Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Library News

It may be cold outside, but it is definitely warm and cozy in our school’s library! That is where you will find the hottest books around--award winners and classics. Consider reading Caldecott, King,  Newbery, Sibert and other Medal and Honor winning titles like:

Alexander, Kwame.  The Crossover. (Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Honor 2015)

Applegate, Katherine. The One and Only Ivan. (Newbery Medal 2013)

de la Pena, Matt. Last Stop On Market Street. (Newbery Medal 2016). 

Morales, Yuyi. Viva Frida.  (Belpre Honor 2015).

Sheinkin, Steve. Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon. (Sibert Medal 2013, Newbery Honor 2012)

Sweet, Melissa. Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade. (Sibert Medal 2012)

Tonatiuh, Duncan. Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family's Fight for Desegregation. (Belpre Honor 2015).

Williams-Garcia, Rita.  Gone Crazy In Alabama.  (Coretta Scott King Medal 2016). 

Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. (Coretta Scott King Medal, Newbery Honor 2015)


Visit SOAR at https://library.cps.edu to find the above titles and many more in our library. Search The American Library Association’s website, www.ala.org, to find a complete list of Caldecott, Newbery, Sibert and other book awards. 

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Approaching Authenticity: An Annotated Bibliography Of Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander Children's Literature

Oftentimes, I think back to my days growing up in a black neighborhood in St. Louis, MO.  Aside from the few whites who did not leave the area, the people who were noticeably different from us were the Chinese. They owned the local chop suey restaurants or beauty supply houses that almost every black person that I knew frequented on a regular basis. I was fortunate to meet people from other backgrounds beginning in my junior high school days. However, because their businesses were a staple in the areas that I lived and my family frequented, Chinese people were a constant contrast to the sea of black and brown faces. Their language, their food and obviously, their physical features, piqued my interest.  What started off as an innocent inquiry became a quest to quell my curiosity. Who were these new and strange people?!
The phrase “All roads lead to Rome” is often said to assure us that different paths can be taken to reach the same destination. Reading countless books, my personal and school experiences and otherwise being exposed to various ways of seeing, thinking and feeling led me to my first important fact--not all Asians are Chinese. As a freshman in high school, one of my first friends and later my first crush and Homecoming date were both Vietnamese. I joined the Korean club as an undergraduate, I became a member of a predominately Japanese church when I started college, and I often think about how lucky I am to have met and befriended Asians from across that vast continent.
To be honest, what initially attracted me to Asians was the contrast in color and culture. The shared love of their cuisine and black people’s personal needs as consumers marked the beginnings of my search for more commonalities. My life has been enriched by what I have learned and experienced from my brothers and sisters from the East. For these reasons and more, carefully constructing an annotated bibliography that consists of books about and written and/or illustrated by Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders has been an academically-important and a personally-meaningful undertaking. I want to introduce others to literature that will hopefully encourage them to meet the kind of people that I have met and grown to love. Moreover, I would like them to initiate authentic interaction and not settle for a type of misinformed voyeurism. Understandably, there has been a lot that I have had to learn to start this process.
In their article entitled Examining Multicultural Picture Books for the Early Childhood Classrooms:  Possibilities and Pitfalls, Jean Mendoza & Debbie Reese cited the importance of a trifecta of considerations for children’s literature—it should be aesthetic, psychosocial and informative/instructional.  Imagine children reading books that allow them to personally identify with the characters. When the pictures or drawings are aesthetically pleasing to them, children will be more inclined to enjoy the book and subsequently read more. Knowing that the characters in a story believe and behave the way they do (or should not) can help children learn lessons about themselves and the world around them.  Something as seemingly simple as seeing others who look like them cooking with their parents, living with their grandparents or learning to speak more than one language while growing up can offer children invaluable insight into issues that will guide the decisions they make, ones that what will affect them for the rest of their lives.
The authors go on to provide us timely information about Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s philosophy on the dual role for multicultural children’s literature. As Professor Emerita at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and long-time educator of children’s literature, Dr. Bishop asserts that such literature should serve as both a mirror and a window for children. They need to be able to see themselves in the books and be offered the opportunity to see the vast diversity evident in others.
