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Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

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Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose is the fourth book in my quest to read all five National Book Award nominees for Youth Literature. Unlike the prior three books, Claudette Colvin is a work of non-fiction.

Claudette Colvin was the catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycotts during the 1950s and Civil Rights Movement. But unlike Rosa Parks, she was forgotten and overlooked for her major contribution to integration.

Hoose’s story is meant to share Colvin’s story and shed light into her role into the monumental and oft ignored Browder v. Gayle case that ruled integration the law in Montgomery and all of Alabama.

Claudette refused to give up her seat on the bus as a teenager, and she didn’t go quietly. She was beaten and degraded as police officers dragged her off the bus for not giving up the seat upon the bus driver’s request (which, back then was de facto for blacks). She was sentenced for the crime, but her cause was taken up by Dr. King and Rosa Parks shortly thereafter. As students of American history, we have an idea of what happened when they became involved in the situation in Montgomery.

But Colvin faded from the spot light, even though it was her action that spurred movement from blacks and equal rights supporters of all colors and backgrounds. Why? She became pregnant and birthed a light-skinned baby. Scorned by white culture for being black and refusing to follow Jim Crow and equally scorned by her black community for having a child out of wedlock with what they assumed was a white father pushed her story to the periphery.

Hoose’s book was engaging and solid — I felt like the prose moved in a story-like fashion enough to keep audiences who may not otherwise have found a non-fiction book about a lesser-known history maker reading. Fortunately for Hoose and for readers, Colvin is still alive today and was able to provide insights into the story herself.

The book has segments of her interviews, along with a selection of photos, sidebars, and other graphics to tell the story. Additionally, Hoose fills in many of the holes between Colvin’s interviews to give the book shape and structure.

This, however, made me sad — I actually found Hoose’s additions the dullest and slowest portions of the book. I wanted to read more of Colvin’s own words and I feel like she got short changed for his prose. I’m a big fan of graphics, and I almost would have preferred more, as well. I consider myself a fairly well educated reader and I felt like having more visuals would have helped me better construct an understanding; I imagine for the age range this book is intended for that adding more graphics would be not only helpful but crucial to better capturing the essence of the Civil Rights struggle, particularly in Montgomery.

Although I believe this is a fantastic book, I do wonder how receptive audiences would be to this if it were not hand sold or used as part of a classroom collection/unit on the Civil Rights movement. I think this because she is (unfortunately!) a little known member of such an important era and she will be overlooked on the shelves in favor of King or Parks. That’s not to say she doesn’t belong, for sure. Additionally, I did find the section about her becoming pregnant a bit non-essential — the graphic details about sex here were tangential to the larger issues, and I think they will be a sticking point for use with younger readers.

I think this is a worthy NBA nominee, for sure, but I still hold my torch for Lips Touch. Fortunately for Claudette Colvin, the nomination will get more librarians, teachers, and book loves to read this story and talk up this lesser known but utterly important member of the Civil Rights movement and perhaps will bring a renewed interest in learning about the faces and stories behind it.

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

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You probably read her memoir, The Glass Castle, and now Jeanette Walls is back with a fictionalized story about her grandmother Lily. Lily is a hard, rowdy woman who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted in a time that these activities weren’t seen as lady-like nor appropriate.

The story follows as she grows up in west Texas and then moves on to Arizona to teach — without her 8th grade education. When Lily gets fired thanks to the end of the war, she chooses to move to Chicago and start a life there. But when she married a two-timing louse, she relocates again, back to her wild ways in the desert southwest.

She eventually marries a stable man and has a couple of children, but she’ll never be broke of her wild ways, and the rest of the story tells of other adventures she and her family have.

Half Broke Horses is told in short vignettes, with each chapter being just a page or two long. It’s very episodic, though for the first 2/3 of the book, there is a great flow between the stories. I felt like the last 1/3 of the book, however, fell completely apart as Wells tried to wrap up the entire adulthood of Lily in fewer pages than she had spent describing her childhood. Within four pages, she’d gone from having young children to fighting with a teenage daughter to Wells being born. Too much too quickly for me.

