September Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Hoodoo

As part of our Spotlight on #OwnVoices in September, we will feature books not published in the last year on Throwback Thursday. Today Angie looks at the John Steptoe Award-winning novel published in 2015.

By Ronald L. Smith. Clarion Books, 2015. 208 pages. ISBN 978-0-544-44525-3 Click here to purchase

The first time I read Hoodoo was in Mississippi in July.  Though it was a sweltering day, I had goosebumps from almost the very first page.  Hoodoo is that kind of book – it’s so good it can make a Mississippi summer day seem cold as winter.

Hoodoo Hatcher is 12 years old. He has a heart-shaped birthmark under his eye, which is something of a namesake for him because when Mama Frances saw it she declared that he had powerful hoodoo – folk magic – in him. Only Hoodoo hasn’t ever shown a single lick of magical ability.  Turns out he doesn’t have any hoodoo in him at all, unlike everyone else in his family, unlike his Daddy, who was a powerful mojo man who met a mysterious end. At least that’s what Hoodoo has always thought.  But now The Stranger has arrived in Hoodoo’s small Alabama town and dark things are following in The Stranger’s wake – people aren’t acting right, corpses are being dug up from the local cemetery.  And The Stranger is looking for a boy. A boy named Hoodoo.  But why?  And how can Hoodoo stop The Stranger if he doesn’t have any magic of his own?

This is a variation of the Hoodoo booktalk I’ve done for a little over a year now.  (And please feel free to steal it to use in your school and outreach visits.) I’ve used it for 6-8th grade classes and every time I use this booktalk, the kids are spellbound.  I watch as their mouths dangle open or a little “oooooh” runs through the crowd.  Without fail at least one kid waves their hand or blurts out a variation on “I BET HE DOES HAVE MAGIC, THOUGH!!!” and the others nod with appreciation.  This is an acknowledgement of how skillfully Smith hits the beats in this story.  Yes, Hoodoo does have magic of his own, but he’ll have to go through trials and tribulations as he learns how to access it and what it means.  Kid readers know this and they savor it because it tells them that they, too, have their own possibilities and are on their own journeys.

Hoodoo is just a joy to read.  There’s no other way around it. Sad, scary things happen in it - there's real loss and consequences and very dark dealings but reading it is ... fun. It's a book you get swept up entirely in, thanks in large part to Hoodoo’s narrative voice. This is an amazing example of how a book is written authentically in dialect.  It's never overdone, it never sounds condescending or fake but it has a real rhythm of the way a Black boy in Alabama in the 1930s might speak. Hoodoo reaches out to the reader and he has such a real kid voice. He gets frustrated by the way grown-ups in his life, Mama Frances especially, seem to be keeping information about his parents and magic from him.  And Hoodoo, like any normal, real kid would, is plenty scared of The Stranger, a fictional creation so scary and malevolent he practically leaps off the page.  (The Stranger reminds me of the darkest creations from Stephen King. This book reminds me a lot of King’s writing, because both King and Smith know that nothing is scarier than childhood.)

Hoodoo is also the perfect example of how an authentic setting can take a story to the next level. Smith sets Hoodoo in a small Alabama town during the Jim Crow era and the details of how this impacts Hoodoo’s life are woven quietly and yet seamlessly throughout the story.  It makes one thing clear: Hoodoo and his family and friends are on their own when it comes to fighting The Stranger. No White people are going to get involved and, anyway, they have no way to understand or access the generations of tradition and hoodoo that bind all this good and evil together. Hoodoo unspools like a true classic Southern gothic yarn, only unlike the work of Faulkner, O’Connor, or Welty, Smith centers the Black experience. I love Hoodoo for so many reasons, but one of them is because the White gaze is just … irrelevant. I want children’s literature to not just diversify but decolonize and Hoodoo is a book that takes that seriously.

Every time I booktalk Hoodoo, I have kids fighting over it.  It’s a perfect book to take on class visits: high interest horror with a fast-paced plot. Hoodoo won the 2016 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent, which is the perfect award for it because it signals that Ronald L. Smith is an author of great talent to watch.  I couldn’t agree more. Hoodoo Hatcher is an indelible character and the exact kind of Black kid hero kid lit needs more of.  All this means I think you need to start sharing this book immediately, if you didn’t know. (As Hoodoo himself would say.)


Reviewed by Angie Manfredi

September Spotlight on #OwnVoices:Don't Call Me Grandma

Don’t Call Me Grandma. Written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Carolrhoda, 2016. 36 pages. ISBN 978-1-467742085. Click here to purchase.

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s most recent picture book stands out for its characterizations and its unforced accounting of love.

