Removing Walls, One Picture Worth 1000 Words

Removing Walls (3:41) Good literature helps us overcome barriers, leap over boundaries, and experience immense freedom of imagination. Author Gene Luen Yang is a strong advocate of removing walls or obstacles to learning, particularly for children. Gene Luen Yang, a graphic novelist, is our guest today on Worlds Awaiting with Rachel Wadham. He is the creator of American Born Chinese, the first graphic novel to win the Printz Award, which is the American Library Association’s annual honor for best Young Adult book. It also won an Eisner Award \[WEB LINK: http://comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards-current-info ] for Best Graphic Album. At present, Gene is the 2016 Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Yang has also produced a number of comic books based on Nickelodeon’s popular series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and DC Comics’ Superman! Currently, he is working on The Secret Coders which draws on his experience as a computer science teacher. One Picture Worth 1000 Words (14:36) Next, illustrator and author, Molly Idle talks with Jessica Verzello of the Worlds Awaiting team about her joy in illustrating and creating picture books. She’s one-hundred percent behind – that a picture is worth a thousand words. Molly Idle has been drawing ever since she could wield a pencil, even before she could walk. Of course, her professional career as an artist came much later. It was upon graduation from Arizona State University, with a BFA in Drawing, that Molly accepted an offer to work for DreamWorks Feature Animation Studios. Five years later and after a number of film credits, she left the studio and leapt with gusto into the world of children's book illustration. Idle lives in Arizona. Technology (22:39) We finish up today with Ann Marie Marchant, Adult and Teen Services Librarian at the Provo City Library, who talks to Cole Wissinger of Worlds Awaiting about the advantages of technology in a child’s social and literate life.