I wasn’t a big fan of this book. I felt like the fictionalization really made the story boring. Wells had a fantastic concept and the character of Lily was interesting, but by fictionalizing the story, it was devoid of any emotion. Additionally, the episodic nature further disjointed the story in a way that I found Lily nothing more than an interesting character — I never had feelings for her one way or another, but rather just went with her.

I didn’t get quite the sense of how wild a character she was, either. I felt like the book was billed as much more of a wild west girl who really broke horses and bucked the tradition, but it seemed to me by fictionalizing the story, it just fell really, really flat. I’ve read more interesting fiction with more interesting female characters who did this. I would have loved this a lot more if this were more biographical.

Like The Glass Castle, I felt distanced from the book. As a reader, I never got fully absorbed in either story, and the more I think about it, I believe it’s Walls’s style. She builds a wall around her story that as a reader, I don’t like. For other readers, this works well because the subjects are real and therefore not always easily accessible or relatable.

I suspect this might get picked up as a film down the road: it’s episodic and fitting to cinematic molding; it’s Jeanette Walls who has proven to be popular; and the story IS interesting. I feel like the help it could get with an artistic director will elevate it and make it more engaging and realistic.

I wonder how hard this story would have been to make biographical, rather than fictional. Walls states in an end note that her original intent was to write about her mother, but her mother insisted that her mother, Lily, was the real interesting one. I wonder how much of the decision to fictionalize came from the publisher, rather than her original intent? Or if it was her intent to do it all along, how much came from her worry to be seen as another James Frey or similar memoirist accused of making it all up?

I believe readers know not everything in a biography or memoir is going to be 100% true (how can it be?). I sure hope it wasn’t done this way to convenience the reader from thinking — there is a good story here, but I just had a hard time connecting and reveling in it knowing that it never could be fully realized as a fictional novel.

Lips Touch, Laini Taylor w/ Jim Di Bartolo

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I’m going to do something I haven’t done before: I’m reviewing this title without finishing it.

Lips Touch by Laini Taylor and with illustrator Jim Di Bartolo is one of the nominees for this year’s National Book Award. I’m going to go out on a limb and say — even without reading the other two nominees just yet — that this is going to be the winner.

Why?

This book is fantastic, it is beautiful, and it is a book worthy of such an accolade. Although this definitely strikes me as a book that would speak in that way to an awards committee, this is also a book with high appeal, though it’s definitely going to appeal most to those who love fantasy, mythology, or fairy tale worlds and older teens. That’s not to say it’s got a lot of questionable content that wouldn’t be appropriate for younger teens but more because it is written in a very sophisticated manner with dense language. And the allusions and depth Taylor has is going to be most appreciated by those with a little reading and literary currency.

Lips Touch is a series of three short stories that revolve around kissing. They’re wildly different but are related through that common theme. Each story is preceded by a few pages of fantastic illustration by Di Bartolo which tell the story graphically. The art uses red, black, and grey to set the tone and the colors are throughout the book, as titles, page numbers, and chapter titles are red themselves. The extra money that the publisher spent on the color was well spent and as a reader, I just loved the beautiful book itself. Sorry Kindle users, but you will miss out on a piece of art.

The first story is an exploration of Christina Rosetti’s famous poem “Goblin Market.” This a poem that, like Taylor, I’ve been fascinated with for a long time. Kizzy, the main character in the story, is one of those girls who wishes she had the boys interested in her like others in her class do. She never will, of course, because she’s not that attractive and well, she has a very, very weird family.

That is, of course, until a new boy comes to town and rouses the goblins. Will they ruin her or him? Will they ever get to experience a true kiss or will they become victims of the goblins out to haunt Kizzy?

Taylor’s second story is a story about a curse placed upon a baby. Based heavily in mythology — and I believe this is Middle Eastern mythos — Taylor crafts a story where the Devil can kill at will, but it is through the promise to a woman with power to travel between life on earth and Hell that he chooses no longer to kill children. That is, if this child who will be given the most beautiful voice on earth never utters a word. When a solider sees the cursed individual upon her late teen years, and she falls deeply in love, will she break the curse? Will she break it for love?