The young narrator is reminded of the witch in The Wizard of Oz whenever she mistakenly calls her Great-Grandmother Nell “Grandma”: “It’s grandMOTHER my pretty.” But Great-Grandmother Nell isn’t mean, just “prickly” and “stern.” She is also 96 and full of memories: the time her sour cherry pie won first prize, the days a Hershey bar cost a nickel, the childhood moment “her best friend said they couldn’t be friends anymore because of her brown skin.” 

 “Was that when your heart got broken?”

Great-Grandmother Nell “looks out the window and whispers, ‘The first time.’”

Great-Grandmother Nell’s room is fascination, its mirrored vanity crowded with fancy glass bottles, a ballerina doll on the bed, and a sweet smell: lilacs and roses. Great-Grandmother Nell takes medicine from a cup with a spider on it, and when she paints her lips ruby red she blots them on a tissue then shows the girl how to do it, too. “To make sure you are wearing just enough but not too much.”

Elizabeth Zunon’s illustrations clearly delineate between present and past in this singular story. In scenes showing the girl and Great-Grandmother Nell, although the style is a bit stiff and some compositions awkward, the images are detailed and often rich with emotion. Pictures showing Great-Grandmother Nell’s past feature a looser style in watercolor, sketch-like images. There is also a double-page collage suggesting a scrapbook, showing Great-Grandmother’s Nell’s experience as part of African American history and culture in the mid-twentieth century.

Tying it all together, present and past, is the young narrator’s first-person voice, conveying a sense of immediacy and engagement as it relates moments with her grandmother, and her grandmother’s memories, too. All of it travels along an arc of unspoken love, compassion and connection, feelings that hum beneath the surface of this keen yet tender narrative.

Reviewed by Megan Schliesman

On Ghosts and the "Magic" of Day of the Dead

Raina Telgemeier has a new book coming out, so expect major excitement in your libraries and classrooms. (In my relatively large public library system in Cincinnati, Ghosts has a waiting list of 55 people; kids’ books don’t have waiting lists that lengthy unless they’re written by J.K. Rowling!) Of course publisher Scholastic/Graphix is doing a big marketing push, including the #GhostsTakeover hashtag on Twitter this past weekend, and of course the book is getting lots of love in review journals (four stars as of this writing). These are things we expect when a hugely popular author releases a new book.

In Ghosts, tween protagonist Catrina and her family have just moved to foggy northern California to make breathing easier for her little sister, Maya, who has cystic fibrosis. They meet neighbor Carlos, who is way into ghosts (he gives the sisters a ghost-themed tour) and sparks a renewed interest for the girls into their own Mexican heritage. This all happens alongside the coming of Fall, Halloween, and the Day of the Dead.

At BEA in Chicago in May and then again at ALA Annual in Orlando in June, many book lovers scored ARCs of the book and so the buzz increased. But there was also a growing chorus of concerned voices, too. In a post for the blog Teen Librarian Toolbox (hosted by School Library Journal), Karen Jensen wrestled with the culturally vague aspects of the book, especially concerning Telgemeier’s treatment of the Day of the Dead; very soon thereafter, California-based public librarian Faythe Arredondo blogged about Ghosts at Teen Services Underground. “Borrowing from other cultures to tell your story may seem minor,” wrote Arredondo, “but it can be harmful to people of that culture.” Before you read any further here, take a look at what Jensen had to say, and read Arredondo's thoughtful post. (For more insider’s perspectives on Day of the Dead, read this and this.)

Recently Ghosts received a positive review from the New York Times, in which Dan Kois wrote that “Day of the Dead plays nicely into... dynamics of Mexican-American family life.” But is that really the case? Okay, if you go to a Day of the Dead celebration later this Fall, it is true that many will wear Day of the Dead makeup, and that there are face-painters who will do it for you.   However, there is growing unease with the way Day of the Dead is becoming popularized: commercialized, and colonized, by White people.

UPDATE, 9/19/2016: These were mentioned in the comments, but just in case you missed them, here is Debbie Reese’s review and Laura Jimenez’s review.

September Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Makoons

By Louise Erdrich. Harper, 2016. 151 pages. ISBN 978-0-06-057793-3. Click here to purchase.

In this fifth book in the Birchbark House series, Makoons is now reunited with his twin brother Chickadee, and growing stronger.  On the Great Plains of the Dakota Territory in 1866, they are eager to join in the buffalo hunts, though mostly they get into mischief while avoiding work.  Fishing one day, they’re the first to spot a buffalo herd, and follow the preparations carefully, try to join the hunt but are thwarted, and help in the work following as the meat, organs, and hide are prepared.  Sneaking off for a nap, they discover a stranded buffalo calf and adopt it.

