A Celebration of African American Families

(Deadline Extended Until November 4, 2005)

The Journal of African American Children’s Literature, a peer-reviewed journal, is seeking manuscripts for publication in the up and coming issue. This issue will focus on “A Celebration of African American Families.”  We are seeking manuscripts that speak to the diversity, complexity, and kinship bonds associated with the African American family structure found in children’s literature.

Today’s children are being saturated via the media with images, music, and literature that embrace negative representations of African Americans and more specifically attack the African American family structure. This call for papers is a challenge to those stereotypes by providing a fair, diverse, and balanced representation of African American families. 

We invite scholars, authors, teachers, and others to submit manuscripts that examine and explore the works of African American illustrators and writers of children’s books that have celebrated and continue to celebrate African American families via their work. Manuscript deadline: November 4, 2005

Black Protest Reborn: Through the Lens of African American Children’s Literature in the 21st Century

The Journal of African American Children’s Literature, a peer-reviewed journal, is seeking manuscripts for publication in its Spring issue. This issue will focus on “Black Protest Reborn: Through the Lens of African American Children’s Literature in the 21st Century.” 

 Recently a surge of African American children’s books have been published that commemorate the courageous African Americans that took a stand and sometimes a seat in order to fight segregation. Angela Johnson, Carole Boston Weatherford, Jacqueline Woodson, and several other African American children’s literature authors, including Toni Morrison the recent recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award for Remember: The Journey to School Integration,have become catalysts for the examination of African American Children’s Literature that demonstrates past protests while instilling words of protest for today within this literature.

 We are seeking manuscripts that explore the ideologies of liberation, protest, hope, self-determination, and political consciousness found in “Black Protest Literature” written for children.  We invite scholars, authors, teachers, and others to submit manuscripts that examine and explore these issues. Manuscript deadline: May 1, 2006

 For further details pertaining to paper submissions go to the manuscript guidelines link.