Debbie Levy's Blog, page 7

An Anniversary

Fifty years ago on this day, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This morning I read, with a sinking heart, the New York Times Magazine article from this past Sunday, “A Dream Undone,” which chronicles, as correspondent Jim Rutenberg puts it, the “countermovement of ideologues and partisan operatives who, from the moment the Voting Rights Act became law, methodically set out to undercut or dismantle its most important requirements.”

In recent weeks, in connection with my research for the picture book biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg I’m working on, I’ve been studying the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, where Chief Justice Roberts led a majority to strike down the muscular heart of the Voting Rights Act, which applied to states with the worst histories of disenfranchising African Americans.

Roberts’ opinion drew a strong–dare I say, gorgeous, if something temperate and understated can be called gorgeous–dissent from RBG. You can hear her read it from the bench here. (Click on “Opinion Announcement, Part 2.”) And here is the last paragraph:

GINSBURG, J., dissenting



After exhaustive evidence-gathering and deliberative process, Congress reauthorized the VRA, including the coverage provision, with overwhelming bipartisan support. It was the judgment of Congress that “40 years has not been a sufficient amount of time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th amendment and to ensure that the right of all citizens to vote is protected as guaranteed by the Constitution.” 2006 Reauthorization §2(b)(7), 120 Stat. 577. That determination of the body empowered to enforce the Civil War Amendments “by appropriate legislation” merits this Court’s utmost respect. In my judgment, the Court errs egregiously by overriding Congress’ decision.

I know, it’s a legal opinion. Justice Scalia, who of course joined the Roberts opinion, would have been fiery and probably sarcastic, which makes for fun blogging but I prefer Justice Ginsburg’s plainer style. Is it too much to hope that our country can address these problems with more light rather than heat?

 

I Dissent!

I DISSENT: That is the title of the manuscript I’ve been working on lately–a picture book biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I’ve never enjoyed using my once-was-a-lawyer chops more than this summer while digging into the life, law, and feminist fabulousness of RBG.

Here’s the announcement in Publishers Weekly:

I hope to share stories from my research files soon! Until then, take a look at illustrator Elizabeth Baddeley’s stuff here. I know she’ll make this book pop!

 

Enough? Enough.

Over the weekend I read a piece in Tablet, by Marjorie Ingall, titled “Enough With the Holocaust Books for Children!” I generally like Tablet and like Marjorie’s articles. This time, I experienced a serious disconnect.

The article states:

As a non-Jewish librarian recently observed to me, if you dropped an alien into the children’s section of a library, it would think Jews disappeared after WWII. (The alien could tick off each book’s subject matter on its long green fingers: Holocaust, Holocaust, shtetl, Holocaust, Holocaust, Hanukkah, Holocaust.) As a people, we have a 6,000-year history to mine for stories. So, why are we so relentlessly focused on one event? We are more than just our suffering.

And:

But the amount of real estate, both physical and emotional, that these stories hold on our bookshelves is proportionally just too high.

The article makes two valid points. The first one is that bad books about the Holocaust are bad.

Here’s an idea: don’t buy or read the bad Holocaust books. And if you’re a librarian, take care to curate your collection.

Of course, opinions vary about what’s a “bad” book. I, for example, am not generally interested in fiction about the Holocaust, and generally find the bestseller, soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture novels particularly not compelling. That’s just my thing, and I won’t name titles, because they’ve all been suggested to me by well-meaning friends who think I’ll like this or that novel because I wrote a book about my mother’s own experience in Nazi Germany.

I can certainly agree that books about the Holocaust that get the facts wrong are bad. The article states, “In my experience, a great many Holocaust books are factually flawed, trivializing of the horror, numbing, and/or unreadably didactic as all-get-out.” I seem to have been lucky enough to have avoided those books. I don’t think it’s hard to find the gold and skip the dross.

The second valid point in the Tablet article is that the Jewish experience is rich with topics other than the Holocaust for writers to mine. Absolutely.

