Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

By Rita Williams-Garcia. HarperCollins Publishers, 2017. 9780062215918.

Click here to purchase.

Clayton Byrd is cut from the same cloth as his grandfather, Cool Papa Byrd. Both of them live for the blues, a love Clayton’s mother (Cool Papa’s daughter) cannot understand. When Cool Papa Byrd suddenly dies, Clayton, determined to run away and join the Bluesmen (Cool Papa’s band), begins a journey that takes him deep into the New York subway system and into a tenuous alliance with a beatbox crew.

It just about goes without saying that this latest offering from Rita Williams-Garcia is packed with vivid descriptions and language so poetic it may as well be music, but my favorite aspect of this book was the strength of Cool Papa Byrd’s character and presence, even though he dies less than twenty pages in. The potency of the (borderline-unhealthy) love Clayton feels for him is palpable, as is his grief when Cool Papa dies; but Ms. Byrd’s feelings towards him are far more negative, as evidenced by her need to sell every one of his possessions after he dies. This book could be foundational for a curriculum on unreliable narrators, as the voice occasionally switches from Clayton ’s perspective into Ms. Byrd’s point of view, such as when she recalls childhood memories of wishing, fruitlessly, for Cool Papa to “drop anchor at their house and take her to baseball games.”

Caregivers and teachers could also use Clayton Byrd Goes Underground to delve deep into the idea of practicing compassion for those who see the world differently than we do. For both Clayton and his mother, the blues are inextricably linked to Cool Papa Byrd; but for Clayton, this connection manifests as he adores, fears, and idolizes his grandfather, while for Ms. Byrd, it translates to bitter resentment and anger as she identifies her father’s love of the blues as a force that made him “light on the fathering side.” The ways they grieve for Cool Papa Byrd are in conflict; Clayton clings to every bit of him that he possibly can, to the point of running away from home, while Ms. Byrd feels compelled to cleanse every reminder of his existence from her life.   If young readers can understand that both of these behaviors stem from an unhealthy form of grief for a larger-than-life character, and that ultimately, Clayton and his mother have to accept not only Cool Papa’s death but also the different impacts he continues to have on both of their lives, they will be well-positioned for a more understanding and compassionate existence. I highly recommend Clayton Byrd Goes Underground, especially for classrooms and family read-alouds.

Reviewed by Allie Jane Bruce

Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Towers Falling

Today we are posting a review from guest blogger Diane Bailey Foote. Diane is Curator of the Butler Children's Literature Center at Dominican University in River Forest, IL. Thank you, Diane!

Towers Falling

By Jewell Parker Rhodes. Little, Brown, 2016. 9780316262224. Click here to purchase.

Published in 2016, this novel set in current-day Brooklyn is suitable for a revisit every September. To adults, 9/11 may not seem that long ago, but for young readers who were born after–or infants during–the tragic day it may as well be ancient history.

Here, 10-year-old Deja is coping with a number of challenges, all stemming from her family’s homelessness due to her ill father’s inability to work. She is responsible for caring for her two younger siblings while her mother works, and she’s starting fifth grade in a new school near the shelter where her family has just moved. She has a defensive shell built up from poor experiences, including bullying at her previous school, and is surprised to find the students and her new teacher friendly and welcoming. It soon becomes clear that the chasm between her experiences and background knowledge and those of her new classmates is wider than expected. The principal has decided that everyone in school needs to study 9/11, and Deja doesn’t know anything about it. Her sense of alienation and her suspicion that everyone else knows something she doesn’t, is heartbreakingly articulated; she thinks to herself she is “too dumb” to be at the school.

The process by which Deja uncovers the meaning of 9/11 to her personally is compelling. Readers feel along with Deja as she learns the facts, including watching a truly horrifying video at a friend’s house. It turns out her father is ill because he had worked as a security guard in the North Tower, and is experiencing what adult readers will recognize as PTSD, as well as lingering asthma from inhaling ash. In a misguided but well-meaning attempt to protect Deja from the horrors he experienced first-hand, he’s insisted on hiding all information about 9/11 from her. Through his daughter’s growing awareness, and not without realistic anger, he begins to come to terms with his condition and seek healing.

