Kevin D. Hendricks's Blog, page 41
April 29, 2014
The World Is Not What We Think
China is poised to become the “most Christian nation” in the world:
Prof Fenggang Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.
By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the larges...
April 28, 2014
Grasshopper Jungle: Funny/Honest Teen Novel Meets Mutant Insects!
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith is the greatest novel you’ll ever read about six-foot-tall praying mantis soldiers devouring a small town in Iowa.
It might also be the best book you read all year. It’s funny, weird, rambling, and full of the profanity and sex you’d expect from a 16-year-old narrator.
It starts off as another story of an outcast teenager, struggling with life and his attraction to his girlfriend and gay best friend. But it turns into apocalypse by experimental mutant insects....
April 27, 2014
Micro-Loans & Bangladesh in Rickshaw Girl
Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins is a short children’s novella that gives a glimpse into the life of a girl in Bangladesh, struggling against poverty and gender stereotypes.
Naima wants to help her family earn more money, but her ideas don’t always work out and she laments, “If only I had been born a boy.”
We also get to see the art and beauty of Bangla culture through the alpana, geometric and floral patterns painted by women during celebrations. The sparse, black and white illustrations in the...
April 26, 2014
8th Grade Super Zero Explores Homelessness & Dorkiness
The history of writer Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich alone had me hooked: Nigerian father, Jamaican mother, married to a man of Croatian descent, she studied writing with Paula Danziger and Madeleine L’Engle.
The book—8th Grade Super Zero—was good too, not blowing me away, but offering a solid story of a struggling teen that felt very real and didn’t shy away from real issues. Reggie, the main character, is dealing with his father’s unemployment, his church youth group is a major influence on h...
April 25, 2014
Diversity Is Not Enough
“We’re right to push for diversity, we have to, but it is only step one of a long journey. Lack of racial diversity is a symptom. The underlying illness is institutional racism.” (“Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing”)
In many ways it comes down to white privilege (that phrase can be difficult to digest—this is the best explanation of white privilege I’ve found). The white establishment (i.e., people like me) doesn’t understand what people of color face.
People like me are blind to...
April 24, 2014
Talking Church Comm on the Social Media Church Podcast
I appeared on the Social Media Church podcast this week talking with host DJ Chuang about church communication. The conversation started with my work on Church Marketing Sucks and how it got started nearly 10 years ago.
The anniversary of the first blog post is coming up in July and the initial idea actually came about this month. Whenever I stop to think that I’ve been working on Church Marketing Sucks for a decade I’m just blown away. That’s a dinosaur in Internet years. To be at the helm fr...
April 23, 2014
Complicating the Single Narrative
At last week’s Festival of Faith and Writing I was pleasantly surprised that the conversation wasn’t limited to the Christian faith. I don’t know about the extent of the diversity, but I did hear from one Muslim writer and one Hindu writer.
Why is that important? Because, as Muslim comic book writer G. Willow Wilson said at the Festival of Faith and Writing, “If a belief system is worth anything it should offer value to those who don’t believe it.”
Our society is so polarized right now I think...
April 21, 2014
Diverse Recommendations: Baby Baby
Last week I talked about sharing diverse pop culture recommendations. So let’s do it.
I mentioned that my favorite music genres of alt-rock and punk are pretty homogenous. But a little searching can find some gems.
One great find is the Atlanta party band Baby Baby. They’re kind of the epitome of a trash can punk band, on the ragged end of being sheer noise until suddenly the melodies and hooks turn it into fist-pumping music. I’m no music reviewer, but they remind me a bit of early Beastie Boy...
April 17, 2014
Today is Reading Day
The kids were both home from school today and so I declared it reading day. No TV. No whining all day. But lots of reading.
How’s that work?
At random points during the day I’d shout, “Reading break!” And we’d gather on the couch to read some books. I promised we’d hit the bookstore or the library, but that will probably come tomorrow.
We got through six books:
On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne – A fun and cleverly written picture book about the life of Albert Einst...
Searching Out Diversity
I keep coming back to the conversation about diversity in literature. I think it’s important. I heard it several times during the Festival in Faith and Writing and today I came across an article about how to get more diversity in your YA fiction.
That piece has some good advice. You have to actually search out diversity, recommend it and support it. It doesn’t happen automatically: Search, share, support.
Lately I’ve been trying to search out more diversity. If I don’t, my shelves are mostly fu...