But to say, as the article does, that it’s enough already with the Holocaust, that the Holocaust is too central in the consciousness of Jews, that children’s books about the Holocaust instill a Jewish identity “based on defensiveness and fear”–no.

First, the Holocaust happened, it was huge, it changed history. There can’t be too many good books about something so significant. Here’s a highly unscientific, inconclusive comparison: when I search for books on Amazon about “the Holocaust,” I get 22,272 hits. When I search for books about “the U.S. civil war” I get 21,253; for “the civil war,” it’s 286,191. I would never say there are too many books about the Civil War.

Oh, when I search for books about fantasy, I get 404,159 hits. How many is enough?

Second, books about the Holocaust are not exclusively or primarily for Jewish readers. The world is still learning about the Holocaust, and by world I include communities and populations in these United States of America. For my own so-called Holocaust book, I have found non-Jewish communities–especially communities that are different from my own urban east coast community–acutely interested in this historical era about which neither adults nor their children have heard much at all. I will spare you the extremely basic questions my mother and I have heard and gladly answered when we presented to non-Jewish audiences. Plenty of people  have no idea. I am not talking about deniers here, but well-meaning people who simply don’t know.

Third, great books about the Holocaust era illuminate such diverse themes as survival, grit, shared humanity, heroism, and friendship. If you want to complain about books that paint Jews as victims and Jewish culture as based on defensiveness and fear, then I guess you could read all bad books and suggest that they stand for the whole. But what is the point of that?

Every so often a Jewish culture critic feels compelled to float this idea that there are too many Holocaust books. When I present The Year of Goodbyes to students or educators, I always take this proposition on directly, usually quoting a similar article that came out in 2010, around the time my book was published, entitled, “There Are Too Many Damn Holocaust Movies.”  (That article starts with this cheeky sentence: ”Remember when you were in like sixth grade and your teacher asked you to read Number the Stars and you quietly thought to yourself, ‘jeez Louise, how many of these Holocaust books are there?’ and then you felt terrible and never said anything to anyone?”) One grows used to the phenomenon. I don’t take it personally as a writer. I don’t take the Tablet article personally; after all, The Year of Goodbyes was on the magazine’s ”best of” list when the book came out in 2010. But apparently–witness this long blog post–I do take this phenomenon personally as a human.

Happily, I have found antidotes for the sad feeling I get from reading the Tablet article and others like it.

The antidotes include the Alabama high school English teacher who recently received a fellowship to attend Columbia University this summer to study how to use literature to teach about the Holocaust. Sounds like she’s already doing a great job of it–her students, Farrah Hayes told the AP in an article published today, “are amazed by the story of the Holocaust,” which she presents through literature, rather than “just throwing facts at them.”

The antidotes also include reflections written by young adults, Jewish and non-Jewish, after visiting the sites of Nazi Germany persecution in Poland as part of the March of the Living program. Reflections like this:

“[C]ommon humanity is what should unite us when injustice is inflicted upon any one of us . . . on the basis of these differences. This is not to eradicate the differences . . .but to transcend them when there is a need to embrace a higher ideal.”

– Ayesha Siddiqua Chaudhry – Canada

“[O]ur differences must make us more knowledgeable, understanding and connected, because in the end we are inflicting suffering on our own family. We are all the same world, and the beauty of this world lies in its diversity.”

– Mona Ayoub – Lebanon

You can read more such comments here. These reflections may be among the best answers there are to the Tablet piece. They show that when we teach about–and even immerse young people in–the Holocaust, we are not reinforcing a Jewish culture of victimization, defensiveness, and fear. If we’re doing it right, we’re reinforcing a culture of compassion, humanity, empathy, integrity, and peace. Not everyone can travel to the sites of concentration camps to absorb these principles. That is where the great books come in. Enough with the Holocaust books for children? Please. Enough of this.

