Musings by our guest blogger

I have been thinking about Lindi’s last post on diversity in books and made a discovery. Here is what I have been reading lately:

• ·       An autobiography in verse about an African American girl growing up in the 60’s and 70’s
• ·       Fiction about a young white girl in New York in 1986 whose beloved gay uncle dies of AIDS
• ·       Novel about a young white girl who is raised with a chimpanzee for a sister
• ·       Fantasy about modern Canadian dragon slayers
• ·       A largely autobiographical novel about a girl from Zimbabwe who moves to Michigan
• ·       Non-fiction account about 4 undocumented teens from Mexico, now living in Phoenix, who make a robot and against all odds defeat the team from MIT in a national competition

                You probably noticed it before I did – the novels are about white girls, while the non-fiction is much more diverse.  And yes, you could say it is just my reading this month, but I think it represents a bigger picture. Diversity is lacking in mainstream fiction. Everyday day there are novels published about white characters. Many are excellent, beautifully written, compelling stories. The ones I listed here do have some diversity in them – the gay uncle, the chimpanzee sister, and the Canadian dragons. But who tells the story of learning from her mother how to obey the segregation laws of the South without making trouble – the author herself. Who can describe the longing for guava and the games she played with the other children in the shanty town called Paradise – the author herself. No one else was telling their story so they wrote it themselves. As for the Latino robotics team – it is now a major motion picture but if the author had not followed up a spam-like press release he received and got to the beginning of the story, it might not have been told.

                What I’m trying to say is that diversity should not be delegated to the non-fiction and memoir sections of the library or bookstore. There should be as much diversity as possible in all forms of writing. Documentaries about overcoming challenges and winning the competition should be balanced with everyday stories featuring a variety of characters. If diversity in books acts as a kind of map, then we all need many more signposts and illustrations along the way.

Titles mentioned:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The Story of Own: Dragon Slayer of Tronheim by E.K. Johnston

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream by Joshua Davis

#WeNeedDiverseBooks

There are some givens in a school library: Guinness world records books and Garfield comic books will circulate until they fall to pieces. Second graders will want to read what their big brothers and sisters are reading, even when those books are really aimed at older readers. Kindergarten girls will want Cinderella books and they don't mean Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters.

Wait. What?

Yes, John Steptoe's stunning, award-winning book, which retells a Cinderella-variant from the Shona people, is just not attractive to young girls. Year after year, we look at which books didn't circulate, evaluating for whether to weed them from the collection, and way too often they are the books with people of color on the cover. The need for children to see themselves in books, in movies, on television, in video games is no longer debated, although the need is still acute. Christopher Myers writes in the New York Times, it is not so much mirrors, as maps. "They are indeed searching for their place in the world, but they are also deciding where they want to go. They create, through the stories they’re given, an atlas of their world, of their relationships to others, of their possible destinations."

But here’s the thing. White kids need diverse books too. When statistics show that whether one believes the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson was race-based is likely to depend on whether you are white or black; when in 2008 some white conservatives stated that Michelle Obama didn’t “look like a First Lady”; when there continue to be disproportionate rates of black suspensions in school, black incarceration in prison, black foreclosures in the housing market -- this simple fact becomes very clear: white and brown kids, male and female and transgender kids, Christian and Muslim and agnostic kids -- we all need to see maps for all kinds of people.

And isn’t that the beauty of story? That by reading or listening to or watching another’s story, we are reminded of our common humanity and our different experiences.

Three Titles for 5th Grade Boys

I put Alabama Moon in the hands of a 5^th grade boy yesterday. He and his family were headed to the airport and dad had forgotten to pack a book for said child before leaving home. I hope he likes it; it is my go-to book for 5^th grade boys. A mom recommended it to me about 5 years ago and I can’t think of a child who has disliked it in all those years.

Moon is 10 years old; he lives in the Southern backwoods with his father. They hunt and trap and trade for supplies at the local general store. When Moon’s dad is felled by a logging accident, he tells his son to “head to Alaska. There’s folks like us there.” And just like that, Moon’s life takes a sharp turn. He’s got to deal with money and highways and social services people. In his entire life, Moon can remember interacting with one person other than his father. He may know how to catch a fish with his hands, but staying out of foster care is another matter entirely.

Watt Key has written a book beloved by children and adults  – it’s laugh-out-loud funny, edge-of-your-seat exciting and thought-provoking.

I’ve recently read a couple other books that might engage your preteen sons – Here Lies Arthur, by Philip Reeve, and 90 Miles to Havana, by Enrique Flores-Galbis. 90 Miles follows the same fish-out-of-water trope as Alabama Moon: after Fidel Castro’s revolution takes hold in Cuba, Julian and his older brothers are sent to Florida to escape Communism, but America is not the land of dreams he was expecting. At first Julian figures on following his brothers’ lead in navigating this new reality just like always, but he soon learns to think for himself. Again, lots of laugh-out-loud moments and suspenseful scenes enhance a thoughtful and thought-provoking story.

In Here Lies Arthur, the fish out of water is a girl passing as a boy. Myrddin literally plucks young Gwyna from a river and uses her to transform an unlikely chieftain into Britain’s most legendary king. Here’s a book for you lovers of realism. Reeve paints a grim picture of the post-Roman era  – dirty, chaotic, violent, corrupt, and misogynistic. But people are people across time and space. There are also love and tenderness, laughter and bravery. And hope – Myrddin truly hopes that Arthur could unite the land and stop some (most?) of the fighting that destroys ordinary folks’ lives. From girl to boy and back to young woman, Gwyna is on the front lines of a great con job, as Reeve imagines how King Arthur’s legend might have arisen. 

Are you a 5th grade boy? Do you have a 5th grade boy? Were you ever a 5th grade boy? What do you recommend?