Book Reviewed:  The Year of Goodbyes – Debbie Levy, Disney Hyperion Books, 2010

The assumption that children and young adults will want to read poetry is reflected in the many recent books that present history and personal experience through verse to young readers. Some of these, such as Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming and Marilyn Nelson’s American Ace, successfully experiment with the boundaries between lyric and narrative, offering the reader a new way to enter the past. Debbie Levy’s The Year of Goodbyes is also an experiment, a profoundly moving one, in combining documents, conversations, and original poems to make the sorrows of the Holocaust individual and real.

In the book’s introduction, Levy (also the author of a children’s biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg) explains the structure of the book through the custom of the poesiealbum, a volume something like autograph books, “but…much more serious enterprises,” which students collected, inscribed, and exchanged with their friends in the Germany of the 1930s, from which her mother became a refugee.  Reproducing translations of actual entries from these books, images, and interweaving her own poems, Levy has attempted to capture the fear and confusion of a young girl about to be uprooted from the only world that she knew.  Levy creates a complete world, bookended between her introduction and a detailed afterward, along with a time line, photos, and bibliography.  The Year of Goodbyes needs to be experienced in this context in order to appreciate the depth of what Levy has accomplished.

“It is January 1938.
I am Jutta Salzberg,
a Jewish girl
in the city of Hamburg,
between the Elbe and Auster rivers,
in the north of Germany.”

Continue reading “Poesiealbum/Poetry Album” →

Book Reviewed:  Islandborn – Junot Díaz and Leo Espinosa, Dial Books for Young Readers, 2018

April is National Poetry Month, with lots of opportunities for engagement with young readers.   Therefore, I’m going to to take a different approach to a new book that is getting a lot of publicity, but not in this vein.

For,  Islandborn is not a poetry book…but it is a book filled with poetry.  Junot Díaz and Leo Espinosa have created an exquisite tribute to the power of the past, even when that past is narrated to a child too young to remember. Lola, a little girl of Dominican heritage living in a close-knit community in Washington Heights, New York City, is assigned a project by her teacher, Ms. Obi.  When the kids in her ethnically diverse class area asked to draw a picture of the country from which they emigrated, Lola is anxious.  “Miss,” she asks, anticipating a problem, “what if you don’t remember where you are from?  What if you left before you could start remembering?”  Ms. Obi inquires if Lola knows people who do remember.  Lola’s response, “Like my whole neighborhood!” produces a child’s journey through her heritage, and makes her into an artist and a poet.

Continue reading “Islandborn, Brilliantly Made” →

As Good as Anybody – Richard Michelson and Raúl Colón, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008

On Wednesday, April 4, we remember the 50^th anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s brutal assassination in Memphis.  There are many excellent picture books about his life and legacy, as well as about other activists in the movement for civil rights. As Good as Anybody stands out for its specific focus on King’s relationship with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched alongside King and chose to use his religious authority to encourage support racial equality and condemnation of white supremacy.  The book introduces the biographies of these two men separately, emphasizing parallels between the two religious leaders from boyhood on, but without glossing over important differences in their experiences.

Continue reading “Remembering Dr. King” →

My very first entry in this blog, posted almost six months ago, was a critique of Philip Nel’s recent book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? (Oxford University Press, 2017).  Although the book included important historical material, if quite selectively, it ultimately seemed to be dogmatic and marred by internal contradictions.  Now Nel has posted on his blog an assault on the use of the Cat as a mascot for the NEA’s “Read Across America Day.”

Once again, Nel manages to choose only specific examples of Seuss’s racism, which no thinking person will deny or minimize, without contextualizing these within his long career.

Nel has an easy and patronizing answer to my discomfort with his need to send Dr. Seuss to a re-education camp.  I am no doubt “wrapping (my) self in an unreflective nostalgia,” and failing to realizing that “then you bear responsibility for the pain that this art inflicts” (Nel’s italics to emphasize the moral idiocy of anyone who questions him.  He cleverly anticipates anger with his dictatorial attitude…

Continue reading “The Cat in the Hat Is Not Perfect” →

The Secret Seder – Doreen Rappaport and Emily Arnold McCully, Hyperion Books for Children, 2005

It is difficult to balance presenting the truth and maintaining a sense of hope in Holocaust books for younger children.  Books that inspire a sense of terror outside of the ability of children to cope undercut their own purpose; they may fail to make the connection necessary to teaching about a tragic era in Jewish history. Books that only present benevolent rescuers or the ultimate victory of liberation are misleading.  In The Secret Seder, Doreen Rappaport and Emily Arnold McCully create the story of a loving and supportive family maintaining their Jewish beliefs within an ominous time.  The author and illustrator neither minimize the child’s fears nor depict an unalloyed sense of security.  Within the story, they emphasize the essential nature of Passover as a celebration of freedom and a defiance of slavery (unlike an unfortunate book that I reviewed earlier).  Though published over 10 years ago, this is a book worth having at Passover time.

Jacques is a Jewish boy living with his parents in Paris, all desperately pretending to pass as Christians under the Nazi occupation.