 

Horn Book’s Ode To Novels In Verse: When Less Is More

The Horn Book ran an article a couple of weeks ago about the value of novels in verse for reluctant readers. Why reluctant readers? The article’s author, library media specialist Dorie Raybuck, explains:

“Compared to a conventional novel, a novel in verse has perhaps half the number of words per page–and isn’t that half the battle with reluctant readers? These readers often look at a page filled with words and think, This is too much! And quit before they begin.”

I like everything about this article, and not just because it starts with Kwame Alexander’s Newbery-winning The Crossover and makes its way to my own The Year of Goodbyes, spending time along the way with works by Sharon Creech, Magarita Engle, and others. I’ve been singing the praises of books in verse–novels and nonfiction–for ages. I was so pleased that The Crossover won the Newbery Award this year, not only because it is such a finely wrought, moving, exciting book, but also because it has drawn attention to the beauty and utility of the novel-in-verse form. It stands as a gold standard for readers, writers, teachers, librarians, and parents.

And you know what? You don’t have to be a reluctant reader to love and devour novels and nonfiction in verse. For any reader, they can offer inviting, rich, even dazzling portals into stories and histories.

I’m happy that the The Year of Goodbyes is part of the discussion in the Horn Book article. I hope that librarians and teachers will continue to use my book to give young people a different, accessible, and, yes, poetic perspective on what it was like to be a young person in Nazi Germany, and what it means to leave one life and start another one.

Oh, and if you haven’t read The Crossover: do.

Here is the Horn Book article:

http://www.hbook.com/2015/03/choosing-books/horn-book-magazine/field-notes-this-is-too-much-why-verse-novels-work-for-reluctant-readers/#_

Bad News, Good News, And Forever

Bad news: The hardcover edition of The Year of Goodbyes is going out of print. It has had a good run: five years since it was published in 2010. Still, I rather hoped it would be in print in this edition–well, forever. Or the publishing equivalent of forever. I hoped my mother’s story, and the words of her young friends in her poesiealbum, would be available to wave after wave of readers.

I know. Writers want waves of readers for all their books. But if you’ve read even a few words of what I’ve said about the story of my mother and her friends and family, you know the depth of my hope for this book.

Which brings me to the good news. On April 7, Disney-Hyperion is publishing paperback and e-book editions of The Year of Goodbyes. Hooray for my publisher! So there is hope for my dream of those waves of readers. I do love a hardcover book, but, by weight, this little book could be considered kind of pricey as a hardcover. The paperback price is much less. It will be much more affordable. Will educators be more likely to bring it into their classrooms? (So many teaching opportunities!) Will more mother-daughter book clubs discover it? Will readers in churches, synagogues, and mosques shape conversations about prejudice around it?

One can hope.

 

A Writer’s Best Friend

I’m referring to Dozer, of course, of Dozer’s Run. And to my own Toby. And to countless other dogs who lie patiently by our feet as we weave words into stories–or blog posts or emails or to-do lists. And who remind us when it’s time to step away from the screen, the notebook, the sheaf of papers.

Dozer, his mom, and I visited the beautiful Benchmark School, outside Philadelphia, in between snow and ice storms last week. What great kids, faculty, and staff at this school for children with learning differences. They were inquisitive, creative, funny, and–no surprise here–completely won over by Dozer. Here is just one group of kids out of the many that day who got to meet this handsome guy:

I also had the chance to visit with kids at Bright Beginnings on Read Across America Day earlier this week. Bright Beginnings is a child care center for children who live in D.C.’s homeless shelters. See the little boy hanging on my knees in the photo below? As soon as he saw Dozer’s Run, he insisted that Dozer’s name was “Bruno.” He could not be convinced otherwise. And so . . . Bruno it was for that story time! I’m sure Dozer would not have minded giving up his name to satisfy this tyke.

We lost our own sweet, sweet Toby dog two weeks ago. She was nearing thirteen years old and finally just gave out. Here she is in happier, healthier times:

I miss her like crazy. And so, when I went to Benchmark School last week to bring Dozer and his book to the students there, I needed a big ol’ dose of Dozer myself–and I got it. Look how dear he is.

