National Book Foundation's BookUpNYC, Sponsored by Bloomberg
BOOKUPNYC STUDENTS WRITE LETTERS TO AUTHOR TERESA ANN WILLIS
Author Teresa Ann Willis visited a few of our BookUpNYC sites this year. All students received a copy of Willis’ book, Like a Tree Without Roots, and the students at the University Settlement site, led by author/instructor Eisa Ulen, followed up the visit by writing letters to Willis. The slideshow contains the students’ letters to Willis, as well as her response to the group.
Images from BookUp Field Trips on Dec. 1 and December 8
This December, all of our BookUp sites visited the "Lunch Hour" exhibit at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library. After that, we had lunch at Hill Country Chicken and went book shopping at Books of Wonder.
BookUpNYC Students Interview Author Martha Southgate
BookUp students in University Settlement’s STRIDE Program on the Lower East Side, led by author/instructor Eisa Ulen, read Martha Southgate’s The Fall of Rome this spring. Southgate was generous to answer some of the students’ many questions via email.
Click here to read interview. >
BookUpNYC students and instructors enjoyed the first annual end-of-year picnic
BookUpNYC students and instructors enjoyed their first annual end-of-year picnic and read-in on Saturday, June 2 in Battery Park City. Author Jacqueline Woodson joined the students after lunch for a conversation and reading, answering questions about her writing process and books, and reciting work from memory, including passages from Locomotion. BookUp students from CAMBA in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn read a poem they had composed as a group with their instructor, Willie Perdomo.
BookUpNYC Students Interview NBA Finalist Julie Anne Peters
BookUp students in Lissette Norman’s group at I.S. 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn read Julie Anne Peters’ By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead earlier this year. They sent a few questions to Peters, a 2004 National Book Award Finalist for Luna, which she was happy to answer via email.
Click here to read the interview. >
Precious, a BookUp Student from CAMBA Kids, on what she loves about BookUp
Precious is an 8th grader from the CAMBA Kids program in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, who has participated in BookUp for two years. She’s going to high school next year, but she’ll take all of the good stuff she learned in BookUp with her.
Sarah and Orchid, BookUp Students from I.S. 318, on what they love about BookUp
Sarah and Orchid are 8th graders from the I.S. 318 program in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Sarah has been in BookUp for three years and Orchid for two years. They’re going to high school next year and took a couple minutes to look back on their experiences in BookUp during a field trip at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Photos from the April BookUpNYC Field Trip at the brooklyn public library
BookUp Students Interview YA Author Lisa Schroeder
Students from our BookUpNYC site at I.S. 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn recently read I Heart You, You Haunt Me by Lisa Schroeder. BookUp instructor Lissette Norman said her students loved the book so much that they chose to keep reading it during two BookUp sessions instead of doing an activity. The students sent us a few questions to pass on to Schroeder, who was generous enough to answer via email.
> To read interview, click here.
BookUp Students Write to NBA Finalist Gary D. Schmidt
The BookUp students at our University Settlement/STRIDE Program site in New York City recently wrote letters to 2011 National Book Award Finalist in Young People’s Literature Gary D. Schmidt about his nominated book, Okay for Now. To the students’ delight, Schmidt responded personally to each letter.
photos from A field trip
March 3, 2012: Kingsbridge Heights Community Center and SUHCCS Community School/Children’s Aid Society sites visit NYU’s Bobst Library, Hill Country Chicken, and Books of Wonder
VIDEO
Writer Sofia Quintero speaks with BookUpNYC participants about the process of getting a book published.
A Day in the Life of a BookUpNYC Field Trip
These photographs were taken during a BookUp NYC field
trip on February 28th, 2009, 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:
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Sessions are held once a week for a minimum of twelve weeks, allowing for a stronger relationship to form between resident authors and students.
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The primary focus is on reading and creative, reading-related activities that enhance the appreciation of reading as an interactive, imaginative pursuit.
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Children read from a selection of challenging material including short stories, books, and literary journals in addition to books recommended by the resident author.
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Participants go on field trips to “reading hot spots” including libraries, bookstores, literary organizations, and cultural programs such as author readings.
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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.
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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
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, Bomb,
CENTRO Journal and African Voices. His
children's book, Visiting Langston, received
a Coretta Scott King Honor. He has been a Pushcart Prize
nominee, a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia
University and is a 2009 fellow in Poetry from the New
York Foundation for the Arts. 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.
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