Unfortunately, children’s literature has been (and continues to be) overwhelmingly Euro-centric. Think about how difficult it has been for my students, the majority of whom come from various Latino backgrounds and are growing up in an urban community, to truly develop a positive sense of self when the prevailing images they see in their classroom libraries are of white children living in suburban or rural environments and not interacting with children who look like them. Even if some of my students moved to the city from the suburbs, they would not be able to fully relate because they will never become white and/or be treated as such. I am grateful that my school has been making strides to provide more multicultural and culturally relevant literature to our students. The opening workshop during our most recent professional development day included a repeat of the presentation my colleagues and I gave at the end of the previous school year on those very issues.
Experts on children’s literature go further to speak of the importance of accurate/authentic representations of diverse cultures in multicultural literature. That is why I, as many of them do, firmly believe that children should not only be exposed to materials written about people like them; they should read works written by people like them as well.  My annotated undertaking became quite complicated when I realized that:
1.    * the majority of  the fiction and nonfiction books in my collection that includes Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (A/AA/PI) are not written by them,
2.    * many of the nonfiction books on A/AA/PI at the public library were primarily about countries, holidays, religion or war, and they were not written by Asians, and
3.      *children’s books about Asians written by Asians are primarily fiction.
This leads me to confess that my bibliography has limitations because I relied heavily on the books in my library collection out of convenience, i.e., the books were readily accessible. It was easy to locate and read books for the first time as well as to refresh my memory of the ones I had read a while ago. As a consequence, the majority of the books in my annotation are fiction.
The above justification for choosing books has provided me with wholly welcome, slightly unanticipated yet highly invaluable information. There is an urgent need to seek out and purchase more nonfiction books by and about Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders! I will begin to fill the void with useful, relevant resources as soon as the funds from the most recent book fair become available!
It is my sincere hope that the bibliography that I have created will be used beyond my Library program and in general classrooms where teachers can help develop diverse cross-curricular quarter-, semester- or yearlong lessons and projects for students in Kindergarten to 6th grade. Therefore, the aims of this annotation are to:
  • Provide students with access to general knowledge of Asians around the world
  • Pique students’ curiosity about the similarities and difference of Asians’ and non-Asians’ experiences around the world and over time
  • Foster an understanding and appreciation of Asian cultures
  • Encourage an overall commitment to celebrating diversity
  • Instruct students in simple, yet effective ways to critically read in order to identify tone, mood and point of view
  • Assist students in evaluating language (key words, phrases, etc.) to determine how Asians are viewed by mainstream culture
  • Instruct students on how to engage in meaningful conversations and create writings that reflect critical thinking about Asian cultures/identity
  • Teach students how to conduct online and in-class searches to find relevant, non-biased materials by and about Asians
After reading selected books and/or engaging in related activities, students will be able to:
  • Appreciate the diversity of Asian cultures
  • Ask each other questions (thinking critically about what they have learned) and use inferencing to develop a new set of questions not yet asked
  • Compare and contrast experiences amongst Asian and between Asian and non-Asian groups
  • Describe and identify Asian groups around the world based on ethnic group, geographic location, language etc.
  • Discuss Asian cultures accurately and respectfully
  • Evaluate material to be able to recognize author’s tone, or attitude toward subject
  • Explain how Asians have learned to cope with and/or adapt to their surroundings
  • Identify author’s words to understand tone, or attitude toward, Asians
  • List various challenges of Asians during particular decades and in certain areas
  • Make connections between their cultures and Asian cultures
  • Recognize the diversity among Asians
  • Synthesize knowledge of Asians to engage in meaningful conversations
  • Search for, read and understand information for academic use and personal enrichment
  • Understand how an author’s tone can play a key role in how Asians are viewed and treated in society
  • Use oral and written language to communicate effectively
  • Value the lives and experiences of Asians by choosing reading materials outside of special projects/cultural celebration months
In an attempt to provide readers with a well-rounded reading experience, I selected a variety of books that covered topics “from A to Z” and those which offered readers samples of “the best of the best” in Asian, Asian American and Pacific Island children’s literature including:
autobiography/biography award winners careers choice coming of age conflict resolution diversity ● education ●ethnicity family freedom friendship gender ●geography ●history identity immigration intergenerational language life’s lessons nature poetry pride prose push and pull factors race/racism refugees responsibility stereotypes traditions
I also hope that the annotated bibliography that follows is both educational and entertaining. There are some very talented, insightful Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander authors and illustrators whose works deserve to be explored and treasured. Happy Reading!


