sarafem's comments (member since Aug 02, 2007)

sarafem's comments from the Children's Books group.

This is still my favorite topic...
I found a book a week or so ago that fits this topic very well...it isn't feminist by any means but it has a female narrator and features strong women (and men) fighting segregation.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10040...
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins is historical fiction based on very real events that happened nationwide but were instigated in my home state of North Carolina. Young college students began protesting segregation by entering eating establishments and sitting at the "whites only" lunch counters - asking to be served a couple of times, but mostly silently, peacefully protesting. The protests spread through Greensboro and then all through the South until restaurant workers finally gave in and began to allow blacks to sit at the lunch counters.

This is an event that makes me very proud to be a North Carolinian and I was excited when I randomly stumbled upon this book in my school library. The book glosses over some of it in an effort to appeal to young children but I have seen pictures of black students (and white students and citizens that joined them) with food and drinks dumped all over them by angry customers; the protesters continued their peaceful, silent vigil for hours while covered in this mess. The way this protest spread rapid-fire around the South and the very public harassment the protestors had to face is quite an amazing story of strength and overcoming adversity in the name of equality.

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis is hands-down one of the best, most inspiring children's books I've ever read; it is what really got me into multicultural kiddie-lit.

Hi Kirei,
You are lucky; when I lived out of the country there one or two small libraries open a couple of hours a day when they decided to open at all, and you couldn't take the books with you. I had to settle for reading everything in Spanish, and my fluency is adequate but not perfect, so it didn't flow too well. Plus the books were old and in awful shape, not to mention poor selection. I could only get newer English language books in a major city two hours away, and they cost about fifty dollars. I was totally starved for literature. Of course, everything else made up for that.

But I came to really appreciate American libraries!

I am embarrassed to say that only recently have I realized how popular My Father's Dragon and its sequels are. I grew up with my mother's copies and passed them down to my daughter; we read them together so much since the age of 2 or 3 that she can recite entire chapters word for word. I thought they were just random books from that era that we happened to stumble upon; I had never heard of them and didn't know they were now classics until two or three years ago.

Wow, Faithful Elephants sounded intriguing so I looked it up...I recall reading it before and I remember just wanting to be alone so I could cry. It was a beautiful and heartbreaking story and I have mixed feelings about it. Absolutely, I want my kids to know that war is wrong, and the more stories they hear like this one, the less the belief will sound like empty rhetoric. On the other hand, this story is so depressing that I'm not comfortable sharing it with kids. I don't know where to draw the line.

I did see, while I was looking up Faithful Elephants, a book that I thought might fit Sarah's qualifications (as far as the Santayana quote; it's not really feminist): Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust by Eve Bunting. Amazon.com book description is: "In this unique introduction to the Holocaust, Eve Bunting encourages young children to stand up for what they think is right, without waiting for others to join them." I can't wait to get to the library tomorrow and see if they have it.

I also read one just yesterday and immediately thought of this thread. The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark by Carmen Deedy. The story is most likely exaggerated (it's a well-known legend but built on hearsay), but basically what happens is that when the Nazis invade Denmark and order all Jews to wear stars, King Christian starts to wear one in solidarity. Soon all Danes are wearing it; their message is "If you take our neighbors, you have to take all of us." I think it's a great example of activism; the story itself is probably fiction, but the sentiment is real - Denmark saved 99% of its Jews while almost all other Nazi-occupied countries lost half to ninety percent. They were saved due to a massive effort to smuggle them all into Sweden, and of the less than 500 known to have gone to concentration camps, all but 51 survived because of the Danish government's intercessions on their behalf. An amazing, inspirational story that really lifted my spirits.

I also read one yesterday that might fit into the feminist perspective; it was called the Ballot Box Battle by Emily McCully. My only disappointment is that it was listed as reading level 2.8 while I think it was more like fourth grade (Amazon lists it ages 9-12). Anyway, it was about a little girl who befriends Elizabeth Cady Stanton while she is fighting to win women's right to vote. Great story you should check out.

Hello group members...
Just wanted to jump in and let you all know that I made a few changes to the format of our members area. I saw a lot of different conversations going on about similar things so I organized them into folders. I tried to keep it simple and in some ways I like it, though other ways not so much.

Please take a look and let Abigail & I know what you think. We can change things back if it's universally disapproved or we can tweak things to get it just right for all of us. Also if you see anything miscategorized or can think of better labels, let us know.

Thanks!

This is a fun topic that I think deserves a little resurrection...

I agree with Minorlibrarian who said that Stargirl would have been her favorite if the book were published in the 80s. Stargirl is one of my all-time favorite books.

