Wilma Rudolph Beat the Odds
02 Mar 2012 4 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Nonfiction, Picture Books, Sports Tags: Kathleen Krull, Wilma Rudolph, Women's History Month
Who says true stories can’t be more thrilling than fiction? Whip out Kathleen Krull’s acclaimed picture-book biography Wilma Unlimited for a rousing read-aloud experience for all. 
Many children don’t know Wilma Rudolph made history by winning three gold medals for running in the 1960 Olympics in Rome. That won’t stop them from cheering for the athlete who contracted polio at the age of 5 and was told she would likely never walk again.
Born in 1940, in Clarksville, TN, Wilma was the youngest of 19 brothers and sisters. She defied others’ low expectations of her by relying on her own strong will. Not only did she manage to shed her leg braces and walk, she went on to play high-school basketball. That’s how a track and field coach discovered her talent and offered her a college scholarship, thereby enabling her to become the first in her family to attend college.
Neither physical hardships, poverty, nor racism could hold back Wilma Rudolph. Enhanced by striking illustrations by David Diaz, this story can’t help but inspire others and show how perseverance can lead to triumph. Why not get this Women’s History Month off to a running start with this winner?
Author Kathleen Krull Provides Tips on Using Biographies in the Classroom.
Check out the 2nd annual KidsLit CelebratesWomen’s History Month.
and see …
“Beyond the mountain, more mountains”
16 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Civil Rights, middle grade, MLK day stories, Nonfiction, Women's history, Young adult
Acclaimed CNN journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault gives a vivid and inspiring account of how she 
“stood on the shoulders of giants” in fulfilling her own significant role in the Civil Rights movement.
Among the 1.8 million who traveled to Washington, DC, to witness the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president were the author and her husband. Opening her memoir with a description of the event, Ms. Hunter-Gault says it led her to reflect on her own participation in the arduous trek toward equality.
Mingled with her excitement were bittersweet memories of the many braves ones lost along the way, whether through racist violence or from natural causes, including her friend and classmate Hamilton Holmes, who “walked into history with me through the gates of the University of Georgia.” Obama’s election marked a special place in that long journey fueled by the lyrics of the spiritual: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’roun’/ . . . Keep on walkin’ / Keep on talkin’/ Walking up the Freedom Trail.”
Ms. Hunter-Gault employs a lively pace and an accessible, photo-filled format that provides historical context for her role in the Civil Rights movement. The black-and-white copies of New York Times front pages provide fascinating insight into the events she relates, beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that rejected the legitimacy of “separate but equal” facilities, including public schools. Despite the law, years of inequity and dimmed prospects dragged on, as no state in the Deep South initiated desegregation. Separate schools, trains, buses, parks, pools, restaurants, bathrooms, and even water fountains pocked the region. The author cites the conditions at her elementary school in little Covington, GA, which had raggedy, incomplete old textbooks, and no cafeteria.
In Atlanta, where her family moved when she was about 10, she benefited from dedicated teachers and a nurturing environment. “We lived happily apart and generally removed from the worst manifestations of segregation, hardly ever encountering overt hostility from whites.”
Such a fragile balance foundered, though, after four black students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College held a sit-in at Woolworth’s five-and-dime, in Greensboro, NC, in 1960. Soon sit-ins spread across the south, including Atlanta, as African-Americans glimpsed the possibilities of a more just society. Thousands of local college students took to the streets of downtown Atlanta in 1960. Charlayne began her reporting career by covering such events for the bold new Atlanta Inquirer. (Another staff writer, Julian Bond, became its managing editor before vaulting into a many-storied political career.)
A significant prospect prevented Ms. Hunter-Gault from participating in those protests. Although she had been admitted to Wayne State in Michigan, several Atlanta civil rights leaders encouraged her and another outstanding high-school classmates to apply to the all-white University of Georgia, the oldest public university in the nation. At a time when it was uncommon for white students to attend college so far from home, black students’ choices were limited. Georgia, like some other Southern states, provided money for black students to study out of state.
Charlayne and Hamilton Holmes, then enrolled at Morehouse, agreed to accept the challenge. Knowing an arrest would likely result from participating in a sit-in, she refused to give the University of Georgia an excuse to reject her application. For a few more months, Charlayne would wait for her opportunity to challenge racism.
In the fall, the author returned to Wayne State but was summoned to Atlanta for the December trial that would determine whether she and Hamilton would be allowed to enroll at UGA. The NYT headline proclaimed their success: “2 NEGRO STUDENTS ENTER GEORGIA U.: Integration Effected as U.S. Court Blocks Governor’s Effort to Shut School.”
The author began the year of 1961 by walking through the iconic black-iron arch that marks the entrance to the oldest part of the campus. Those steps would lead not only to her own success, but also to her own groundbreaking role in the Civil Rights movement. Although she endured cold stares, taunts, and a window-shattering brick, she found strength in recalling the Twenty-third Psalm, which her grandmother had taught her. And while the author alludes to being isolated in her own room (in the gracious four-story Myers Hall, where I lived in the late 1970s), she balances that experience with recollections of the horrifying violence encountered by Civil Rights activists throughout the South, especially as they worked for voting rights in the dangerous state of Mississippi.