Continue reading “A Secret to Share” →

The Yankee at the Seder – Elka Weber and Adam Gustavson, Tricycle Press, 2009

Don’t invite this “Yankee” to your Seder if, like me, you are celebrating Passover this year. If you do, you should be prepared for a serious discussion about race, history, and freedom. Maybe that is not a bad thing, but this book really strains the implications of a “teachable moment.”

If you’re not sure what Passover (Pesach) is, it is the Jewish holiday commemorating and reenacting the Exodus from slavery in Egypt.  If you are not sure what the American Civil War was, it was a bloody conflict in which more than 600,000 soldiers lost to lives, in addition to the many who were handicapped, traumatized, and sickened.  The War was fought because a group of southern states seceded from the Union in order to preserve their “right” to own slaves, as well as the possibility of expanding slavery throughout the United States.  After Reconstruction ended, a long and successful movement developed to systematically deprive liberated black people of their rights by “rebranding” the Civil War as “The War Between the States,” in which two societies with equally legitimate cultures and economic systems fought for their freedom. Slavery was essentially removed from the equation.  The Yankee at the Seder is part of this corruption of history, even if, as is likely, the author did not view her picture book in this light.

Continue reading “Do NOT Invite This “Yankee” to Your Seder” →

Books referenced:
Bunny’s Book Club – Annie Silvestro and Tatjana Mai-Wyss, Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 2017
Red Knit Cap Girl and the Reading Tree – Naoko Stoop, Little, Brown and Company, 2014

It is a well-known fact that animals love to read, especially eager and bookish animals who befriend both people and fellow nerds of their own species. The obvious appeal to children of recognizing fellow book lovers who happen to have four legs is inventively exploited in two stories about the need to read.

In Bunny’s Book Club, a persistent young rabbit who knew of his affinity for books “….ever since he first heard the lady with the red glasses reading aloud outside the library.”  Being on the outskirts and looking in are not enough for Bunny, who devises a plan to “break in” to his favorite place, using a flashlight and a convenient book drop.  Soon his friends, including a porcupine, a mole, and bear, want in on the action, and they eventually spend hours enjoying their illegally borrowed books both in the library and in Bunny’s cozy home.  The fun ends, almost, when they are caught by an understanding librarian, possibly one of the most appealing created in children’s literature. She issues them cards, and the fun never stops.

Continue reading “Book Nooks, Non-Digital Version” →

Just Being Audrey – Margaret Cardillo and Julia Denos, Balzer + Bray, 2011

Last week, the great French designer Hubert de Givenchy died at the age of 91.  Although his long career included a series of great accomplishments and innovations, he will always be remembered to many as the man who dressed Audrey Hepburn.  Obituaries recalled his own anecdote of preparing to meet an actress named “Hepburn” in his fashion house, and being initially disappointed when a slender young woman dressed in “ballerina flats and a straw gondolier’s hat” showed up instead.  From then on, she became both a professional inspiration to him and a lifelong friend.

Sadly, Hepburn herself did not enjoy the long life of her companion; she died in 1993 at the age of sixty-three.  Margaret Cardillo and Julia Denos’ Just Being Audrey gently avoids discussing her death, but their thoughtfully researched and beautifully designed love poem to the iconic actress and humanitarian is anything but patronizing to young readers.  Picture book biographies based on the childhoods of famous figures are not new. It is an obviously appealing idea to present to children what great people were like when they were just kids. While some of these books rise to the task of connecting childhood creativity and persistence to later success, others follow a hollow and misleading formula. Einstein as “bad at math.” You are bad at math….

Continue reading “Adieu, Audrey” →

Great Women in American History

Book referenced:  Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women – Cheryl Harness, HarperCollins, 2001

Here are some challenges to male authority to share with our children.   The women included are all profiled in Cheryl Harness’ illustrated encomium to brave women (not her only effort in this area). The book is dense with information and expressive sketches of our foremothers. It is a great source of inspiration and an invitation to learn more.

Anne Dudley Bradstreet: “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/Who says my hand a needle better fits.”  Obnoxious, indeed. Women write poetry, and are often the best interpreters of our own experiences.

Pocahontas/Matoaka: I’m not a Disney heroine….

Continue reading “More Rabble Rousing and More Remembering:” →

Book referenced:  Rabble Rousers: 20 Women Who Made a Difference – Cheryl Harness, Dutton Children’s Books, 2003

March is women’s history month. I could write about books that introduce children and young adults to the compelling life stories and outstanding contributions of women all year.  Recent collective biographies for young feminists include Chelsea Clinton’s She Persisted (which I reviewed for Tablet Magazine) and She Persisted Around the World, as well as Susan Hood’s Shaking Things Up (which I reviewed on The Horn Book “Family reading Blog”).  Earlier examples of this genre are still relevant and I have found several in my collection.  Cheryl Harness both wrote and illustrated Rabble Rousers fifteen years ago.  The books emphasis on activist crusaders for change, and its inclusion of a diverse range of women, makes it worthwhile to read today.

Of the twenty women included in this inspiring look at non-compliant women, four are black, one is Hispanic, and one is Jewish. None is Asian or Native American. However, there are other kinds of diversity to consider in honoring women’s accomplishments.

Continue reading “Women Raising Hell” →