Tove Jansson & The Responsibility of Children’s Literature
Authors, illustrators and editors come together to unpack Tove Jansson's influential work and consider the field of children's literature more broadly as an invocation into citizenship. M.T. Anderson, Lauren LeBlanc, Dr. Raquel Ortiz and Tracy Hurren will raise important, even difficult questions on how we initiate our youngest into life in society, and what the roles and responsibilities of children's literature must be.
About our Panelists
M. T. Anderson is a New York Times Bestselling author who writes books for children, teens, and adults, including The Pox Party, which won the National Book Award; Elf Dog & Owl Head, which won a Newbery Honor Award, and the science fiction satire Feed, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award and which won the L.A. Times Book Prize. Another science fiction satire, Landscape with Invisible Hand, was made into a movie starring Tiffany Haddish and Asante Blackk. His nonfiction book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad was one of the Wall Street Journal’s Best Books of the Year. His most recent book, Nicked, is a historical heist story set in the eleventh century. He lives in New England.
Tracy Hurren is VP Editorial and Co-Owner at Montreal based Drawn & Quarterly, one of the world's leading publishers of graphic novels, and home to the Moomin comic strips, picture books, and deluxe chapter books in North America. She edits and art directs for esteemed cartoonists Adrian Tomine, Tillie Walden, Lee Lai, Nick Drnaso, and of course, the incomparable Tove Jansson.
Lauren LeBlanc is a writer and editor who has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, the Believer, the Drift, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. For the Atlantic magazine, she has written an essay about Tove Jansson, Jansson's travels around the United States, and the recent reissue of her novel "Sun City." She is also an elected board member of the National Book Critics Circle. Born and raised in New Orleans, she now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Raquel Ortiz is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, social anthropologist, educator, storyteller, playwright, performer, poet, composer, editor, illustrator, and author of children’s books and songs. Her newest project, an Afro-Puerto Rican bomba album for children, entitled Que vengan los niños, includes songs that are sung in Spanish and English. The album, created in collaboration with William Cepeda, a four-time Grammy-nominated Latin Jazz legend, composer, and educator, contains 12 songs ranging in topics from the beauty of the island of Puerto Rico to animals, bomba music, and Boricua pride in the USA, and incorporate traditional Latin American children’s songs. Four songs are inspired by Dr. Ortiz’s children’s picture books and theater productions.
The exhibition and this program is presented by Brooklyn Public Library in partnership with Moomin Characters, Moomin Arabia, the creator of the world-famous Moomin mugs that have become cherished collectables, Finnair, one of the world's oldest airlines, and the City of Tampere, home of the world's only Moomin Museum.