And the third story, admittedly, I did not get through. This is a story that relies a lot on world building and development and will definitely appeal to fantasy readers. This is not my genre and because I was so enamored with her first two tales, I did not want to read through the third knowing that I could not appreciate nor evaluate it well. The preceding art I did enjoy but knew from that and the short summary following the illustrations that it wouldn’t be for me.

Lips Touch was so enjoyable, so different, and so memorable. I first heard of this book from a webinar I attended wherein David Levithan raved about the book but had a heck of a time finding it anywhere. I wanted to purchase it for my library when I first learned of it but could not locate it through my vendor. A few trips to a number of big chains proved fruitless, as well, both before and after the NBA nomination announcement. So, if you’re interested in reading it and can’t find it easily, don’t be surprised. I did land a copy through Amazon.

This is a literary work. It is based deeply in language and imagery, and it alludes to many myths, legends, and other literature. This will not have wide appeal, but I think that any reader can appreciate at least one story in here. If for no other reason, pick up Lips Touch for incredible language use and for the unique use of visual story telling.

I’m pretty okay taking the risk in saying this will be the winner this year — I suspect that Claudette Colvin and Charles and Emma are going to be great reads, but this book has so much more to it than the text and for a fiction title just glows differently.

Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia

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On to my second book out of the five nominees for the National Book Award in Youth Literature. This time it’s Rita Williams-Garcia’s Jumped, which is also a Cybils nominee this year.

Jumped is an urban novel, told from three perspectives and takes place over the course of one school day — about 7:30 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. with a bit of story taking place later. This is the story of a girl full of confidence and pride who inadvertently got in the way of a girl with a mission to cause trouble (to make herself feel better about her troubles) and a third girl – the one who saw it coming.

Leticia has to take class during 0 hour to make up for not doing so hot in school last year. She’s a sly one, of course, and tricks her teacher into thinking she needs to use the bathroom desperately and is able to ditch out of class early that day.

Dominique, at that time, was making her way to her basketball coach’s office to ask for play time in the game. She’s not passing with a high enough grade in one of her classes and coach has benched her. She isn’t happy. When her coach tells her she can’t play, she leaves his office, rage rising.

And Trina? Well, her day is great. She’s looking cute and her art work’s put on display in the hallway. Girl’s floating through her day … and floats right past Dominique in the hallway who swears she’s going to beat her at 2:45.

Leticia saw it all go down. But is it her responsibility to tell Trina? Should she intervene in a situation that could only get her in deeper trouble? Trina did nothing to warrant the anger Dominique has for her.

Jumped is an interesting story and it gives a good perspective into a culture I am totally unfamiliar with – the urban high school. With the proliferation of stories in the news lately, I thought this book was so contemporary and so well done without becoming an issue novel. But unfortunately, I think the enjoyment I got stopped there.

I found the book very slow for being such a small book. I think the pacing is intentional, building up how each character proceeds through their school day through the end scene. The end scene unfolds precisely as we imagine it will, but when it’s over, well, there’s no resolution. An issue novel would go the mile to resolve the story, and since this ISN’T an issue novel, there’s not a good resolve. I’m still undecided how I feel about that as a reader taken into such an unfamiliar world. I believe readers who find this a familiar world may feel similarly.

Williams-Garcia knows the language and the people well. I don’t think, though, that their voices are well developed. If this is intentional, it’s brilliant, but my reading on the story — and my understanding in the format of a very short time line and short novel more generally — maybe didn’t lead to that conclusion. The characters are pretty flat, built as just their situation. As a reader, I know why Dominique is mad and I know what Trina did to irritate her. Kind of.

Maybe I’m meant to feel like Leticia, unsure of what’s going on and what to do about it.

