I wanted to post about some things that might be of general interest to the class:

1. Beasts of the Southern Wild (you can rent it a bunch of places like Prime, Youtube, etc, but it’s not on streaming anymore unfortunately) a 2012 movie with so many parallels to The Florida Project I felt remiss not to mention it – freeform childhood within poverty and an amazing young actor playing a young girl raised by a not traditionally “responsible” yet still loving parent, with more explicit magic than Florida Project but that same real life little represented marginalized community in the South, within this larger, magical feeling world. It’s really good!
2. Someone – Jamie? – had asked about how certain books enter the curriculum canon in an early class, and while I can’t speak to the teaching side of that, on the publishing side it has to do with librarians and the somewhat controversial awards system. But one part of that that’s a big deal, and which has participation by kids, is the Texas Bluebonnet.
3. Everyone probably knows about WNDB already but they’re cool and give out a lot of grant money for children’s lit related in and outside classroom stuff. Disability in Kidlit doesn’t update anymore, but that’s a resource I have more complicated opinions about, it’s at least a well-curated collection about the intersections of those two things.