      Approaching Authenticity:
   An Annotated Bibliography of Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander Children’s Literature

Arcellana, F. (1999). The Mats. New York:  Kane/Miller Book Publishers.
Simple, sensitive and sentimental. Francisco Arcellana reminds us that the heart takes time to heal in The Mats, a tender story of a father who returns from his homeland, the Philippines, with beautiful hand-made mats for the entire family. He also brings back three for his daughters who died when they were very young.
Chin, J. (2009). Redwoods. New York:  Roaring Brook Press.
Train rides are almost always an adventure for kids. Imagine the monumental thrill Jason got when he found a book on the subway about redwood trees. The more he reads, the further he travels until he ends up in California and climbs to the top of a redwood tree!
Chinn, K. (1995). Sam and the Lucky Money.
Sam wants to buy something special with the lucky money that he gets for Chinese New Year, but everything is too expensive. From the fresh honey-topped buns to the New Year’s cookies to a brand new basketball, it all looks so appealing! When Sam sees an old beggar man who is grateful for even the coin that his mom gave him, Sam knows exactly what to do with his lucky money. The full-page, larger-than-life water color paintings done by husband and wife team Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu help really bring Sam’s story to life and into our hearts.
Coerr, E. (1977). Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.  New York:  Dell.
For some people, one is their favorite number. Others have lucky number seven. For Sadako, it was supposed to have been 1,000. When she was stricken with leukemia ten years after the dropping of bombs in Hiroshima during World War II, her friend told her that she would be cured if she made 1,000 paper cranes. Find out how many Sadako made and much more in this heart-warming, heart-wrenching story of friendship, hope and the tragedies of war.
Choi, S. N. (1991).  Year of Impossible Goodbyes. New York:  Random House Children’s Books.
Born and raised in Pyongyang, North Korea, Choi wanted to share her personal experiences and foster and understanding of such an unsettling period in time and in her life. Year of Impossible Goodbyes was her contribution. As Choi’s surrogate, Sookan, the main character, freely recounts her own and her family’s internal and external struggles as they suffered yearlong antagonism by the Japanese military that had taken over North Korea during World War II.
Choi, Y. (2001). The Name Jar. New York:  Knopf.
Arriving from Korean and dissatisfied with feeling different for many reasons, including having a name no one can pronounce, Unhei decides to let her American classmates pick her a new one. Consider reading Alma Flor Ada’s My Name Is Maria Isabel and see how a Puerto Rican girl deals with name issues, too.
Ellis, D. (2000). The Breadwinner. Groundwork Books.
An interview with a mother in a refugee camp in Afghanistan inspired Ellis to pen The Breadwinner, the story of Parvana a 11 year old girl whose family’s livelihood was threatened when her apartment was bombed and her father was imprisoned for having a foreign education. Because girls could not earn money, Parvana pretended to be a boy and subsequently became the family’s breadwinner. In the spring of 2015, fifth graders at my school read this book and then collected money to send to students in Afghanistan as part of the service learning project, Pennies For Peace. Learn more about hope, education and a feelings empowerment have been brought to children around the world at http://penniesforpeace.org/about-us/.
Gilmore, D. (2014).  Cora Cooks Pancit. New York:  Shen’s Books.
Like Dorina Gilmore growing up in her Filipino/Italian home, Cora loves to cook! However, this book is more than an account of what goes on in the kitchen. Through Cora, Gilmore shares some of her own memories made with her mother, grandmother and aunties. Gary Soto’s Too Many Tamales would add a second helping of tasty tales about family, food and fun.  
Gold, A. L. (2000).  A Special Fate:  Chiune Sugihara:  Hero of the Holocaust. New York:  Scholastic Press.
Born on January 1st, the very first day of a new year, Chiune Sugihara was definitely someone special. He was destined to bring about something new. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but Sugihara was going to save lives in a different way. As the Japanese diplomat to Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara lived up to his birthright as he disobeyed his father and governing bodies by writing visas that saved the lives of thousands of Jews. He was named to the Righteous Among the Nations by Israel 30 years ago for his heroic deeds.
Heo, Y. (1996). The Green Frogs. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin.
Gae gul! Gae Gul! Gae Gul! In this Korean folktale about two disobedient frogs who always did the opposite of what their mother told them, the boys finally decide to honor their mother’s last wish. Children of all ages will be entertained as they discover why frogs always cry out when it rains.
Houston, J. W. (1973). Farewell To Manzanar. New York:  Ember.
The effects of the World War II hit home when in 1942 when under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the United States government ordered the Wakatsuki family and over 100,000 other Japanese Americans and resident Japanese “aliens” to leave their homes and relocate to one of ten remote, military style camps. Written thirty years after leaving Manzanar, Houston wrote Farewell…from her perspective as an innocent young girl sharing the hard times her family and other Japanese American families faced in the Manzanar internment camp located over 200 miles from Los Angeles, California.
Ingus, T. (1996).  Two Mrs. Gibsons. New York:  Lee & Low Books.
Celebrating biracial identity, Two Mrs. Gibsons explores the love that the author, Toyomi Igus, has for the two women who share that name and the love she has in her heart—her Japanese mother and her black American grandmother. This book is an excellent companion to Monica Brown’s books about Marisol McDonald, a girl with Peruvian and Scottish heritage.
Kajikawa, K. (2009). Tsunami! New York:  Philomel Books.
Readers will learn much about sacrifice and how some rich people do really care about helping the poor. Tsunami! is a well-crafted Japanese folktale about a wealthy villager who sets fire to his rice fields to warn his neighbors about the impending storm. Chinese-American award-winning author and illustrator Ed Young created life-like cut-to-paper collages for the book.
Kasza, K. (2003).  My Lucky Day. New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
When you think something may be too good to be true, it just might be. At least that was the case when a piglet looking for Mr. Rabbit showed up at Mr. Fox’s door. Kids of all ages will laugh out loud as the piglet outfoxes another unwitting neighbor and plans to fool a few more.
Kent, Rose. (2007). Kimchi & Calamari. New York:  Harper Collins.
After adopting her son from Korea, Rose Kent decided to write a children’s book to reflect his experience. In Kimchi & Calamari, Joseph Calderaro, a Korean boy adopted by an Italian couple, is about to learn things that will change the way he thinks about himself and others around him. He knows more about the Revolutionary War than he does about what happened to Koreans during WWII. He has also had some not-so-positive experiences with Koreans who have their own views about who he is and how is supposed to be. So, imagine the invaluable lessons Joseph learns about race and identity when he has to write a report on his heritage for his Social Studies class.
Lai, T. (2011). Inside Out & Back Again. New York:  Harper.
There is no doubt that peace and peace of mind mean very different things to different people. Written in a style known as novel in verse, Thanhha Lai offers the reader an autobiographical account of the unexpected troubles that she encountered on her journey from Saigon in Vietnam to Alabama in the American South.  Sometimes the things that happened made her wish to be back in her war-torn homeland.
Lin, G. (2008). The Year Of The Dog:  A Novel. New York:  Little, Brown and Company.
Who Am I? That is a question that Taiwanese American Pacy is determined to find out. It’s the Year of the Dog--her year--and new things are heading her way. She has a new, American name (Grace), new projects at school and a new way of thinking about herself and the people around her. When struggling with her identity, feeling too American for the Chinese and too Chinese for Americans, her mother helped her understand “neither and both” is exactly who she is supposed to be. Though categorized as fiction, this book gives an account of Grace Lin’s real-life experiences.
Louie, A. (1982).  Yeh-Shen:  A Cinderella Story From China. New York:  Philomel Books.
Thought to pre-date Cenerentola, the Italian version of Cinderella, by a millennium, Yeh-Shen is the tale of beautiful, orphaned daughter of Chief Wu, a cave chief who lived in Southern China. Suffering at the hands of her mean and jealous stepmother, Yeh-Shen finds comfort in her pet fish that her stepmother tricked and killed. Read this ancient story to learn more about the power that lived within the spirit of the fish and within Yeh-Shen herself.

