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John Newbery (1713–1767) opened a bookstore in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London, where he published and sold books for children
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The first child labor laws, which were passed in 1907, freed children to go to school
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In 1919, the US publishing house Macmillan launched a department devoted entirely to children’s books.
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In 1922, the John Newbery Award was established by the American Library Association,
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In 1922 and 1923, two women, Helen Dean Fish and May Massee, became the first children’s books editors, each at a different company.
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In 1924, The Horn Book Magazine was published by the Bookshop for Boys and Girls in Boston under the guidance of Bertha Mahony and Elinor Whitney.
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Modern picturebooks began to develop during the 1920s and 1930s
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from the 1940s through the 1960s, children’s and young adults’ books became an increasingly important part of libraries, schools, homes, and publishing houses
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in 1962, Bryan was the first African American to both write and illustrate a children’s book.
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Pura Belpré Awards (for Latino literature), were established in 1970 and 1996, respectively, and are administered by the American Library Association.
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Literature for young readers by and about Native Americans began to flower in the late 1970s, as Native American voices, so long suppressed, began to be heard
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In 1975, disturbed by the lack of picturebooks that reflected diversity, Harriet Rohmer established Children’s Book Press, devoted to the publication of bilingual picturebooks that reflected a diversity of cultural experiences
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The first African American to win the Newbery Award, in 1975 for M. C. Higgins, the Great (I–A) and the international Hans Christian Andersen Award,
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Just Us Books, founded in 1988, were established to address the lack of diversity in the field, and forward-thinking editors such as Phyllis Fogelman, at Dial, encouraged and supported the work of several now-notable African American authors and illustrators
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In 1994, Bishop found that only 3 to 4 percent of the children’s books published in 1990, 1991, and 1992 related to people of color.
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In the late fall of 2002, the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) was launched, a joint project of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland and the Internet Archive in San Francisco
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By early 2004 there were almost four hundred books online, with plans for an additional ten thousand more by 2009
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A graphic novel for adolescents, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese (A), won the Printz Award in 2007.
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Arab American community produces, the Arab American Book Award for literature for young readers was established in 2007
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In 2008, however, the classic description of a picturebook was shaken with the awarding of the Caldecott Medal, given for the most distinguished picturebook of the preceding year, to Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret (I). Selznick’s book contains more than five hundred pages of text with hundreds of pictures.
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Publishers, such as First Second, are devoting resources to graphic novels, and beginning in 2009, The American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) publishes a list of “Great Graphic Novels for Teens” as well as a “Top Ten” list each winter.