Through the perspective of the eight year-old twins, and picking up where Chickadee (2012) leaves off, the reader continues to follow closely the daily life of this Ojibwe family and their community.  As they are forced west, so are the buffalo, and through the buffalo themselves Makoons and Chickadee learn that “Soon the generous ones will be gone forever.” (p.118) 

Erdrich’s naturally evocative prose suffuses the reading experience with precise details of each daily scene, flavored with humor (a running joke is the vain but untalented hunter Gichi Noodin) and propelled forward with expectancy. Nokomis’ tending of her garden, the twins’ raising of the buffalo calf, and even, ultimately, Gichi Noodin’s lessons learned demonstrate, to Makoons and to the reader, how his people’s lives will continue to change. 

Like the books that precede it, it is a delightful and much needed addition to children’s historical fiction.  A perfect companion book to Chickadee, it offers, at the same time, a more somber counterpoint.  At its opening, Makoons shares a vision with his brother:

We will become strong and bring down buffalo. We’ll have horses, we’ll feed our people. All of us will travel into the great grass places, toward the western stars. We will never go back east to our lake, our deep woods. … We will be tested too … We will have to save them … Our family. Only … We cannot save them all.  (p.3-4)

At the close of the book, Chickadee reflects on what has come to pass so far, and asks his brother “Was this all? …Your dream. Is it over?” (p.147)  His brother only offers silence. A testament to Erdrich’s power as a writer is that this foreboding is laced with threads of hope, strength, and memory, enacted by her telling of the story, and the reader’s listening.

Reviewed by Nina Lindsay

September Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Shiny Broken Pieces

by Sona Charaipotra & Dhonielle Clayton. HarperTeen, 2016. 374 pages. ISBN 978-0062342423. Click here to purchase.

Gigi, June, and Bette are back in this sequel to Tiny Pretty Things--but things are different now. Cassie has healed, and returns to the cutthroat ballet academy, where she and Gigi (freshly returned from her own injury) quickly become besties--and vicious, manipulative plotters, determined to hurt the people who hurt them last year.  June struggles with anorexia, bulimia and the sinking realization that she will never be number one at the American Ballet Company.

Bette, meanwhile, uses her time at home (she's been expelled from the academy) to practice non-stop and and prove her innocence.  Determined re-capture her spot as Prima Ballerina, she fights her way back into the spotlight, only to find that she must share it with Gigi in the school's end-of-year performance of Swan Lake.

Like its predecessor, Shiny Broken Pieces is simply delicious.  Horrible "accidents", sabotage, self-destruction, and a teacher/student affair populate the pages.  But Charaipotra and Clayton also achieve a "real" feel in some of its quieter moments, as June takes one painful step at a time to cure and heal her eating disorders, Bette comes to grips with the pain she's caused, and the lines between friend and enemy blur as Cassie manipulates Gigi until she hardly recognizes herself.  Chapters alternate between the three main characters, each voice distinct and immediately recognizable.  Readers will find their sympathies swinging rapidly from character to character, as each girl's passion and sense of self-righteousness builds.  Compelling characters, heart-pounding action, and complicated relationships make for a breakneck read.

Reviewed by Allie Jane Bruce

September Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Child of Spring

by  Farhana Zia. Peachtree Publishers, 2016. 176 pages. ISBN 978-1561459049. Click here to purchase.

This lovely little book follows Basanta, a young girl living in a village in modern day India.  Basanta works with her mother in the big house, often working for the rich girl of the house, Little Bibi.  Being around Little Bibi makes Basanta question everything about her life - why does Little Bibi have so much?  Why can't Basanta have fine things too?  When Basanta finds a ring that Little Bibi has lost, it doesn't seem to wrong to consider keeping it for herself.  Little Bibi has so much.  Will she even miss the ring? In the course of the story, readers follow Basanta as she learns about the things that have real value in your life.

There's a lot to love in Zia's second novel but what really stands out is the setting. Though the village where Basanta and her family and friends live is never named, the details of life there are richly woven throughout the text.  We meet the merchants and families that create the fabric of the village and spend time with the children as they play, conspire, and create together.  Basanta is a determined, curious girl who questions the way her world works and doesn't just settle for "that's the way it is."  Her Amma is another great character - she loves Basanta but also expects her to make hard choices, do the right thing, and think about her actions.  I love grown-ups with personalities of their own (that are still so loving) in children's literature. One of my favorite parts of Child of Spring is a kite flying battle between the children in the village. It's a lively, exciting scene that brings play and competition to children to life in a very immediate way. Basanta's struggles to understand her place in the world is also a struggle to understand her place in the community of her village and this is, again, where Zia's writing really shines.  This is a book so firmly rooted in place it is almost tangible. I think this would be a great book to do as a read-aloud to a class: the chapters are short and episodic and there's lots of great, descriptive writing to dig into.