Some story elements do seem a bit facile. For example, Deja makes two new best friends unrealistically quickly, each of whose backgrounds serves to make a point about 9/11. Sabeena, a Muslim girl, recalls discrimination toward her family after the attacks, and Mexican American Ben’s father served in the military. However, the friends’ give-and-take is realistically done, and frankly, Deja’s ease in making friends comes as needed relief against the sadness of her family’s situation and the terrible facts of 9/11, none of which are spared here.

This is a sensitive, credible portrayal of young people coming to terms with a major event in American history that is still affecting society today.

Reviewed by Diane Bailey Foote

Looking Back: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli

By Allie Jane Bruce

When I was a kid, I luuuuuurved Maniac Magee. I swooned as I read about his superhuman athletic feats, howled with laughter at the zany idea that someone could be allergic to pizza, and cried like a baby when, halfway through the book, he walks silently out of town, his spirit crushed. I definitely had a crush on him. I read and re-read the book often enough to remember Jerry Spinelli’s mesmerizing, hilarious language and skillful employment of magical realism.

I recently re-read it for the first time in at least a decade, and the experience was both nostalgic and gut-wrenching. I remembered enough to be prepared for the White savior element, but it turns out there was a lot I had forgotten--and yet--internalized.

Before I go any farther, I need to say that while what follows is intensely critical, there is one part of this book that I still truly love, and her name is Amanda Beale. This smart-as-a-whip, book-loving, funny, kind, caring, and yet fallible Black girl is just about the only fully humanized and relatable character in the entire book. She is a grounding, heart-driven force in a story riddled with problems, and frankly, I think she deserves better.

Onto the criticism. Much of the book hinges on the tension between the East (Black) and West (White) sides of the fictional town of Two Mills. Maniac (whose real name is Jeffrey) seems determined to breach the divide by inserting his White self into the Black side of town. Chapter One, which features an orphaned Jeffrey running away from his life with an aunt and uncle who refuse to talk to each other, establishes the book’s primary theme: Jeffrey’s refusal to live in a world in which people divide themselves. Thus, the book sets up a problematic analogy, in likening segregation produced by generations of institutionalized racism and systemic oppression to a house in which stubborn Aunt Dot and Uncle Dan, who won’t get divorced because they’re “strict Catholics”, have “Two bathrooms. Two TVs. Two refrigerators. Two toasters.” (p. 6)

This is a racially privileged White person’s version of racism. This is a world in which racial differences are interpersonal and can therefore be pinned on people who refuse to speak to each other, not on systemic and structural inequities. A world in which there is only Black and White--no Native, Latinx, Asian, or multiracial people to complicate matters. An ahistorical world, in a fictional town in which Black people and White people really are separate but equal--and all it takes to breach these divisions is a plucky, racially colorblind White kid who dares to try. Indeed, the prologue asserts that Maniac’s “legacy”, his “monument”, is the fact that nowadays, “sometimes the girl holding one end of the rope is from the West side of Hector, and the girl on the other end is from the East side” (p. 2). This White savior mentality pervades the entire book.

As do stereotypes. I was struck by the stereotypical ideas and language that comprise Mars Bar, the Black, masculine, slang-heavy aggressor who calls Maniac “fishbelly” and “could back up traffic… while he took ten minutes to cross the street” (p. 37).  Likewise, the McNabs are White, masculine, mean, bullying, old-school racists who live in a disgusting home (“Cans and bottles lay all over, along with crusts, peelings, cores, scraps, rinds, wrappers--everything you would normally find in a garbage can” [p. 131]) and are preparing a bunker for what they’re sure will be an upcoming invasion by Black East siders (Giant John McNab describes Black people as “bloodthirsty for whites, like Indians in the old days, Indians on a raid… They're today's Indians.” [p. 152]). Let’s face it, although Spinelli never uses the term--the McNabs are “white trash,” and convenient for any White people looking to distance themselves from racism (why self-examine yourself for racism when you can pin it on those types of White people?). Although some scenes, most of which occur at the end of the book, inject a degree of humanity into these characters, the relish and vividness with which Spinelli describes these caricatures is palpable.