Mochizuki, K. (1993). Baseball Saved Us. New York:  Lee and Low.
Life in the Japanese internment camps was undeniably difficult, but Shorty and his father decided to make the most of a miserable situation. They built a baseball diamond to lift their spirits and help them gain a renewed sense of self-respect. As the first picture book written about the internment camps, Baseball Saved Us is a must-have that teaches us lessons about growing up and growing within. Learn more about life in the camps at http://amhistory.si.edu/ourstory/activities/internment/.
Mochizuki, K.  (1997).  Passage To Freedom:  The Sugihara Story. New York:  Lee and Low.
As a less academically-advanced, more kid-friendly accompaniment to Lisa Gold’s A Special Fate…, Passage to Freedom offers younger readers the opportunity to see how one person really can change the world. Told from the perspective of his young sons, namely his 5 year old Hiroki, we learn of Chiune Sugihara, the diplomat and the dad. He put his entire family’s life at risk when he decided to write visas for Polish Jews during World War II. His loving wife, Yukiko, supported his decision to save others’ lives, an act of courage that drastically altered the Sugiharas’ lives and changed the world forever.
Park, L. S. (2005) Project Mulberry:  A Novel. New York:  Clarion Books.
As new members of a farming club at their suburban school, Korean-American Julia Song and her neighbor and friend, Patrick, who is white, try to decide what project to do to win the blue ribbon at the state fair. Julia’s mother suggests that they raise silkworms, and Patrick agrees. Julia, who struggles with her identity as she and her family are the only Koreans in their town, thinks that that is “too Korean”. When they decide on working with the silkworms, the kids get of plenty mulberry leaves, the main source of food for silkworms, from Mr. Dixon, a black man with whom Julia’s mother, clearly has “issues”. Telling the story in first person narrative, Park creates conversations between herself and Julia which teach the 7th grader and us about far more than how to create award-winning projects.
Park, L. S. (2002). When My Name Was Keoko. New York:  Clarion Books.
Reminiscent of Sul Nyol Choi’s Year of Impossible Goodbyes, When My Name Was Keoko is the story of Sun-hee, a Korean girl living in Japanese-occupied North Korea during World War II. Being forced to forget their flag, forgo their own language and fight alongside the Japanese is overwhelming Sun-hee and her family. It is even more difficult for her to keep her family’s secret, especially when her older brother enlists in the Japanese army.
Polacco, P. (2012). The Art Of Miss Chew. New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Trisha has been so lucky to have teachers who really care about her, leading her to self-empowerment through education. One of her teachers, Mr. Falker, identified her reading problem and got her the help she needed. When she got an F on a Social Studies test with Mr. Donovan, he praised her for knowing the subject matter and offered her extra time which lead to her success. When Trisha is met with opposition when she wants to be an artist like her grandmother,  neither she nor her art teacher, Miss Chew, are willing to let Trisha’s dream fade away. Instrumental in her receiving a college scholarship to an art school, Polacco dedicates the book to Violet Chew “who taught me the art of seeing.”

Robles, A.D. (2006). Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel/Si Lakas at an Makibaka Hotel. Children’s Book Press.
This bilingual English-Tagalog book energizes us with the power of protest! When the Makibaka Hotel is about to be closed and tenants are getting evicted due to poor maintenance, Lakas and his friends rally to keep it open. Tenants Tick A. Boom and Firefoot play the drums and tap their feet to drown out the sounds of a leaking roof and to chase away mice that scurry across the floor. Big, bold and vivid pictures of friends and neighbors holding signs and singing into karaoke machines invite us into the streets to join in the struggle. With so much similar activity going on across the entire nation, this is a story with which readers are bound to relate.
Santat, D. (2014). The Adventures of Beekle:  The Unimaginary Friend. New York:  Little, Brown and Company.
Author Dan Santat claims to have had an imaginary friend, a chicken named Mr. Pickles, when he was a kid. Wanting to share that special childhood experience with others, he created an inspiring tale of friendship and courage as seen in the extraordinary actions of an unimaginary creature.  Excited about what life has to offer, Beekle does not wait for a child to imagine him. He sets out on an adventure of his own to meet the perfect pal. The breath-taking artwork—bold and bright colors on some pages, deep, dark hues on others—coupled with the happy ending of a modern-day boy meets girl tale earned Santat the 2015 Caldecott Medal and a gold star from everyone who has read it.
Say, A. (2011).  Drawing From Memory. New York:  Scholastic Press.
As emotional as it is artistic, Drawing From Memory is a memoir by Allen Say that beautifully recalls his relationship with his mentor, Noro Shinpei, the renowned Japanese cartoonist. Throughout the book, Say unreservedly recounts the roles that his mother (who eventually encouraged his artistic leanings) and that his maternal grandmother and father (who both considered artists’ attributes—they are “lazy and scruffy people”--to be unrespectable) played in his life and events, great and small, through sketches, cartoons, water color paintings, black and white photographs and maps.
Say, A. (1993). Grandfather’s Journey. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin.
Have you ever loved a place simply because someone you loved loved it first? Recipient of the 1994 Caldecott Award, Grandfather’s Journey is the emotional account of a man’s Japanese grandfather who loved to travel and ended up expressing his love for two countries—Japan and the United States.
Say, A. (2005). Kamishibai Man. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin.
Meaning “paper drama” in Japanese, kamishibai is the art of storytelling that originated in Japanese Buddhist temple in the 12th century to teach moral lessons to an illiterate crowd. Allen Say offers a revival of the lost art, introducing us to a man who continues to tell stories and sell candies even though the advent of television forces to people to lose interest.
Yang, G. L. (2006). American Born Chinese. New York:  Squarefish.
In this coming of age story, kids from all cultures will be able to identify with a kid who is trying to find his place at a new school. As the only Chinese American student in his middle school, Jin is in love with a blond classmate that he’s known since third grade, and he does not want his cousin, Chin-kee, who came straight from Taiwan to ruin his chances with Amelia because of geekdom by association. Painful and funny, filled with stereotypes and truths, the graphic novel format and the inclusion of Kung Fu Monkeys are bound to fit well with readers who may also learn a few lessons about themselves along the way.
Yee, L. (2005). Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time. New York:  Arthur A. Levine Books.
Times are tough for basketball superstar, Stanford Wong. After failing 6th grade English, he has to deal with his father, his friends and his feelings about Emily, the girl he has a crush on. Oh, and there’s Millicent, his tutor that he constantly reminds us that he hates. Written in first person narrative and in journal/diary-form, Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time takes a funny look into the life a typical teen with some unusual issues.
Yep, L. (1995). The American Dragons. New York:  Harper Collins.
Published nearly a quarter of a century ago, American Dragons:  Twenty-Five Asian American Voices is an invaluable contribution to American Literature. Yep’s assembly of short stories in poetry and prose provide an intimate look at the joys, pains, fears and desires of Asian Americans who are at once very similar yet remarkably different from each other and non-Asians/Americans.
Yep, L. (1975).  Dragonwings. New York:  Harper & Row.
Though written 40 years ago, this is a timely story of the relationship of between a Chinese boy and his father at the beginning of the 20th century. Brought down by the burden of prejudice the two are elated as they work together to create type of flying machine. They have faith in their invention because father thinks that he was once a dragon.

