STACKED

books

Books From My Childhood

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A few weeks ago, my mom unearthed a box of old children’s books that once belonged to me, my older brother, and my younger sister. When I think of books from my childhood, I often go back to the books I read in late elementary and middle school (Harry Potter, Philip Pullman, Wizard of Oz). The books from this box, though, were mostly picture books and early chapter books: relics from much earlier that I hadn’t thought about in many years. But memories of them returned easily, and I realized just how much these very early books shaped my reading life.

Sarah’s Unicorn by Bruce and Katherine Coville is one of the first fantasy books I remember reading on my own. I read it over and over, and I’m pretty sure it’s why I was so enamored with the name Sarah for a while as a kid (that and the fact that it means “princess”). While my love for unicorns has faded somewhat, my love for fantasy and magic has not.

 

Big Sister and Little Sister by Charlotte Zolotow is a classic that I didn’t realize was a classic until I became a librarian. I have a little sister myself, and when we were little, she was fairly blonde. The relationship depicted in the book mirrored ours in some ways. I remember reading this book out loud, recording it on a cassette tape.

 

My parents would often give us books as gifts. I love that they included notes so I could look back as an adult and know when they were given to me. This version of Thumbelina is gorgeous and helped make me a lover of fairy tales. This book was actually not in the box; I’ve had it in my possession uninterrupted. (I have enjoyed it for many years, as my mom hoped.)

 

I don’t think I had problems eating my peas when I was a kid, but maybe this book indicates otherwise. Also, Nellie is a major carnivore. That girl claims she would eat all of those animals on the front cover. They are not her friends, people.

 

This is another book I’ve had in my possession uninterrupted, but I thought I’d include it here because the note is so great. Trevor Romain is an Austin author, and my dad (if my memory isn’t faulty) got this book for me at a signing when I was around seven. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love to write and didn’t want to be A Writer. I love that Trevor Romain wrote such a nice, personal note for a little girl who was just getting started herself.

 

I devoured the Amelia Bedelia books as a kid. They definitely helped foster my love of puns and wordplay.

 

I’ve always thought marginalia was interesting (both in my own books as well as complete strangers’). It looks like I was practicing writing an uppercase J in this book.

 

I remember reading Let’s Trade by Harriet Ziefert a lot as a kid, but I honestly don’t know why. It’s a completely message-driven book. The girl kind of looked like me; maybe that was it? Who knows. I just read everything I could get my hands on, probably.

 

This book, called New at the Zoo, was super fun! It was divided into two halves, and you could mix and match the upper and lower parts of the animals to create entirely new ones. And it’s a pop-up book! Endless hours of amusement.

 

This one actually belonged to my brother, but I had to include it because I’m sure I read it too – along with all of the other Choose Your Own Adventure books I could get my hands on. My 6th grade teacher was super cool and gave us an assignment to create our own Choose Your Own Adventure book as part of our language arts class. Mine was historical fiction about the Titanic. (Yes, the movie had just come out.) There were not many endings where you lived, just so you know.

#1000BlackGirlBooks Donation Fund Drive Book List

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Black Girls

 

In Mid-January, a story about 11-year-old Marley Dias and her quest to collection 1000 books about black girls hit the internet. Or maybe the correct phrasing of that is that it hit the internet in a way where it picked up attention and got spread far and wide in the book community. Almost immediately, I knew I wanted to do what I could to help this fabulous girl collect the books she wanted to meet her goal.

Like last year, I thought putting it out there that I’d take up donations would work. But unlike the Some Girls Are drive, rather than collect books and send them to Marley, I opened up my Paypal account to accept donations, which I’d then funnel into sending her book after book after book.

Nearly $3000 came in from the drive, which is fabulous and powerful. I still have a couple hundred dollars left to spend, and it’s my idea to get in touch with the people behind this project and help fill in any additional holes.

One of the fun, frustrating, and challenging elements of this drive was selecting the books to send. I let anyone who donated choose a title or two (or ten, it didn’t matter!) to send, but I limited to one copy of each title. I did this knowing that some titles, like brown girl dreaming and Pointe would be requested again and again and be sent again and again. There’s nothing wrong with that in the least, especially for a library like the one Dias is working toward, but I wanted to offer a further range of titles, too. Thanks to the hard work of dedicated people like Zetta Elliott and Edi Campbell, I was able to really dig deep into the world of kid lit featuring black girls at the center of the story. In addition to utilizing their incredible resources, I tapped into the brains of Sarah Hannah Gomez, Justina Ireland, and Anne Ursu, who all provided a wealth of title ideas for sending.

