushcart Prize
nominee, a Urban Artists Initiative/NYC grant recipient
and was recently a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing
at Columbia University. He is currently Artist-in-Residence,
Workspace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He is co-founder/publisher
of Cypher Books. willieperdomo.com
Sofía
Quintero
Sofía
Quintero is the author of several novels and short stories
that cross genres. Born into a working-class Puerto
Rican-Dominican family in the Bronx., the self-proclaimed
“Ivy League homegirl” earned a BA in history-sociology
from Columbia University in 1990 and her MPA from the
university's School of International and Public Affairs
in 1992. After years of working on a range of policy
issues from multicultural education to HIV/AIDS, she
decided to pursue career that married arts and activism.
Under the pen name Black Artemis, she wrote the hip
hop novels Explicit Content, Picture Me Rollin’
and Burn. Sofía is also the author of
the novel Divas Don’t Yield and contributed
novellas to the “chica lit” anthologies
Friday Night Chicas and Names I Call My
Sister. As an activist, she co-founded Chica Luna
Productions (chicaluna.com),
a nonprofit organization that seeks to identify, develop
and support women of color who wish to create socially
conscious entertainment. She is also a founding creative
partner of Sister Outsider Entertainment, a multimedia
production company that produces quality entertainment
for urban audiences. Sofía is presently working
on her first young adult novel Efrain’s Secret
which will be published by Knopf in 2009. To learn
more about Sofia and her work, visit
blackartemis.com, sisteroutsider.biz
or .myspace.com/sofiaquintero.
Eisa
Ulen
Eisa
Nefertari Ulen is the author of Crystelle Mourning,
a novel described by The Washington Post as
“a call for healing in the African American community
from generations of hurt and neglect.” Her essays,
exploring topics ranging from Hip Hop to Muslim life
in America post-9/11 to the gap between the Civil Rights
generation and Generation X, have been widely anthologized.
Nominated by Essence magazine for a National
Association of Black Journalists Award, she has contributed
to numerous other publications, including The Washington
Post, Ms., Health, Heart & Soul, Vibe, The Source,
Black Issues Book Review, Quarterly Black Review of
Books, and CreativeNonfiction.org. She is the recipient
of a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center Fellowship
for Young African American Fiction Writers and a Provincetown
Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship. Ulen graduated from
Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s degree
from Columbia University. She teaches English at Hunter
College in New York City and lives with her husband
in Brooklyn.
Books
Read in BookUpNYC
As a key part of BookUpNYC, each student reads and
receives his or her own copies of a group of books each
semester. Students also select titles for purchase on
field trips. The following are some of the books read
in BookUpNYC group sessions:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
by Julia Alvarez
Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks
Blubber by Judy Blume
Tyrell by Coe Booth
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon
Deep in the Mountains by Terrence Cheng
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln
Collier
Behind the Mountains by Edwidge Danticat
The Fire Thief Series by Terry Deary
Drown by Junot Diaz
Double Dutch by Sharon Draper
The Sista Hood by E-Fierce
The Skin I’m In by Sharon Flake
Every Time a Rainbow Dies by Rita Williams
Garcia
Gemini by Nikki Giovanni
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston
Hughes
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale
Hurston
The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones
Madame President (How I Survived Middle School)
by Nancy Krulik
The Gun by Paul Langan
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
Angry Black White Boy by Adam Mansbach
El Bronx Remembered by Nicholasa Mohr
What They Found: Love on 145th St. by
Walter Dean Myers
Graffiti Girl by Kelly Parra
Bodega Dreams by Ernesto Quiñonez
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria
Rilke
The Boy Without a Flag by Abraham Rodriguez,
Jr.
Buddha Book by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
Push by Sapphire
Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld
Lena by Jacqueline Woodson
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm
X
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
A People’s Trilogy of the United States
by Howard Zinn
Bloomberg L.P. is a leading
financial information services, news, and media company,
serving customers around the world. Bloomberg's media
services include the global BLOOMBERG NEWS® service;
the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® 24-hour business and financial
network; and BLOOMBERG RADIOSM services. In addition,
Bloomberg publishes BLOOMBERG MARKETS® magazine
and BLOOMBERG PRESS® books for investment professionals.
For more information please visit http://www.bloomberg.com.
Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch
(Grand Army Plaza)
New York Public Library Main Branch
(Manhattan, midtown)
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Manhattan,
Harlem)
BOOKSTORES
Barnes and Noble at
Union Square
(Manhattan, downtown)
Barnes and Noble Bay Plaza (Bronx)
Brownstone Books (Brooklyn, Bedford Stuyvesant)
Hue-Man Books (Manhattan, Harlem)
CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS
Rubin Museum of Art/PEN World Voices Festival
RESTAURANTS
Johnny Rockets (Manhattan, Greenwich Village)
Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Too (Manhattan, Harlem)
Smoke Joint
(Brooklyn, Fort Greene)
Step-Ins
(Bronx, Parkchester)
SAMPLE BookUpNYC ACTIVITIES
Judge a Book By Its
Cover – The
instructor presents students with 25 books and asks them to
evaluate whether or not they are interested in reading them
based on title, cover, jacket copy, and first page. The students
silently examine the books, fill out a form indicating their
preferences, and then discuss their choices and what drew
them to each book.
Manuscript
to Book – The instructor walks students
through the book publication and production process by displaying
his or her book at various stages including manuscript, galley,
proposed book cover designs, final designs, completed hardcover,
paperback, and even remainder and foreign language copies.
Talk
Show – One student, the talk show “host,”
interviews other students posing as characters from the books
they’ve read. Alternately, the characters interview
each other.
Mock
Court – Students split into teams and
put a character on trial. One team consists of a prosecutor
and two witnesses while the other consists of a defense attorney
and two witnesses. The “lawyers” and “witnesses”
build their cases based on the text they’ve read.
Epistolary
Exercise – Students compose letters
to characters in the books they have read, drawing from the
content of the books, or create their own characters to write
to.
Narrative
Collage – Students use magazine clippings
to create collages of characters from a book. They use the
collages to reflect upon and discuss the characters’
lifestyles and experiences.
Acrostic
Poetry – Students compose acrostic poems
in response to their reading.
Website
Design – Students design websites to
explore issues raised in a book. Their websites include quizzes
based on their own experiences and characters’ experiences.
In an alternate version of this activity, students design
web pages for each character in the book, to reflect the characters’
interests and personalities.
Comics
– Students draw comics based on the book, sometimes
from the perspective of one of the characters.
2008-2009
READING HOT
SPOTS MAP NOW AVAILABLE
Inspired by the goals of BookUpNYC, the Reading Hot
Spots Map was created to provide young people and their families
with the locations of New York City bookstores, libraries
and literary organizations where they can browse, read, and
spend time with books, free of charge. To request copies of
the Reading Hot Spots Map, email Rebecca Keith at rkeith@nationalbook.org.