Graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang, a two-time National Book Award nominee, has been named the latest ambassador for Young People's Literature, marking the first time a comic book creator has assumed the role.
This isn't the first time one of Yang's, well, firsts has made headlines. His debut work American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel nominated for the National Book Award for YA literature back in 2006. Though the anthology — three intertwined tales about Chinese identity and intersectionality — lost out to M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, it was highly lauded, making the top 10 lists for TIME Magazine, Booklist and NPR, and won the 2007 Harvey Award for Lark Pien, the novel's colorist. American Born Chinese was also the first comic to win the Printz Award, which is delegated for excellence in young adult literature.
"Gene Yang continues to prove himself as a pathfinder for publishing, for comics, and for literature in our changing times," said Mark Siegel, editorial director of First Second (Yang's editor for American Born Chinese and his two-story follow-up about the Boxer Rebellion and Joan of Arc in Boxers and Saints), in an exclusive interview with School Library Journal. "This is another great honor ... for graphic novels as a form ... a vital, timely, flourishing form of human expression."
Yang is expected to assume the mantel of ambassador on Jan. 7 in a ceremony at the Library of Congress. The appointment, which will last two years, includes duties such as touring the country to speak to children, teens, teachers, and parents about the imperative nature of reading, as well as his own experiences as a young reader and writer.
Yang will receive his new title from former ambassador Kate DiCamillo, author of the award-winning The Tale of Despereaux, who calls Yang "a talented writer" and "a brilliant artist."
"His stories are thought-provoking, genre-bending, utterly original examinations of the human heart," she added.
Source: School Library Journal
Photo: mliu92 | Flickr