When I was very young, maybe until age 8, I wanted to be Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew was my mother's favorite as a child (my mother's own name was Nancy Drew) and she had the entire collection in hardback; I'm sure it's quite valuable now. Anyway, I had consumed all of them by the time I was 8 or 9 and I just loved her.

Pippi Longstocking and Ramona Quimby were also favorites. Basically any strong girl who went against the grain.

My daughter went through stages where she reminded me of Fancy Nancy and Junie B. Jones (drove me crazy with both). These days, she loves Meg from Narnia.

You are so right about this Keillor book! I have this on my nightstand and there are a lot of good ones for kids.

We've also overlooked some great ones like Dr. Seuss. Supposedly he's for the little ones but I use them over and over with older kids to get them thinking about poetry as well as greater themes such as the environment and prejudice.

I have Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems and Beast Feast and In The Swim, both by Douglas Florian (writer of Insectclopedia that I previously mentioned) on order from Amazon.com that I can't wait to get my hands on.

I second Linda's mention of Sing A Song of Popcorn, can't believe I forgot that one before!

Others I've thought of since my last post are:
Souls Look Back in Wonder by Tom Feelings, a collection of African-American poetry
Neighborhood Odes by Gary Soto; he has several I recommend as I LOVE this guy, most including this one have a strong Hispanic theme, drawbacks are a lot of use of Spanish that interrupts the story if the child doesn't already know it
Tomie DePaola's Book of Poems - this guy is wonderful for EVERYTHING he does
Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes - I think this might be hard to find; my copy is rather old and passed down from teacher to teacher for probably 20 years but it is filled with GREAT hilarious poems that are spins on traditional fairy tales
Street Rhymes Around the World - author's last name begins with a Y; this takes rhymes and songs from other countries in their original languages and then translates them to English. I've used a few and my kids love them
The Palm of My Heart - poetry by AA children, this is a really touching book
Celebrating America by Laura Whipple with art and poetry. This book can get a little irritating to me as it waxes life a little too glossy for me, but I have used a few of the poems with my kids, and my daughter loves it and has learned a lot from it.

I love this topic and can't wait to check out some of these books. Several already listed are ones that I would have suggested but here is my take:

I am an activist and teacher in a pretty conservative area and I like to get my kids interested in activism with subtler texts; that way parents won't call me a communist or a hippie or god knows what else. Two that I have found remarkably effective this year are Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney and The Liberation of Gabriel King by K.L. Going. Miss Rumphius is "doing something to make the world more beautiful" and Liberation is about two children with a lot of differences who become friends and spend the summer trying to get over their fears.

I am surprised I don't see some Dr. Seuss mentioned here; what jumps out the most to me are Horton Hears a Who (environmentalism and human "existence" in the universe) and The Sneetches (about prejudice).

Stories about the Holocaust and Martin Luther King are always wonderful to get kids stirred up about wanting to change things, without there being a subtext that they need to. The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is one, also Milkweed for the Holocaust. There are a LOT of MLK books out there; it seems like two or three new excellent ones are published every year. My Dream by Faith Ringgold is a favorite in my class, and there is one whose illustrator I do not recall that takes the Dream speech word for word and illustrates it so that kids can understand it.

Finally, I LOVE Mandela by Floyd Cooper and Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Barbara Nichol. They are both picture books at fourth and fifth grade levels but I have read both in sections to my kids, and my daughter loved them both at age four. Mandela is about Nelson's life and the injustices that inspired him to fight for equality. Beethoven is about this strange deaf man that lives upstairs who happens to be a brilliant composer, and about the child who is at first afraid of him but comes to love him. I read this one to my kids after I taught them some basic sign language and they loved the connection and learning that even the disabled can be geniuses.

Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein are the obvious choices, and always well-loved even if we adults get tired of them over and over again. I have the books J mentioned and they are wonderful as well.

I just went through my daughter's bookshelves and found these:
Little Dog Poems - Kristine O'Connell George (younger kids, but my 9 year old reading on an 8th grade level still pulls it out and reads it all the time)
A Child's Calendar - John Updike (I use these every month with my kids and they love them)
Love: Selected Poems - e.e. cummings (for older children, though I "performed" a few for my third graders and they LOVED it)
A Family of Poems - edited by Caroline Kennedy (one of my favorites, and I pull poems out to use with my kids all the time)
Insectlopedia - Douglas Florian (poems about insects, my daughter and my students eat this book up)

Junie B. Jones as a musical...are we talking a movie coming to theaters or a Broadway thing? Probably a stupid question, but I want to keep my eye out for this. Sounds like something my kids will love.

Hi Marissa,
I would love to do it if you don't have anyone yet. I haven't participated other than reading posts as of yet but I would like to be more involved. I'm an elementary teacher in Wilmington, NC.