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Lisa Yee, author of Millicent Min, Girl Genius and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, has managed to conquer Techonology Itself and has posted the audio from her upcoming NPR interview on her blog. Her interview is part of a longer segment about Asian authors in contemporary children's fiction, which she says should air in many NPR markets this week.

Also featured in the segment is Jason Low of Lee and Low Books. He and Lisa both talk about the universality of a good story and great characters. While it is still uncommon to see an Asian face on the covers of books these days, Jason was heartened at the number of new books out about Chinese Americans.

I agree that we are in a flourishing period of books about Asian kids who were born in America, and not just about immigrating to America. The Ruby Lu series is my current favorite. And like Lisa says, young readers respond and relate to the characters in the books they read, not to the race of the characters. Yet, at the same time, it is still important to see the many different ethnicities of our society reflected in the media. I say, if that media happens to be NPR, now we're getting somewhere!

Tags: asian+americans+literature lisa+yee