Yin. (2001). Coolies. New York:  Philomel Books.
Based on true events that occurred during the 1800s as recently arrived Chinese worked on the railroads in western USA, Yin’s work of historical fiction gives insight the lives of two brothers, Shek and Wong who endure physical and emotional pain while helping to build the cross-country railroad system. Coolies would pair well with Laurence Yep’s book in the Dear America/My Name Is America series entitled The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung:  Chinese Miner about a boy named Runt who travels form southern China to California in the mid-1800s to join his uncle during the Gold Rush.
Young, E. (1989).  Lon Po Po:  A Red Riding Hood Story From China. New York:  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers.
Author/illustrator Ed Young won the Caldecott Medal for this twisted tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Lon Po Po is actually the granny wolf who meets her match in the form of three little sisters—Shang, Tao and Paotze.
Yousafzai, M. (2013). I Am Malala:  How One Girl Stood Up For Education and Changed The World. New York:   Little, Brown and Company.

What would you sacrifice to go to school or to speak up for peace and democracy? Malala risked her life. The Taliban took over the area of Pakistan in which Malala and her family lived, and they targeted her for her outspoken nature. Surviving a gunshot wound to the head, Malala continues to stand up against terrorism and inequality. She has become a symbol of international peace and courage; in 2014, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Library News

December in our school library is making us spellbound! The genre for ROBERTO is Fairy Tales and Folktales. There are so many enchanting books to choose from including, Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story From China, Domitila: A Cinderella Tale From The Mexican Tradition and How The Ostrich Got Its Long Neck: A Tale From The Akamba of Kenya. We are also enjoying some “twisted tales” like Shannon Hale’s Rapunzel’s Revenge or Seriously, Cinderella Is So Annoying!: The Story Of Cinderella As Told By The Wicked Stepmother by Trisha Shaskan. 

It is easy to search for our favorite stories or characters by visiting S.O.A.R. at https://library.cps.edu.  We can also read kid-friendly versions of The Brothers Grimm’s works at www.grimmfairytales.com/en/main  and a variety of our favorite fairy tales and fables from around the world at www.kidsgen.com/fables_and_fairytales/.

In a special mini lesson, students will share how much they like what they read by creating book covers for their tale. If you know any children ages 8 to 13, encourage them to write a fairy tale, folk tale, myth or any other original piece to submit to Stone Soup magazine. Go your school's or local public library to check out How To Write A Fairy Tale by Gare Thompson to get started!

Happy Reading!

Ms. Martin
Library Media Specialist

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Reflections On His Recollections: A Book Talk About Allen Say's Drawing From Memory

James Allen Koichi Moriwaki Seii, more commonly known as Allen Say, was born in Yokahama, Japan in 1937 to an American-born Japanese mother and China-raised Korean father who was adopted by a British family. Say first dreamed of being an artist at the age of six. His dream came true as a 12 year old when he began an apprenticeship with his favorite cartoonist, Noro Shinpei. After four years of study with the reknown artist, Say moved to California with his father. Studying art in high school, a stint in the military, marriage and a host of other events filled Say’s life and his imagination.

Allen Say pursued a career in commercial photography, and at the age of 35, his first book, Dr. Smith’s Safari, was published. For the next decade, Say alternated between using writing and illustrations with his photographic works. In 1988, at a half a century old, he won the Caldecott Honor for his book, Boy of the Three-Year Nap. It has been said that at this time that Allen Say truly recaptured his love of writing and illustrating children’s books. Having written works as early as 1974, some of his most widely known titles include:

The Bicycle Man (1982)
El Chino (1990)
Grandfather’s Journey (1993) Caldecott Medal
Tea With Milk (1999)
Drawing From Memory (2011)

Say, A. (2011). Drawing From Memory. New York: Scholastic Press.