These stereotypes--the "dangerous Black man," the disgusting, bigoted "white trash" family, and the "bloodthirsty" (and extinct) Indians--imprinted themselves in my subconscious. Most perniciously, they reinforced in me a faulty analysis of racism itself. Racism, 12-year-old-me would have said, is because some people, like Mars Bar and the McNabs, are mean to people who look different from them. Never mind that this version of racism--which erases systemic and structural injustices--depends on stereotypes of Black male aggressors and White male rednecks in its own explanation for why racism exists.

As I re-read Maniac Magee, I had a sudden flashback to my fourth-grade teacher reading it aloud. This teacher--a White woman--simply loved this passage:

“For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why these East Enders called themselves black. He kept looking and looking, and the colors he found were gingersnap and light fudge and dark fudge and acorn and butter rum and cinnamon and burnt orange. But never licorice, which, to him, was real black.”

She dwelt lovingly on this passage, and professed that it must have been a decisive one in winning Spinelli the Newbery medal (not that she could have actually known). Why, I ask now, would someone who clearly doesn’t understand the distinction between race and skin color--someone who is comfortable exotifying dark skin with a surplus of edible metaphors--feel entitled to write a book on the subject? And why would the Newbery committee give a gold medal to a book that rewrites and nullifies an entire cultural identity to suit White fancies?

(I’d like to go on a rant here about the overwhelming Whiteness of the Newbery, but that’s another post.)

There was one more particularly nightmarish scene I’d erased completely from my memory. About three-quarters through the book, Maniac challenges Mars Bar to accompany him to the West side. Mars Bar, whose pride will not allow him to pass up a dare, accepts. Maniac--who knows full well that the McNabs are White supremacists who are literally building a bunker and planning to stock it with automatic weaponry to use on Black people--brings Mars Bar to a birthday party at the McNabs.  Yes, really. When Mars Bar asks about the bunker, Maniac tells him it’s a bomb shelter.

Unsurprisingly, the party does not go well, but thankfully, Mars Bar leaves physically intact. Afterwards, Maniac ponders, “What had he [Maniac] thought? What had he expected? A miracle?” As it turns out, by his own admission, Maniac didn’t give it a lot of thought.

Let’s unpack this. Maniac puts Mars Bar’s life in danger on a whim, an exercise in feel-good-y-ness that matters more to him than this Black kid’s life. Nowhere does Spinelli interrogate or problematize Maniac’s behavior. Maniac feels an intense sense of pride in Mars Bar (“this East End warrior” [p. 166]) for concealing his fear. Then, Maniac goes on his way, onto the next thing. His disregard for Mars Bar’s physical safety, and his inability to reflect on the fact that he put a life in danger, are, frankly, horrifying. Scenes like this are why it’s necessary to overtly and repeatedly assert that Black Lives do Matter.

During an open-fire-hydrant block party in which Maniac plays and dances with Black (East side) people, an elderly Black man approaches him. It is one of the most upsetting, chilling scenes in the book--certainly written to be more upsetting than the scene in which the McNabs attack Mars Bar. Spinelli describes the man’s voice as “deep and thick and sort of clotted, as though it had to fight its way through a can of worms before coming out”. He tells Maniac to go home. “Never enough, is it, Whitey? Just want more and more. Won’t even leave us our little water in the street… What happens when we go over there?” (p. 60-61) he asks, as he gestures to the White, West, side of town.

He’s got a point.

Spotlight on #OwnVoices: Wild Beauty

By Anna-Marie McLemore.  Feiwel & Friends, 2017. 9781250124555 
(Release date: October 3)

Click here to purchase

When I sat down to start this review, I thought I’d begin by giving myself a crash course on “magical realism.” I can wield the term but with little more than glancing authority. 

