Here Wee Read

Nadia Odunayo is the founder and CEO of The StoryGraph, the new website that helps you to track your reading and choose which book to read next. She previously worked at Pivotal Labs as a software engineer and originally learned to code at Makers Academy in London. In her spare time she loves to take dance class and, naturally, read!

Follow The StoryGraph on Twitter @thestorygraph and Instagram @the.storygraph.
Visit Nadia’s website: https://www.nadiaodunayo.com/

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

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Traci lives with her family in the Cherokee Nation, out in the country like she did as a child. Back then, she had geese, chickens, horses, dogs and cats. Her mother’s Cherokee family has been in the area since the removal of most Cherokee people from their southeastern homelands in 1838. Traci grew up hearing stories about her ancestors and looking at their photographs with her elisi (eh-lee-see), grandma. Now her son does that with his elisi in addition to fishing in the nearby lake and learning their Cherokee culture.

Before she began writing for children, Traci’s work focused on helping Native American tribes and their citizens. She wrote legal codes, testimony for Congressional hearings, federal budget requests, grants and reports. She continues that work by writing stories for young people and encouraging other Native writers and illustrators to share theirs. When Traci was a child, she never read culturally accurate books about the Cherokee or any other Indigenous people. The stories and poems she writes now reflect her mission to add to the canon of literature showing that Native Nations and their citizens still exist and thrive today.

Visit Traci’s website: https://www.tracisorell.com/

Books mentioned in this episode:
We’re Still Here: Native American Truths

Libro.fm offer: Receive 2 audiobooks for the price of 1. Customers will need to start a monthly membership and will pay $14.99 for 2 audiobook credits to use on over 185,000 audiobooks.  Enter code HWR at checkout or click here libro.fm/redeem/HWR.

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
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Atinuke is a Nigerian-born author who started her career doing traditional oral storytelling. Her books include a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Winner, a Notable Book for a Global Society, a Cybils Award Winner, and an Africana Award Winner. She is the author of the popular Anna Hibiscus series, B is for Baby, Too Small Tola and more.  She currently lives in Wales.

Learn more about Juana and her work by visiting her website:
http://atinuke-author.weebly.com/

Books mentioned in this episode:
Too Small Tola

Libro.fm offer: Receive 2 audiobooks for the price of 1. Customers will need to start a monthly membership and will pay $14.99 for 2 audiobook credits to use on over 185,000 audiobooks.  Enter code HWR at checkout or click here libro.fm/redeem/HWR.

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

Ambient Bongos by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Juana Martinez-Neal is the Peruvian-born daughter and granddaughter of painters. Her debut as an author-illustrator, Alma and How She Got Her Name, was awarded a Caldecott Honor and was published in Spanish as Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre. She also illustrated La Princesa and the Pea by Susan Middleton Elya, for which she won a Pura Belpré Illustrator Award, and Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, which won a Robert F. Sibert Medal. Juana Martinez-Neal lives in Connecticut with her family.

Learn more about Juana and her work by visiting her website: https://juanamartinezneal.com/

Books mentioned in this episode:
Zonia’s Rain Forest
Tomatoes for Neela
Alma and How She Got Her Name

Libro.fm offer: Receive 2 audiobooks for the price of 1. Customers will need to start a monthly membership and will pay $14.99 for 2 audiobook credits to use on over 185,000 audiobooks.  Enter code HWR at checkout or click here libro.fm/redeem/HWR.

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

Nandi Taylor is a Canadian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent based in Toronto. Her debut novel Given garnered over one million reads on the online story sharing site Wattpad and earned a starred review from ALA's Booklist magazine. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in English literature and a diploma in journalism.

Nandi has worked as a travel writer while living abroad in Japan, which indulged her passion for bringing beautiful locations to life through the written word.  She grew up devouring sci-fi and fantasy novels and from a young age wrote books of her own. Her works are an expression of what she craved growing up--Black protagonists in speculative settings. Common themes she writes about are growth, courage, and finding one's place in the world.

Learn more about Nandi and her work at http://nanditaylor.com and on Facebook and Instagram.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Given

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

Vanessa Brantley-Newton is a self-taught illustrator, doll maker, and crafter who studied fashion illustration at FIT and children's book illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is the author and illustrator of Grandma's Purse and Just Like Me, and has illustrated numerous children's books, including The King of Kindergarten and Sewing Stories. Vanessa currently makes her nest in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, daughter, and a very rambunctious cat named Stripes.