Note:  In my opinion, the excerpts that I will read marked the turning point in Allen Say’s life. Throughout pages 17-27, we learn that Say entered a middle school where he was supposed to begin life as a “normal” student—studying and taking exams. Therefore, he was expected to forgo his artistic pursuits and get serious about his education. Naturally, adhering to his true calling, he settled into his own apartment which he had immediate plans to transform into an art studio. While out for dinner on his first night alone, Say read an article in a newspaper that supported this decision and forever altered the course of his life (and ours as well).

As emotional as it is artistic, Drawing From Memory is a memoir by Allen Say that beautifully recalls his relationship with his mentor, Noro Shinpei, the renowned Japanese cartoonist. Throughout the book, Say unreservedly recounts the roles that his mother (who eventually encouraged his artistic leanings) and that his maternal grandmother and father (who both considered artists’ attributes—they are “lazy and scruffy people”--to be unrespectable) played in his life and events, great and small, through sketches, cartoons, water color paintings, black and white photographs and maps. According to Say his mother taught him to read before he began school because she was afraid that he would drown in the Sea of Japan. Her fear became the force that propelled him into the world of comic books. He was safe at home reading; he found comfort and security in his drawings. So he drew and drew. Neither of his parents were really pleased, but his father really expressed his disdain for his son’s decision.

At the age of eight, Allen began first grade. His teacher, Mrs. Morita, was the first to praise his drawing abilities. World War II, his parents’ marital problems and the family’s dissolution, separation and relocation signaled the start of Say’s new life with his grandmother. It also meant that he would soon leave her house, start a middle school and be expected to abandon art.

According to a simplistic psychological definition of memory that I retrieved from Wikipedia, memory involves:

encoding--receiving and processing information
storage--creating a permanent record of the encoded information, and
recollection--recalling back that stored information in response to a cue

Drawing From Memory is well-organized and well-developed. Though he is not one I would consider a wordsmith, I really enjoyed reading Say’s book because of the free and public way that he expressed private, personal details of his life through mere memories. He presented us with the good, the bad and the in-between in the language he knew he could fully express himself—art!  What is remarkable, reflecting the reasons that he is revered, is that Say did this by taking us on a journey through the rudimentary stages of his artistic expression and then allowing us to settle in with him as he became firmly rooted in his ultimate level of artistic sophistication. That is truly praiseworthy!

While trying to recall the memoirs that I had recently read and/or owned, two very well received ones came to mind:  Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie and Night by Elie Wiesel. Neither of them involved a single person who had experienced a creative, emotional, physical and/or spiritual awakening in ways similar to Allen Say’s as did another favorite work by author and poet Maya Angelou.

In her 1969 autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Angelou took us on a journey from childhood to near adulthood that paralleled Say’s. Both Say and Angelou experienced disappointment and rejection at a very young age. Nevertheless, they were inspired, encouraged and elevated through the professional and ultimately more personal relationships with a teacher. Maya had Mrs. Flowers who encouraged her to read, but more importantly to speak. Allen had his sensei, his teacher/mentor, Noro Shinpei who set an example for him and motivated him to reach even higher heights.

I would definitely recommend Allen Say’s Drawing From Memory. Though at first glance, it may seem to primarily be a children’s picture book. After all, it is full of cartoons. However, it is far more than that. The content is mature. Issues of unrest, abandonment, rejection, dreams chased and dreams captured would meet the social and emotional needs of readers as young as preteens who are may be experiencing similar issues in their lives. An artist who is considering giving up his or her pursuit of happiness should consider drawing from their own memories, reminding themselves what made them fall in love with art, encouraging them to renew that relationship. I really like Drawing because it makes me think of how I keep my grandmother’s memory and our shared love alive. She passed away four years ago, so by constantly crocheting and recalling our crafting stories, like Say, I am proving that our projects as well as our passion can be passed on to our posterity. I, too, have been drawing from memory.

Family, Faith and Hope For The Future: A Comparison Of Night By Elie Wiesel and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell To Manzanar