I’ve since abandoned that quest. Not because it isn’t worthy, but because I’d rather spend the time and space diving into the wonder that I found in Wild Beauty, which addresses racism and classism and homophobia, misogyny and many forms of exploitation, in the context of a work of magical realism in which what is impossible in the world in which we live when we close the book is, of course, the magic, while the realism of the singular story is grounded in the tragic believability of all those terrible things in the real world we wish didn’t happen but do. 

Wild Beauty introduces the Nomeolvides women, who have been keeping the grounds of La Pradera in full bloom for generations. Not by planting and tending, but by digging their hands deep into the soil and drawing forth flowers and trees in their maturity: colorful blossoms, green leaves, ripening fruit. This is their gift.

And curse. Before the Nomeolvides came to La Pradera, they were accused of being witches. The Briar family, the White owners of La Pradera, gave them safe haven in exchange for them transforming the landscape of the estate.

That was generations ago, but the Nomeolvides have never left. Not just because the work never ends. Because they can’t. The land has bound them to it. They can take a trip into town, but if they try to leave for good they will die, gasping for air as pollen fills their lungs.

And there’s more.  When a Nomeolvides woman falls in love, the land will take her lover—cover him with the earth. For generations they’ve sent their lovers away to save them.

At the center of this story is Estrella Nomeolvides, one of five young women who are cousins on the estate. The cousins have a shared secret: they are all in love with Bay Briar, a young woman they grew up alongside and who has now inherited La Pradera. None of them dare to act on that love for fear Bay will disappear. And none of them believe their mother could possibly understand her loving another women.

Then a dusty, dirt-covered, skinny young man, barely more than a boy and brown-skinned like the Mexican American Nomeolvides, appears one morning at La Pradera, rising from the soil. His clothes are worn and outdated. Is he a lost lover of a long-ago Nomeolvides woman returning to the world? He has no clear memory of his past. They call him Fel: three letters written on the ribbon pinned to his shirt. Four of the cousins treat him like a brother, but Estrella’s feelings for Fel are anything but familial.

Not long after, Reed Briar arrives at the estate. Arrogant, entitled, he intends to challenge Bay’s inheritance. Bay, and the aunt who raised her, were Briar outcasts. It turns out Reed is too, but he’s been raised with privilege and hubris and is seeking to find his way back to the center of the family’s and society’s good graces. The Nomeolvides are the means by which he intends to impress. Estrella understands this. They all do. But she is the one who agrees to give him what he wants, hoping to leverage greater safety for the rest of them. 

Reed’s arrogance and attitude, his greed and his lust for power, are symbolic of the hidden history of the Briar’s and La Pradera; a history that turns out to be the source of the curse that ties the Nomeolvides to the land, and seals their lovers’ fates; a history rooted in race and class prejudice.  Woven into that history are the generations of Nomeolvides women who were complicit in covering it up without knowing. 

“Nomeolvides”: Do not forget. But it was the land that never forgot what happened. And it’s the land that has demanded some form of justice ever since, doing what the world of White men and privilege refused to do.

Wild Beauty unfolds in its own time under the sure hand of Anna-Marie McLemore’s lush storytelling. Sensory-rich details create a vivid physical and emotional landscape while the characters breathe on the page.

There is magic and there is realism in Wild Beauty.  In the story, and in the real world, hope resides in the space between them. Hope is what happens when lies become truths; when mothers and daughters let go of their secrets; when gender does not define who we are or whom we love; when justice belongs to the living, and we do not forget the dead.  

Reviewed by Megan Schliesman

Looking Back: Where's Waldo?

By Elisa Gall

Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo? (published as Where’s Wally? outside of the United States) turns 30 this year. To celebrate, Where’s Waldo? Destination Everywhere! will be released later this month. I first learned about the anniversary from Dr. Debbie Reese on Twitter:

Debbie Reese's tweet reads, "Hey, @Candlewick, did this stereotype get cut from the new 30th anniversary edition of Where's Waldo? I HOPE SO."