A few notes: I wish Peachtree hadn't chosen to italicize the numerous Hindi words throughout the text. There's no need to italicize another language in a text, even if that is the way "it's always been done."  It distances the reader. (Check out Daniel José Older's awesome video about why he doesn't italicize Spanish in his stories - this is it in a nutshell.) I also wish Zia had been more definitive about the exact place in India (an author's note mentions the book is set in "the state of Hyderabad in India." which is where Zia grew up) and time of the story. I have also seen a few reviews refer to this as a middle grade book but I think it is much more suited to to an older elementary crowd, so keep that in mind as well. (I think it would be perfect for 4th-6th grade readers.)

I was glad to spend time with Basanta and her entire village - the children are ingenious and determined and they have fun and are allowed to make mistakes like real kids. I was taken with this sweet and immediate story of growing into a community and a place.

Reviewed by Angie Manfredi

September Spotlight on #OwnVoices:Freedom in Congo Square

Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. Little Bee Books, 2016. 36 pages. ISBN 978-1-499801033. Click here to purchase.

Freedom in Congo Square begins with a two-page foreword by historian Freddi Williams Evans providing historical background and context for this picture book about Congo Square in New Orleans, which was a vibrant gathering place for free and enslaved people of African descent in that city. Evans explains that the enslaved who came to New Orleans under brutal conditions and continued to live brutal lives as the property of others were the ones who made Congo Square famous. “Code Noir” laws designated Sundays as holy days, Evans explains: work-free and for worship. While Sunday mornings may or may not have been work-free in truth—some worshipped, some still worked, for themselves or others—Sunday afternoons found many Blacks gathering in places around the city, “until a law made Congo Square the only place they could meet.”

             

            In Congo Square, the musical traditions and dances of different Central and West African cultures resounded. Some played drums and other instruments, some danced, others sang, clapped, or shook gourd rattles. New styles of songs and dances were introduced by people coming from across Louisiana and other states. “Over time, the intermingling of the different African, Caribbean, and European styles led to the development of new styles.” Jazz music was one of the styles that grew out of this dynamic convergence.

               Congo Square remains a vibrant gathering place today, Evans notes, one in which people gather from all over the world. “There they enjoy the freedom of expressing themselves by singing, dancing, drumming .… If you are ever in New Orleans on a Sunday afternoon, feel free to join in.”

               The page turn that follows this concluding line of the Foreword is dramatic because it takes us back to the time when Congo Square first became famous. For those who skip the Foreword (don’t skip the Foreword), the start is no less powerful: “Mondays, there were hogs to slop, / mules to train, and logs to chop. / Slavery was no ways fair. / Six more days to Congo Square.”

               Carole Boston Weatherford’s potent text doesn’t waste a word or a syllable. The first fourteen couplets count down the days to Congo Square, documenting the work of enslaved men and women as they labored in fields and in houses, in despair and in defiance. “The dreaded lash / too much to bear …. Run away, run away. Some slaves dared.”

               The remaining eleven couplets mark the transition to Sunday, and the gathering in Congo Square. Here the tone turns hopeful, spinning out details of the joyous gathering where news is shared and music and dancing, chanting and singing lift spirits and hearts. “Grouped by nation, language, tribe, / they drummed ancestral roots alive …. The piece of earth was a world apart. / Congo Square was freedom’s heart.”

               The twenty-five couplets that comprise the principle narrative are set against R. Gregory Christie’s spare, expressive paintings. Stylized, elongated figures with little or no facial details carry out the heavy work of Monday – Saturday. Sometimes they stand erect, sometimes their backs are stiffly bent with burden. An image of the enslaved workers asleep has echoes of Tom Feelings’ haunting images for The Middle Passage—black silhouetted figures lying prone.  

        But these stiff, constrained people break loose and free once Sunday comes, moving fluidly, with joy and abandon, against pulsing, vibrant orange, yellow and gold backdrops that erase all detail of setting—the mood and the music is all that matters. Only the final page spread brings a return to some background detail, with the suggestion of trees. Congo Square, it is clear, is a brief, psychic escape from the realities of enslavement.  

          A glossary and an author’s note conclude this rich and stirring work. In her note, Weatherford provides additional historical information, including the fact that “there was more to these gatherings than revelry” as she explains that Congo Square also served as a hub of communication for free and enslaved Blacks as well as a marketplace. “For a few hours every Sunday, Congo Square gave slaves a taste of freedom.”

Reviewed by Megan Schliesman