We Need Diverse Books!

Recently, at the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles, I learned about a group organized to promote diversity in books.  In my view, diversity is anything new and different from my own life. Cultures, countries, past, present, yes, even future.  The list is endless. All fascinate me.   

SALT, A Story of Friendship in a Time of War,  by Helen Frost, Frances Foster Books, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013

This well researched novel in verse is set in the Indiana Territory in late summer of 1812. It is told from the point of view of two twelve year old boys who are like many boys their age today, content to spend their time hunting, fishing, and exploring the forest around their homes.

Anikwa’s ancestors have lived in the Miami village of Kekionga for centuries.  James is the son of a trader who sells supplies to both the Native American community and the soldiers and their families who live inside the fort known as Fort Wayne. Salt is one of the most prized commodities for both sides of the stockade.

Such a peaceful picture changes when the British and Americans lay claim to the land of Anikwa’s forefathers.  Warring factions assemble. James’s father must close his trading post and move his family inside the fort.  The supply of salt ends abruptly for the Miami tribe.

The boys, who are fictional, tell their stories in a distinct verse form. The author tells us Anikwa’s poems are “shaped like patterns of Miami ribbon work,” James’s poems began as an image of the stripes on an American flag. In the author’s words, “As I discovered the two voices, the pulse-like shape of Anikwa’s poems wove through the horizontal lines of James’s poems, and the two voices created something new that held the story as it opened out.” Here and there, as if to bring out the flavor of the boys’ friendship and surroundings, the author places poems about salt, how the deer leads man to find it, how man uses it, and how it tastes in the tears of those impacted by war.

Helen Frost is the award winning author of  Keesha’s House, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and Diamond Willow which won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award. She lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

 

A glossary of Miami (Myaamia) words is included and the author gives credit and thanks to the Myaamia Center  a rich source of maps, language, and historical and cultural information located at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

This is a diverse book. I think we need more. What do you think?

 

 

Tough Times, Tough Characters

Legendary writer Sid Fleischman said a strong villain is the writer’s best friend. The main character must become stronger to overcome the monstrous villain. A stronger villain and a stronger main character make the story stronger. The same could be said for obstacles.

EVERY DAY AFTER by Laura Golden, Delacorte Press, 2013

Author Golden has created conniving, bad-tempered villains and painful obstacles to challenge her main character, 11 year old Lizzie. The year is 1929, harsh for everyone. Her father leaves, abandoning his wife and Lizzie. This pushes her mother into leaving, too, mentally and emotionally.  

Lizzie is not an orphan. Or is she? Dad could return. Lizzie is sure he will be back in time for her 12^th birthday.  Mom could get well. If she doesn’t, it won’t be because Lizzie didn’t try—hard.

One of Lizzie’s classmates wants to see her shipped off to an orphanage. This gal is so jealous of Lizzie, she bleeds green. The reader will wonder what sets this villain off.

The bank wants to take the house. Lizzie’s grades, a source of pride for her father, begin to drop.

There are good characters willing to help but they don’t know Lizzie needs help. To let them know would, in Lizzie’s eyes, be letting down her father.

Lizzie writes in her journal, looks at her father’s face in the heirloom locket he left her, and wonders why he left and what will happen if he doesn’t come home. These are tough times for everyone in Bittersweet, AL, but Lizzie also suffers from isolation, keeping out those who could do something to make her life better. The reader, pulling harder and harder, page by page, for Lizzie to triumph, wonders when Lizzie will realize that her father has let his family down.

Every Day After is author Golden’s first novel but it won’t be her last. Her inspiration for this one was her paternal grandmother who lost her mother at the age of 12. She was left with a strict father in circumstances similar to the ones Lizzie endures.

Historical fiction helps us see how far we’ve come. If you are trying to train your tweens to sort and wash dirty clothes at your house, Lizzie’s laundry chores will make everyone thankful for your washer and dryer. They might even help you cheerfully.  

 

 

 

SEARCHING FOR DIVERSITY

When diversity is the subject, it’s not uncommon to hear the sentence,  “If only there were more books like…” completed by this title: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. How about a hundred?

CODE TALKER by Joseph Bruchac, Dial Books, 2005

Many of the 100 books by author Joseph Bruchac draw on his Native American heritage. Code Talker is only one, but I chose it because it honors a brave, heroic service to our country that couldn’t be talked about for more than twenty years.

Main character Ned Begay is fictional, but he becomes very real to the reader as he joins the Marines in WWII and serves in the Pacific, from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima.

Ned is young. He lies about his age so he can enlist in the Marines, and because he is a Navajo, he is assigned to a top secret task, performed only by Navajos: code talker.

The Navajo language is vital in the conflict with the Japanese because it is an unbreakable code. The courage and skill of the code talkers during some of the heaviest fighting of the war saved countless lives, but what they did and how they did it was so secret that when the war ended, not even their families on the reservation were told.