Before I selected Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel’s Night and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell To Manzanar, I viewed them a completely separate books with their independent value. I had chosen them as part of my “Super Six” as I like to call my book list for this course because I had either read or heard of both books during my undergraduate days. It was not until I began to read Houston’s autobiography did a rush of memories flood my mind. “Wait a minute!” I said out loud while reading on the bus. “I remember now! Elie Wiesel was talking about so much of this, too, with Jewish people, of course. And to think it was all born out of the same war, happening to different groups of people at the same time!” That was the beginning of the comparison that I now present to you, the reader.
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From the beginning of time, we have been distinguishable from one another by skin color, language, physical location and a host of other natural and fabricated phenomena. Empty rhetoric this is not--I firmly believe that no matter what the eyes tell us when we look at one another, no matter how strange other’s words sound to our own ears, we are, in essence, far more alike than different. Unfortunately, it often takes unspeakable tragedies to acknowledge what I sincerely regard as fact. So is the case with Wiesel and Houston. Though they were separated by geography, we see profound similarities in the ways their settings helped shape their experiences, attitudes and beliefs-- their character. In many ways, Elie and Jeanne’s lives were united, paralleled by “the human condition”. Though complex, rich and quite unique in their own right, the main character’s lives in both Night and Farewell To Manzanar are wrought with struggles of similar important issues, like community (including “self” and “the other”), faith and family. Elie Wiesel and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston contended with internal and external forces for a relativity short chronological period of time, the profundity of which caused indelible long-term effects.
The style of Farewell To Manzanar is easy to identify. Jeanne’s voice, with assistance from her husband, was her own. Written thirty years after leaving Manzanar, Houston wrote Farewell… as if she were recounting her life to a friend who stopped by for a long weekend. It is clear that she told us of the hard times her family and others in the camp faced, but her true understanding of the events were relayed as if a child (as she was during the internment) were telling them. That is because “at seven, I was too young to be insulted.”
Houston’s life saddens us insofar as the reader is able to sympathize with her for being an innocent child who suffered cruelties that were disguised as protection for a greater cause, a different group of people.  It is free from the true criticism that I would have liked to have seen, but its absence is acceptable because of the perspective from which Jeanne spoke. Her telling of her experiences is as engaging as it is tolerable. You actually feel drawn in, wanting to learn more about this little girl, her family and the other Japanese families who were subjected to unconscionable indignities sanctioned by the United States of America, the land of the freedom and the home of the brave.
By contrast, in recounting the tragic circumstances of his life, Elie Wiesel spoke through Eliezer, a fictionalized characterization of himself. That does not make the events less true. Can we really blame him for creating a proxy to distance himself from the physical and emotional abuse he suffered and witnessed? Night, gives us unfathomable insight into the inner struggle of a man, a fight that was caused by the atrocious acts that were carried out by individuals who tortured and slaughtered millions of innocent people. It is not difficult to see, from my previous comments, that the tone of Wiesel’s memoir is primarily gloomy, sad and serious which left me feeling angry, despondent and in utter disbelief.  I continued to read because like Elie/Eliezer (and scores of other readers), I unrelentingly grappled with every horrific physical and emotional blow that was dealt while somehow continuing to cling to a fleeting morsel of hope.  
Family
The disruption of the Wakatsukis’ and Wiesels’s lives was caused by events well beyond their imagination or control. World War II (1939-1942) was being fought on a global scale. Battles raged overseas as well as on the home front. Whether for issues of religion or race, people were imprisoned around the world for being different from, which made them an imagined threat to, the ruling majority. The effects of the war hit home when in 1942, under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, the United States government ordered the Wakatsuki family and over 100,000 other Japanese-Americans and resident Japanese “aliens” to leave their homes and relocate to one of ten remote, military style camps. (Italian- and German-Americans were also affected by this decree because we were at war with Germany and Italy as well.)
If we briefly turn our eyes from California where the Wakatsukis lived, we can focus on the tragedy that struck thousands of miles away in Europe when Eliezer’s, his family’s and the lives of other Jews were quite literally ripped apart. In 1944, they were forcibly removed from their homes, thrown into concentration camps including Auschwitz/Birkenau (in modern-day Poland) and Buchenwald in Germany and further separated by sex-- men with men and women with women. (Elie stayed with his dad while his three sisters remained by their mother’s (Sarah) side. Sarah and Tzipora, his little sister, died in the war. Hilda and Beatrice also later died.)
One saving grace is that the Wakatsukis were able to stay together during their dislocation.  Jeanne makes us smile as she recalled how her once close-knit family lived in relative comfort and enjoyed simple pleasures at home like dinner time together. All thirteen of them could fit around the large wooden table and enjoy noisy conversations while eating delicious, home-cooked food.  We are quickly overcome with sadness and disgust when our attention is brought back to their crowded, unsanitary barracks in Manzanar, a camp about 230 miles outside of Los Angeles, CA, the scene of many events that drastically altered their lives.
Papa Wakatsuki had been arrested on suspicion of being a spy before the family was relocated to Manzanar. With the head of household gone, and after a few weeks in the mess halls (typically rooms where soldiers eat together), the remaining Wakatsukis stopped having their meals as a family. (It was hard for her elderly grandmother to leave their barracks; Jeanne and her siblings tried to find better food in other blocks or simply passed time eating with their friends.) This undoubtedly undermined Wakatsuki’s unity and contributed to the disintegration of their family structure. The physical proximity of her family became irrelevant as the emotional distance between them could be measured in miles.
After spending a year in Fort Lincoln detention camp near Bismarck, ND, Papa returned to his family a broken man. Like the cane he used to support his leg, he began to turn to alcohol to brace himself against his inner demons. Papa became so out of control that his threat to beat Mama with his cane was only thwarted by a punch in the face by Kiyo, the family’s youngest son.  
Similarly, though he was comforted by the companionship, the time that he spent with his father contributed to Eliezer’s emotional and spiritual conflict as much as the harsh conditions led to his father’s physical decline and ultimate demise. The beatings, the torture, the experiencing of and witnessing to the brutalities in Auschwitz and Buna, another labor camp, had all but destroyed both men-- mind, body and soul.  Sadly, Eliezer’s father died shortly after arriving at the last concentration camp. He succumbed to a culmination of beatings he sustained because he was sickly and audibly in pain caused by dysentery, an inflammation of the intestines. In a cruel twist of fate, the United States liberated Eliezer and the surviving Jews from Buchenwald in 1945; Shlomo died several months before his freedom.