The image featured in Reese’s tweet shows the backpack hauling, striped clothes & glasses-wearing Waldo character walking past a crowd, including two people lounging outside a tipi. They appear as stereotypes of First Nations/Native people, wearing generic headbands with feathers. One is smoking a pipe, and next to the pair is a brown dog with a headband and feathers atop its head. I did a double take after seeing the tweet, because I was a huge Waldo fan as a kid, and I did not remember that image from the series. As a child I owned a Waldo t-shirt, and as a school librarian I’ve probably checked out Waldo books to kids hundreds of times. I’ve even dressed up like Waldo for Halloween. But truth be told, it had been awhile since I’d spent time with the books. So today I sat down and did just that.

My first reaction at opening Where’s Waldo? was feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated. Overstimulation might be an understatement. I didn’t know where to look (that’s the point of a search and find book, I suppose). A reader could spend a good hour on one spread alone, looking and thinking and wondering about each drawing, character, setting, and situation. There is A LOT going on.

A chaotic sea illustration featuring the canoe scene described in the main text of the post.

There are a lot of sophomoric, goofy moments happening, as well as a bunch of cringe-worthy ones, including the image Reese shared in her tweet and this image showing another group of “Natives” paddling a canoe amidst chaos in the sea. Instead of lounging, this time they are in battle position: one has mouth agape and leg up, as if chanting, while his canoe-mates are either paddling or holding weapons at the ready. Reading this post Reese wrote several years ago helped me to clarify why the feathers and stereotypes represented here are so problematic.

The introduction page for "Trouble in Old Japan."

I noticed that people of color and First Nations/Native people are present in Handford’s books, but often when real settings and cultures are present they are also used as props or gimmicks, such as in Where’s Waldo Now? when Waldo travels the globe. The images from “Trouble in Old Japan,” in which Waldo comes upon sumo wrestlers and samurai, show how this setting-specific representation is also troubling.

An illustration of sumo wrestlers and samurai featuring Japanese stereotypes. 

Many of Handford’s fantasy worlds in Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey lack racial diversity and feature what appear to be huge crowds of White human characters. This subtly (and wrongly) communicates to First Nations/Native children, children of color, and White children that White is the default for representation - and in these make-believe stories, First Nations/Native children and children of color either do not exist or are not welcome.

A scene with flying dragons, a castle, and a White crowd of characters. 

A scene with many White characters wearing blue, green, or red clothing.

I’m sure that some will say that you can’t criticize the whole book or series because of a few images, or that these images are somehow less likely to be noticed on account of the clutter and topsy-turvy storytelling happening around them. I do believe that there is so much crammed into each spread that a reader might notice something different every time they read the book; that makes me aware that with more time examining these books, I’ll likely come to see additional elements of racism and other systems of oppression reflected in them. Even if we aren’t consciously taking all of the messages in at each read, we are seeing them and they are affecting us. I didn’t even REMEMBER these scenes from my childhood, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a role to play in my socialization. It’s not that I didn’t see them, but rather that I didn’t notice them or understand them.

The publisher’s site for the 30th anniversary book promises “12 classic scenes as you’ve never seen them before,” and that has me wondering what will―and hoping what will not―be reflected in those scenes. I’m not ashamed that kid-me loved these books, and in many ways I think Handford’s complex visual storytelling is part of why I’m so into visual narrative today. I am frustrated, however, that I didn’t have a teacher or role model to help me notice and question these images. I worry about how many teachers and caregivers today are looking at Waldo books and celebrations with children without reflections or critical conversations. A great anti-bias lesson in a classroom might be to look through these books and try to spot and discuss the -isms and -ias. A different kind of search and find book, if you will.

Spotlight on #OwnVoices: The Lines We Cross

by Randa Abdel-Fattah. Scholastic Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1338118668. Click here to purchase.