Justina further pointed something out to me that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about. It only took $2500 to collect nearly every black girl book in children’s/middle grade/YA/crossover adult. These books have limited shelf lives, as numerous titles were tough to track down or required me going through third parties to collection. Do you know how sad it is to think that that amount of money is all it takes to buy nearly everything?

I’m thrilled we could do this, but it didn’t hit me how difficult finding black girl books truly was until I’d exhausted the obvious, exhausted the less obvious, and still have some money left over to find further titles.  I am eager to see how Marley completes this dream of hers, as well as what her library will look like, but I’m also saddened to see so clearly the very thing she was talking about (and that so many others have and continue talking about): these books are not out there, not obvious, and that needs to change. I also ran into seeing just how few graphic novels offer black girls at the center of the story.

As promised, here’s a round-up of nearly everything I purchased for #1000BlackGirlBooks. This list is so long and took a long time to compile, so forgive any errors or mistakes. I’m doing what I can to designate titles by category — picture books and early readers, middle grade, YA, adult, and graphic novel. I’ve starred titles within each of those categories that are non-fiction, and all links will take you to Amazon. I’m choosing to do it that way because I’m using Amazon as my way of gauging ages for some of the titles, and it’s where I made my purchases for Marley because of the ability to track purchases and ensure quick delivery.

I used my librarian brain when buying these, knowing these will be used in libraries. That means there are award winners here, as well as popular books, as well as pop culture leaning title. This is a mix of a little of everything, just as it should be.

Ready? Here we go.

 

Picture Books/Early Reader Titles

 

 

Middle Grade (some are higher level and some lower)

 

 

Young Adult

 

 

Adult (with crossover appeal)

 

 

Graphic Novels

 

 

Battling Boy by Paul Pope

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Paul Pope is quite the name in comics. As a relative newcomer myself, Battling Boy was the first I had heard of him, but I know his reputation for high-quality comic storytelling.

In this graphic novel for kids, the first in a projected series, Pope first introduces us to Haggard West, hero of the town of Arcopolis. He’s fighting one of the monsters that have been taking over the town, and he seems to be winning, as he always does…until he’s not. In fact, the monster kills him. Haggard West is dead.

The town is distraught. Who will hold back the tide of monstrous creatures? West’s daughter, still a child, thinks she’s the natural successor.

Meanwhile, the godlike Battling Boy is living in his home above the clouds, with his godlike father and his godlike friends. His father announces that it’s time for Battling Boy to go rambling, a rite of passage for their culture. This means Battling Boy is sent to a part of the mortal world where he will test himself against whatever plagues the people – and he’s sent to Arcopolis.

Things start out rough for Battling Boy, and they don’t get any better in his first battle. Except…a series of events fools the citizens into thinking he is a full-fledged hero with the power of gods, when really, he’s only a hero in training, and not a great one at that. He tries to keep up appearances with the help of a set of t-shirts with images of animals on them, which give him powers based on the animals’ strengths. Will Battling Boy be able to save the town, even though he’s basically an impostor hero? (Hint: you don’t actually find out in this volume.)

This title has been getting a huge marketing push from First Second, and it’s getting a lot of early critical acclaim as well. I felt pretty tepid toward it, though. Mostly, I was frustrated there was so much beginning here. It never seemed to advance beyond exposition, despite the frenetic action. There’s a certain plot point near the end that I felt could have happened much earlier and propelled the story further along in this first volume.

I thought the mythology was a bit muddled as well, but I’ve always been more interested than most in backstory. Without more details about Battling Boy and his cultural background, it seems quite generic, perhaps a bit too much like Asgard.

I would have liked to see more of Haggard West’s daughter. She seems interesting; I genuinely want to know more about what it was like to grow up with a superhero (without any supernatural powers) as a father. We get snippets of that upbringing, but she doesn’t get to do much except go to her classes, which include advanced science as well as fighting. Her story doesn’t meet up with Battling Boy’s (though I expect it will in future volumes).

But those are mostly personal complaints. Kids who like the serial nature of comics and are used to waiting several volumes to progress beyond chapter one probably won’t mind that nothing is resolved here. The t-shirt concept is very modern; I can picture kids throwing on their own graphic tees and imagining themselves with super powers based on the images. The art, also done by Pope, fits right in with the traditional comic book aesthetic. It’s actually a bit better than most, I think, with vivid colors and a vibrancy that complements all the action. Kids who love comics will be thrilled with this new superhero and Pope’s modern take on it.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Battling Boy will be available October 8.

Rewriting History (aka Lying to Our Children)

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In the most recent issue of Kirkus, there are two reviews for books that feature Laika, the dog who was sent into space by the Soviet space program and died there (a return trip was never planned). Laika’s life (and death) is dealt with sensitively and realistically in Nick Abadzis’ 2007 graphic novel, simply titled Laika.