Faith
To some, night is a time of reflection, rest and rejuvenation. Others fear the night for the unseen ominous creatures and events lurking in the dark.  Throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, we are reminded that only God’s light can drive out darkness.  Eliezer arrived at Birkenau/Auschwitz at night. He questioned who God really was as he entered an unknown, dark world. 
As the war raged on around him, Eliezer fought furiously with the one that raged inside of him. We know that he constantly prayed. He believed in an omnipotent God. He believed that nothing seen could be shaken. If nothing existed without God because God created everything, what kind of God would have created an abyss like Auschwitz? Was he that unabashedly cruel? Worse than that, he probably was no God at all. The fact that he continuously prayed and struggled with these questions makes us understand that Eliezer maintained a measure of faith in God even though God may have revealed himself as disloyal to Eliezer.
Jeanne did not subscribe to religion in the way Eliezer did. Faith was not an issue of keeping her family together, and its lack was not to blame for her family falling apart. She noted that her family followed some of their ancestor’s Buddhist traditions when they lived Ocean Park. It was not until she was in Manzanar that she began to be gain an interest in Catholicism much to her father’s disapproval. It is likely that because of their deplorable living conditions, Jeanne identified with the female saints who were horrifically martyred for their beliefs. In that way, religion (or faith) would not be seen so much as something Jeanne depended on to make sense of the world she lived in; she embraced it to provide herself with another world to which she could escape.
Community (and “Self” Vs. “The Other”)
Polish-Jewish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman spoke of social death as a condition of groups not being accepted by society as fully human. This phenomenon is evident in regard to blacks who were victims of American slavery and Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Likewise, Eliezer could see that the brutality inflicted by the Nazis had also caused the prisoners to engage in a type of social suicide.
Seeing the extent of a group’s degradation at the hands of other human beings weighed heavily on Eliezer’s soul. With all of his might, he fought to fall victim to the newest form of cruelty realized as Jews rising up against Jews. It was a barbarity born as the direct offspring of their abominable circumstances.
Eliezer was horrified by the way he saw men treating their own fathers. On the train to Buchenwald, he was an unwilling witness to a son beating his father to death. He was once told by a Kapo, or fellow prisoner-turned-supervisor, that in the camps, “there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends”. Though he did often think of him as a burden, (would he really mind if, in his weakness, his father laid down in the snow and died?), Eliezer’s love for and solidarity with Shlomo reactivated his innate drive to maintain his humanity and try to keep himself and his father alive.
Being forced to prove their loyalty to the United States via a two-question oath continued to further weaken the Wakatsuki family, and it turned the Japanese prisoners against each other.  Jeanne’s father and her brother Woody answered “yes” and “yes “on the questionnaire, agreeing to serve in the US armed forces and swearing allegiance to this country while renouncing any allegiance or obedience to Japan. When he went to a town hall meeting to defend his decision, Papa was branded a traitor, and a man attacked him. Liked the feelings that swelled inside of Eliezer, I can only imagine the war that raged inside of Papa as he publicly declared his allegiance to the very country that had imprisoned his family, accused him of being a spy and refused him citizenship. Back at the barracks, he cried as he sang the first line of the Japanese national anthem.
The concentration and internment camps caused dissension among family members and for those individuals forced together. They were united by not by blood, but by ethnicity and religion as well as the fear and hatred others had for them. Nonetheless, it is important to note that the circumstances brought about a degree of creativity with forged a sense of community. Through Wiesel, Eliezer spoke of the organization that existed in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. They identified individuals who served, among many things as cooks, hygienists, police officers and social workers. At Manzanar, there were also cooks, (who took pride in the long lines they saw outside their barracks), along with makeshift construction workers and seamstresses who made do with the supplies issued by the United Stated War Department.          
            The Wakatsukis left Manzanar after about a two-year stay at the camp. Jeanne tried to gain a sense of herself while also trying to figure out where she fit in within the larger American community. Mixed messages of kindness as well as unspoken prejudices made her realize that neither she nor others really knew who she had become. One time, trying to be the exotic “other” only led tension between her and her father as he accused her of using her sexuality to win a school contest. It was not until later in life when she reflected on her experiences at Manzanar as an adult with her own family did Jeanne see how her life, simultaneously Japanese and American. It was where her life began and her father’s life began to end.
Through Eliezer, we learn that Elie Wiesel being a victim of and witness to man’s inhumanity against his fellow man did not lead him to take another’s or end his own life. He suffered long and hard for no fault of his own. Elie’s relied on his faith in God to persevere and protect his and his father’s lives. I imagine that the inner strength gained from the memories of his mother and sisters, his relationship with God and his tireless love for his father gave Elie the will to live. When his father died, we know that Elie felt a strange sensation of relief. As Eliezer, he told us that “I have nothing to say of my life of this period. After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore.” That is probably why Wiesel experienced a 10-year period of introspection and reflection before writing Night. How grateful I am that the Holocaust did not silence him forever! What an invaluable resource filled with examples of faith, personal conflict and courage than can be used by members of any community!
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According to TeachingBooks.net, the Lexile measure for Night suggests a readability for 2nd-3rd graders. However, I would not share such a content-specific and emotionally difficult book with 8 and 9 year olds. I recommend reading it with junior high and high school students, particularly during the spring in conjunction with Holocaust Rembernace events. Because it is less complex and told from the perspective of a young girl, Farewell To Manzanar may be appropriate for a 6th grade interdisciplinary Language Arts/Social Studies unit at any time. It might be more meaningful if share during units on communities, while exploring various multicultural books on girls coming of age, Asian American heritage celebrations or as part of Women’s History Month in March. Before reading either Night or Farewell To Manzanar, it would be wise to activate students’ prior knowledge with lessons and activities on World War II and related issues like the Holocaust, Judaism, concentration camps, ethnocentrism, nationalism, etc.