Michael and Mina are 11^th graders in Sydney, Australia. Michael is White; Mina is from Afghanistan. One day Michael spots Mina at an anti-immigrant rally (his father is a leader of the far-right “Aussie Values” group; she is a counterprotester with a sign reading, It’s Not Illegal to Seek Asylum). Soon thereafter Mina appears in Michael’s class at ultra-posh Victoria College. At first Michael and Mina are at odds, with Michael spouting out things he’s heard from his folks (of his beliefs, Michael says, “I wear my politics like hand-me-down clothes: Some bits feel like they don’t fit properly, but I expect I’ll grow into them, trusting that because they’re from my parents they’ve come from a good source”) and Mina understandably taking offense. But Michael and Mina grow closer, eventually bonding over their love of indie music and school assignments. They begin to develop complicated and strong feelings for each other. Bit by bit, Michael begins to discard articles of the “hand-me-down clothes” he inherited from his ultra-conservative parents, and he and Mina fall in love.

Chapters alternate between Mina’s and Michael’s first-person narratives. Both voices ring true. As a White cishet male, I myself have never been subject to microaggressions. Reading about Mina’s experiences as a young Muslim woman in overwhelmingly White spaces was eye-opening and painfully realistic. Each tiresome interaction serves as a mirror for young readers from marginalized groups while providing a window into a different experience for those readers who, like me, have the privilege of not having to worry about loaded questions like, “Where are you from?” Abdel-Fattah also succeeds in portraying a White cishet male who has to make some tough decisions, but does so with thoughtfulness and empathy. In this way Michael is something of a model for how White people can move beyond binary thinking and take part in meaningful conversations with family and friends.

The Lines We Cross would be a great title for high school literature circles – the format, the plot and characters, and the timely topic would make for great discussion. Don't sleep on this one.

Reviewed by Sam Bloom

Spotlight on #OwnVoices: The First Rule of Punk

By Celia C. Pérez. Viking, 2017. ISBN 978-0-425-29040-8. Click to purchase.

The cover of The First Rule of Punk.

To María Luisa, or Malú, two years is forever. It’s the rest of middle school, and the amount of time that she and her professor mom will be living in Chicago thanks to a too-good-to-pass-up job opportunity at a Midwestern university. Two years seems like a lifetime spent away from Dad, Florida, and the record shop Dad owns and lives above. (“Spins & Needles wasn’t just a record store; it was my second home.”)

Malú identifies as punk (through style, skateboarding, music, zine-making, attitude, and more). She connects to her White, punk dad but struggles with pressure she feels from her mom (who Malú nicknames “SuperMexican”) to be “señorita-like” and more connected to her Mexican identity. 

Things in the Windy City don’t start off very well. Malú’s Blondie-inspired makeup conflicts with the dress code at Posada Middle School, and Selena Ramirez, a bully from class, calls her a “coconut” (brown on the outside, White on the inside). In time, new friends, Latina mentors, and musicians come into Malú’s life. She and a group of buddies start a band (the Co-Co’s), but she hides it from Mom, worried about what she’ll think of it. When the Co-Co’s are denied a space on the Fall Fiesta talent show program by school administrators, the bandmates take matters into their own hands and stand up for what they believe. In the process, Malú learns a few things about being punk—and being herself.

An example of a zine portion of the story.

The First Rule of Punk is a middle grade novel that will appeal to fans of comics and other visual narrative. (Suggest it to readers who like Victoria Jamieson’s Roller Girl!) Pérez includes examples of the zines Malú creates and shares, which show depth to character by allowing her inner thoughts and elements of backstory to be communicated in a visually poetic fashion. The protagonist’s voice is endearing, engaging, and funny (if even a little bratty at times), and readers will root for Malú all of the way. 

If you’re a librarian or a teacher (or a teacher-librarian), consider using the book to inspire kids to make and distribute their own zines. Pérez created this handy guide so there are no excuses not to. (And pssst: if you want to listen to some tunes while you read or create, there’s a playlist too.)


Reviewed by Elisa Gall

SaveSave