Liberation Day

Today, January 27, was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

I have no fresh insights appropriate to this occasion. What I do have is a page from my mother’s poesiealbum that her classmate Hannelore Ascher wrote for her on October 3, 1938–a time when these 12-year-old girls still lived in Hamburg but were hearing frightening things about Jews in Germany being arrested and then disappearing.

Hannelore was quoting a little couplet that German girls would have been familiar with: “Speak little but speak the truth/Too much talk is dangerous!” (In German, it rhymes.) A month later, my mom escaped Germany with her parents and sister and came to the United States. Hannelore’s family did not leave in time. Hannelore was deported to Auschwitz. She did not survive the Holocaust.

I don’t have a photo of Hannelore, but I wanted on this day to remember her, along with so many others, and so I’m looking at her handwriting and what she chose to share with my mother.

Also: The Washington Post has put together a video of two D.C.-area survivors of Auschwitz who talk to students and visitors at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. These two men, Henry Greenbaum and Martin Weiss, are worth your time. You will see how students hang on their every word, as did I. Do watch it:  The Holocaust’s last voices.

Dozer On The Small Screen

Dozer the Goldendoodle got a lot of small-screen face time a few years when he ran away from home to join the Maryland Half Marathon. There was a nice report on the evening news with Diane Sawyer, a slick ESPN segment, plenty of local television coverage, and more.

Maybe all that exposure is why I didn’t immediately create a video for Dozer’s Run, my 2014 book about this adorable canine philanthropist, even though his story practically cries out for a book trailer.

But now I have. Enjoy! I never tire of looking at this dog’s handsome mug.

Good As It Gets

For a children’s book author, I really don’t think it can get better than this:

 

 

 

   

I mean, this is what it’s all about: children excited about and connecting over a book! Thanks to An Open Book Foundation and For Love of Children for putting books into the hands and homes of kids, and for letting me and Vanessa Brantley-Newton take part in their work. We loved sharing our book with students last month. (There was much to love, as I think the photos show!) We love that, thanks to these organizations, so many students get their very own copies of brand-new books, including We Shall Overcome, to take home.

An Open Book and FLOC are only a click away from this post you’re reading. If you don’t know them, today–#GivingTuesday–is a perfect day to learn about them and to consider including them in your annual charitable giving. Just an idea. . . .

 

Indies First at Politics & Prose This Saturday!

This Saturday, November 29, I’ll be at Politics & Prose Bookstore from 1 to 3 p.m. serving as a guest bookseller. The last time I worked in retail was back in the 1970s at David’s Western in Silver Spring, Maryland–does anyone remember it? Near the Silver Spring library? We sold jeans and Frye boots and Stetson hats. I was a student and it was a great job.

This time around I’ll be helping to sell books as part of a national movement to promote independent bookstores, like Politics & Prose, that are such important members of our communities. It started last year as the brainstorm of author Sherman Alexie. This “Indies First” campaign takes place on “Small Business Saturday,” and I’m really happy about that, because it has a far more felicitous ring than “Black Friday,” doesn’t it?

If you’re in the Washington, D.C. area, I hope you’ll come out to Politics & Prose and do some book shopping on Saturday. Of course I hope you’ll come when I’m there–1-3 p.m., in case you missed it a minute ago–but if you can’t come then, don’t worry! Other authors will be there all day. You can meet Katherine Marsh, author of the fabulous Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, from 3-5 p.m. Are you a thriller person? You can meet David Baldacci, from noon to 2. (Look: we overlap for an hour!) From 4-6 p.m., Dinaw Mengestu will be in the store; his  latest book, All Our Names, enriched my summer reading.

Politics & Prose has my books We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song, Dozer’s Run, Imperfect Spiral, and The Year of Goodbyes on the shelves. You know I’d love to sign one for you.