That said, this is a quick read that will be enjoyed by so many teen girls, both those who know about this urban landscape and those who don’t. I don’t think this one will walk away the winner of the award, though — but I think it was highly deserving, whether or not it was one of my favorites. I understand entirely why it is appealing and worthwhile, and the press it will get from its nomination is justly earned.

Kid-Friendly Graphic Novels & Knights of the Lunch Table by Frank Cammuso

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Every two months, all of the children’s librarians from my entire system (73 libraries!) gather downtown for an information order meeting. One of the presentations at a recent session? You guessed it – graphic novels for kids. Our fearless leaders in Children’s Services have been trying to broaden the world of graphic novels in the Los Angeles Public Library. The battlecry? No longer will the Young Adult area hold a monopoly over the graphic novels! Publishers, children’s librarians, and patrons are demanding more content for younger kids.

I managed to coerse the graphic novel committee into letting me post their great powerpoint overview of the graphic novel genre and how Los Angeles Public Library is incorporating these books into the children’s collections… and programming around it! As a verified non-expert in this genre, I appreciated the synthesis of a huge amount of information into a simplified format. I only wish I could’ve grabbed some snapshots of the cute insanely cute crafts that were demonstrated. I hope you enjoy the efforts of Marc Horton, Eva Mitnick, Carey Vance, Joanna Fabicon, and Maddy Kerr – I know I did.

The September issue of School Library Journal reflects this trend. Peter Gutiérrez wrote an article entitled “Good & Plenty: It used to be hard to find good graphic novels for the K–4 crowd. My, how times have changed.” Okay, the title is a bit of a clunker, but the article itself offers a great primer to some of the awesome material for children. And I decided to challenge myself to read a few of the novels mentioned.

My favorite of the bunch? Frank Cammuso’s Knight’s of the Lunch Table series, without a doubt.

I accidentally ordered the second volume of the series, the Dragon Players, instead of the first volume, the Dodgeball Chronicles. No matter – the story was easily picked up without needing an introduction.

King Arthur and the Round Table seemlessly fits into this modern day story about middle school. Artie attends Camelot Middle School with his evil sister Morgan. Of course, there’s a Mr. Merlyn, a science wiz with a mysterious raven as a classroom pet. And Percy and Guen show up as Artie’s best friend and love interest respectively. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to references to the Camelot legend. At times, I really want to go back and grab my copy of the Once and Future King, just to catch more obscure allusions in the text.

In the Dragon Players, Artie finds himself in a competition of dueling dragons – robot dragons, that is. The bullies of the school, appropriately named “The Horde,” have forced Percy to build them a fearsome dragon competitor. Cammuso weaves the theme of duality from the beginning of the story to the narrative climax. I particularly loved the scene where “the ladies of the lunch” dispense a warning.

Arthur, King of Middle School,
Within thy heart, two dragons duel.
One is warm and one is cook,
In thy life just one shall rule.

All pretty standard stuff, right? Of course the mystic lunch ladies would speak in cryptic gibberish. But Cammuso continues the exchange… with an appropriate food-related sense of humor. This, of course, totally confuses Artie.

French fries… or veggie sticks?
Who knows which dragon you shall pick?
Chef salad… or pizza cheesy?
One is right and one is easy.

I couldn’t stop laughing, and then I forced several co-workers to listen to the dialogue.

A shadowy figure in the guise of a dorky kid named Evo shows up with an easy answer to Artie’s dueling robots dilemma. And of course, Artie and his friends have to go through harrowing hijinx before they must make a decision. Kids will definitely identify with Artie; he’s savvy, street-wise, but a little uncertain at the same time. Like most kids, he looks to his friends and his mentors for advice… but Artie can also look to his magic locker (a middle school version of Excalibur) for a more unique form of guidance.

The art is fantastic – the characters are drawn with deft, broad strokes. The coloring is vibrant, appealing to both younger kids and their parents. I’m not extremely visually oriented; I read text too fast. But I found myself going back through the pages a second (and even a third) time to absorb all of the small details in the background of the panels. The stories pertain to middle schoolers, but younger elementary school readers will eat up this series.