Vanessa celebrates self-love and acceptance of all cultures through her work and hopes to inspire young readers to find their own voices. She first learned to express herself as a little girl through song. Growing up in a musical family, Vanessa’s parents taught her how to sing to help overcome her stuttering. Each night the family would gather to make music together, with her mom on piano, her dad on guitar, and Vanessa and her sister.  The children she draws can be seen dancing, wiggling, and moving freely across the page in an expression of happiness. Music is a constant celebration, no matter the occasion, and Vanessa hopes her illustrations bring joy to others, with the same magic of a beautiful melody.

Learn more about Vanessa and her artwork at http://vanessabrantleynewton.com and on Facebook and Instagram.

Books mentioned in this episode:
Just Like Me
Becoming Vanessa

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

Roda Ahmed the author of the children’s book “Mae Among the Stars” that published in 2018 with Harper Collins.  “Mae Among the Stars” is inspired by the story of Mae Jemison, the first African American woman to travel into space.

Roda was born in Somalia and moved to Norway with her family and seven siblings.  She’s a graduate in Anthropology from the Norwegian University of Technology and Natural Sciences.  Roda has also mastered five languages; Somali, Arabic, Norwegian, English and French.

Visit Roda’s website: http://rodaworld.com to connect with her and read more about her work.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Brave Bessie: Queen of the Sky
Mae Among the Stars


Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

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Jarrett has been a storyteller most his life, both on his own and in collaboration with Jerome. While their earliest work remains locked in a drawer—the key long lost for good measure—their first co-authored book, Creepy Things Are Scaring Me, was published by HarperCollins in 2003.

Since then, Jarrett has been honing his skills of storytelling as an entrepreneur. He’s served as creative director for multiple technology companies and, most recently, as co-founder and CEO of a startup in the high-tech world of clear removable orthodontics. During his time there, he and his team crafted a compelling story, built a brand around it, and then sold it all in late 2017.

A member of SCBWI, Jarrett now spends his time writing and drawing in his home near Austin, TX, where he lives with his wife, their two boys, and a dog named Whiskey. When he’s not writing or drawing, you might find him fishing on a river somewhere or tinkering under the hood of his new old F100.

Jerome is a designer, illustrator, and writer, originally from Houston, TX. He studied graphic design at the Art Institute of Austin and has worked as a technical writer, freelance graphic designer, and illustrator.

Since 2016 he has been a graphic designer at The Walt Disney Company where he uses design and illustration to visually tell stories in print, digital, and immersive experiences for Disney global business development. He works primarily from his home office near Austin, TX, where he lives with his wife, daughter, and son.

Jerome is a member of the SCBWI and shares a previous author credit with Jarrett for Creepy Things Are Scaring Me (HarperCollins, 2003), which they wrote as teenagers.

Books mentioned in this episode:
The Old Boat
The Old Truck 

Kwame Alexander’s Community Poem!
https://www.splcenter.org/march-continues-community-poem
Submission Deadline: March 10, 2021

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

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Sandhya Prabhat is an Independent Animator and Illustrator based in the Bay Area, California and is from Chennai, India. She holds an MFA Degree in Animation and Digital Arts from NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia, and a Bachelor's Degree in Literature from Stella Maris College. 

Sandhya has illustrated more than ten children's books. She also works on animation for TV and movies, and designs for social media platforms.  Visit sandhyaprabhat.com and visit her on Facebook and Instagram @sandhyaprabhat.

I Am Brown is a joyful celebration of the skin you're in--of being brown, of being amazing, of being you.

Books mentioned in this episode:
I Am Brown 

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

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Rio Cortez is the New York Times bestselling author of The ABCs of Black History (Workman, 2020) and I Have Learned to Define a Field as a Space Between Mountains (Jai Alai Books, 2015). Born and raised in Salt Lake City, she now lives, writes, and works in Harlem.

Letter by letter, The ABCs of Black History celebrates a story that spans continents and centuries, triumph and heartbreak, creativity and joy.

To learn more about Rio please visit her website at https://www.riocortez.com/
Books mentioned in this episode:
The ABCs of Black History 

Connect with Charnaie online in the following places:

Blog: http://hereweeread.com
Personal Website: charnaiegordon.com
Podcast Email Address: [email protected]

Find Charnaie on the following social media platforms under the username @hereweeread: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

Feel free to share this podcast on your social media platforms to help spread the word to others.  
Thanks for listening!

The Way Out (Longing) by Hayden Folker | https://soundcloud.com/hayden-folker

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