Only after the service of the code talkers is no longer classified does Ned begin his story: “Grandchildren, you asked me about this medal of mine. There is much to be said about it. This small piece of metal holds a story that I was not allowed to speak of for many winters. It is the true story of how Navajo Marines helped America win a great war.”

The work of prolific author Bruchac has won many awards including the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for The Heart of a Chief.

Start with Sherman Alexie on your bookshelf and add the works of Joseph Bruchac. I hope your bookcase is large.

Brave Little Book

Proving one can’t judge a book by its thickness, here is a brave little book, slight in pages, but powerful in how and what it exposes. The message is a challenge to us today to confront fear and stand up to bullies, at the core of every dictator’s hold on his people. 

BREAKING STALIN’S NOSE by Eugene Velchin, Henry Holt and Company, 2011

This moving story takes place over two days, during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, but it offers the breadth and depth of a lifetime. As events unfold, ten year old Sasha’s devotion to his father, a Communist, and Stalin, their leader, remains steadfast no matter what he is told. Sasha’s closeness to his father is established with warm, quiet scenes but this ends abruptly when the police, “State Security,” barge in during the night and haul his father away.

In a country suffering from a regime where everyone is watching everybody else, no one is really safe from being “reported.” Sasha’s father was reported by another man living in their communal apartment house. That man and his family move into the disgraced father’s apartment before Sasha can rub the sleep from his eyes, ejecting Sasha into the hallway and leaving him homeless. Seems Sasha and his father enjoyed a little more space in their apartment than others. Communists may believe that everyone should share equally, but woe unto those who seem to have even a little more. Envy causes grief.  

Sasha’s lonely experiences peel away his innocence in layers a child can understand. Life settles upon his shoulders like a blanket that is too heavy. Even so, the book ends on a note of hope. Good people still exist.

The author, who left the Soviet Union when he was 27, has written and illustrated several children’s books. He dedicated this book to his father who “survived the Great Terror.”

In his author’s note, Eugene Velchin relates that during Stalin’s reign, 1923-1953, over 20 million people were executed, imprisoned, or exiled. Many crimes were fictitious and punishment was carried out in secret. This secrecy continued after Stalin’s death. Fear was handed down from generation to generation. Older generations still do not want to talk about this.

This book could be a launching pad for discussion no matter the age of the readers living in your house. Courageous people in parts of our world today face persecution and death for making choices about what they believe to be right.  How fortunate we are that we can talk about anything.

For more, see the author’s website: www.eugeneyelchinbooks.com/breakingstalinsnose

Water, Water, Anywhere?

Except for times of drought when we’re asked to water our lawns before and after 10 o’clock on set days of the week, we take water for granted.

In the mid-1800’s our ancestors didn’t have that luxury. They couldn’t pretend they were opera stars singing in daily hot showers or gulp a glass of cool water from the kitchen sink. If they wanted water to keep their cattle, crops, and themselves alive, they had to hire a dowser, a person with the gift of finding water.

Not everyone had this gift. It seems to me that a dowser must have been as necessary to his community as a doctor. A dowser would have his future planned and his security assured. Wouldn’t he? But what if the dowser was determined to escape the reach of his gift and do something else?

THE WATER SEEKER by Kimberly Willis Holt, Christy Ottaviano Books, 2010

Dowser and trapper Jake Kinkaid uses a forked branch to make his living. He’s saving his money so he can stop dowsing and do what he wants. The plan is simple. Jake’s life gets complicated.

A wild, red-headed woman named Delilah runs to Jake’s cabin to escape her abusive father. In very short order, they marry, produce a son, and Delilah dies, leaving Jake to raise his son, Amos, alone. Amos inherits his mother’s artistic talents and his father’s gift of dowsing, but, as the reader learns, Amos is not entirely alone. Other women who love and care for Delilah’s boy, sometimes see a wild, red-haired apparition who seems more approving than threatening.

Jake’s gift of dowsing doesn’t make him happy. He longs to spend all his time hunting and trapping. As a scout for a wagon train going west, he is injured trying to rescue another man on a treacherous river crossing and his leg must be amputated. By now Amos is 14. He knows that he, too, has the gift of dowsing, but he keeps it to himself because he knows how unhappy his father is about his own gift. Instead, he tries to help his disabled father dowse and struggles to keep him from falling into a deep depression.

Amos’s life parallels the expansion of our country during the middle part of the 18th century. This is historical fiction at its best. As the author follows Amos from his birth in 1833 to the birth of Amos’s son in 1859, the reader absorbs how the early pioneers learned to work together, take care of each other, share, grow, settle, and branch out with their own families.

Author Holt won the National Book Award for When Zachary Beaver Came To Town, and her book My Louisiana Sky was made into a movie. She was launched on her quest for information for The Water Seeker when her own husband mentioned that his father was a dowser. Mentioned? What a happy discovery! There is more on her website: www.kimberlywillisholt.com

This book should travel well in the days ahead. Tuck it into your tween’s carry-on. A book can stay open after the captain orders all electronic devices shut down.