Stories about dogs dying are not new for kids. In fact, I’d say that children’s books where the dog dies have a long and storied history in the English-speaking world, from Old Yeller to Where the Red Fern Grows to Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog. There’s even a joke that people often tell: If the children’s book has a picture of a dog on it, that dog is a goner. (“Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down.” -Gordan Korman’s No More Dead Dogs). Dog deaths are painful, naturally, but kids aren’t unaccustomed to reading about them.

I was a little surprised, then, to pick up the latest issue of Kirkus and read about two books being published in October that give a much more, shall we say, creative ending to Laika’s story. One seems to outright lie; the other is a bit more of a fantasy. In both of these stories, the author imagines a happier end for Laika.

In Laika: Astronaut Dog by Owen Davey (picture book, Candlewick), Laika ends up living on an alien spaceship. What really happened is mentioned in a more text-heavy author’s note, and as we know, author’s notes are often skipped. Most kids will probably know that the alien spaceship is not real, but Davey doesn’t tell us Laika’s true end in the story proper, either. Fanciful, yes. Honest? Not so much.

In A Curious Robot on Mars by James Duffett-Smith (picture book, Sky Pony Press), Laika is not the primary character. That honor belongs to the Mars rover, who discovers, after its own mission ends, that Sputnik and Laika are living on Mars and makes friends with them. Unlike Davey’s book, the entire story here is clearly a fantasy, but it doesn’t erase the fact that Laika’s true fate isn’t mentioned. Does it need to be?

I wonder what motivates this kind of historical revision. We want to save our children from pain, certainly, but that doesn’t explain why we keep publishing novels where the dog dies, where such an event is most likely meant to elicit pain. Perhaps it’s easier to deal with if it’s fictional, since we can tell our children “It’s just a story. It’s not real.” Laika’s death is real, and perhaps that makes it harder.

I can’t completely buy that argument, though, since kids whose families have dogs will most likely experience their pet’s death before they get too old. Dogs simply don’t live very long when compared to humans. Dog deaths are real; they happen to kids every day.

Perhaps it’s because Laika’s death was intentional, planned. Perhaps it’s because her story shows how adults use other living things for their own advancement, with little to no regard for that living thing’s well-being or ultimate fate. Perhaps it’s because it reveals the deliberate and casual cruelty of grown-ups, and that makes people uncomfortable. I’m not entirely sure.

I should note that the Kirkus reviewer calls out the first title as “cowardly.” (The second title is dismissed more for its artwork.) I haven’t read it myself, but it seems altogether too disingenuous. When we write about hard and painful things that happened in the past, we need to be truthful. There’s a way to do it gently and sensitively, to make it appropriate for children at different ages and maturity levels. Lying (even by omission) isn’t the way to do it.

What do you think about these stories, and others like them that sugarcoat or even rewrite unpleasant parts of history for kids?

Little White Duck: A Childhood in China by Na Liu and Andres Vera Martinez

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I mentioned previously that the Cybils graphic novels categories had two memoirs this year, and Little White Duck was the middle grade selection. It’s the story of Na Liu’s childhood growing up in 1970s China, beginning near the end of Mao Zedong’s life. Rather than tell one linear story, she instead chooses to show us her early life in a series of vignettes, some more engrossing than others.
The vignettes cover a range of incidents, some touching upon major national events (Chairman Mao’s death, the great famine), others relaying a more personal, familial story (a visit to some poorer cousins, a mistake with some chicks while attempting to emulate elders). Through these very short stories, Liu makes the reader aware of the how different her childhood was from our own childhoods in a different place and time. Importantly, though, she also makes us realize what we hold in common: love of family, childhood fears and jealousies and confusion, the need to impress the adults around you.
Vignette-style stories are always a risk, in much the same way that short story collections are: it’s very unlikely all stories are going to be knock-it-outta-the-park incredible. The vignettes in Little White Duck are a bit uneven, some memorable, some not. What is consistently excellent, though, is the art. Wow, this is some gorgeous art. Everything about it is beautiful: shapes, colors, expression. I could pore over these pages and completely ignore the words and I’d be a happy reader. It’s easily digestible art, too: not cartoony, but not too photo-realistic either. I know some kids who would really dig it.
For kids inquisitive about another (real!) place and time, this would be a great choice. And the vignette style could be a real plus for kids who sometimes struggle to read what can seem like very long chapter-less graphic novels (or the longer chapters in traditional novels).
I tried to think of some good readalikes, but really, Abby gave me plenty: The Wall by Peter Sis, Kampung Boy by Lat, Drawing from Memory
by Allen Say. Her Goodreads post has a few more.