Ms. Hunter-Gault triumphed with her journalism degree from UGA and then headed to New York, but many of her contemporaries, such as the Freedom Riders, intent on protecting voting rights, braved beatings and worse. John Lewis, the group’s first to take a blow, in Rockhill, SC, recalled being “prepared to die.” Many, in fact, did—black and white, young and old.
To the Mountaintop speaks to the power of the press in both accelerating and deepening public awareness of inequality, as journalists such as Ms. Hunter-Gault explore once-overlooked events and perspectives. “I could still make a contribution by reporting on people who had been excluded from the white-controlled media. I resolved to seek out stories that showed black people in all their humanity–their problems, as well as their achievements, struggles as well as victories.” From Harlem to Gaza, from Somalia to South Africa, she has cultivated those stories and shared them with the world.
Even as Ms. Hunter-Gault looks back on her own career and on the highlights of the movement, she points to issues that deserve action, including the still-unsolved Civil Rights-era murders. Citing the Haitian proverb “Beyond the mountain, more mountains,” she stresses that the struggle for justice is never over. A timeline and the full text of 10 NYT articles provide additional context for this engrossing and uplifting account.
Reprinted with permission from the New York Journal of Books.
Related link
- Civil Rights Digital Library Educators, don’t miss this fascinating source for primary resources. As the site points out, “The initiative promotes an enhanced understanding of the [Civil Rights] Movement through its three principal components: 1) a digital video archive of historical news film allowing learners to be nearly eyewitnesses to key events of the Civil Rights Movement, 2) a civil rights portal providing a seamless virtual library on the Movement by connecting related digital collections on a national scale, and 3) a learning objects component delivering secondary Web-based resources – such as contextual stories, encyclopedia articles, lesson plans, and activities–to facilitate the use of the video content in the learning process.”
Paris From a Distance
27 Nov 2011 2 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Nonfiction, Picture Books Tags: Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brian Selznick, Eva Montanari, Hugo, Invention of Hugo Cabret, Martin Scorsese, Paris, Victoria Griffith
Last night I lurked behind a clock in Paris, thanks to Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed new film Hugo, based on Brian Selznick’s wildly creative novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The entrancing vistas featuring the Eifel Tower, the city’s twinkling lights, and the dizzying tiers of iron stairways that support the massive timepiece swept me back to a magical era. While I approach cinematic versions of novels with a soupcon of skepticism, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one as worthy of its literary source. 
For a fresh peek at an older Paris, pick up Victoria Griffith’s recent picture-book biography, The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont, which highlights the overlooked Brazilian inventor who was the first to lift off and land a completely self-propelled plane. (The Wrights’ 1903 airplane needed strong winds and even a rail system to send it aloft.) Alberto’s remarkable flight, which occurred November 12, 1906, outside Paris, is depicted with cheerful movement and intriguing perspectives in the pastel-and-oil paintings of Eva Montanari.
At first, we get to float over the city with Alberto in his dirigible, the inventor’s own unique and celebrated mode of transportation. Griffith’s story sparkles with Montanari’s double spreads bubbling with images of ladies’ elongated gowns, a wave of rushing horse-drawn carriages (no match for Alberto’s airship!), and the sidewalk cafes filled with coffee drinkers at little round marble-topped tables.
Alberto devotes the next three years to building a new and better flying machine. Touchingly, he envisions a world where his invention would mean the end of all wars. “Once people are able to fly to different countries, they will see how much we have in common. We will all be friends,” he tells a hat-shop attendant in the book.
If only that vision had prevailed. Instead, others would get credit for inventing the airplane and then profit from its use for warfare, as Griffiths explains in her note, accompanied by vintage photos of Alberto Santos-Dumont and his inventions.
For a child (ages 7 to 10) with a taste for reality, this biography is just the ticket.
Related Articles: Parents’ Choice Award for The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont.
“Watch and Read: Starring Hugo Cabret”
The Puppeteer Who Made the Parade
13 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Autumn Read-alouds, Biographies/Autobiographies, Holidays, Nonfiction, Picture Books Tags: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Melissa Sweet, Thanksgiving, Tony Sarg
Some movers and shakers are in it for the sake of sheer fun. Tony Sarg loved toys so much he never abandoned them. Instead, he devised puppets that could float along Broadway for a parade like no other. Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade is Melissa Sweet’s joyous tribute to the man and to creativity itself.
Oh, the snipping and flipping and sketching that went into creating this fantastic nonfiction book. Beginning with end papers featuring vintage pages of The Tony Sarg Marionette Book and finishing with a dramatic 1933 New York Times ad (“HERE COMES THE PARADE!! IT’S IMMENSE! IT’S COLOSSAL! COME A-RUNNING!!), Ms. Sweet delivers a package that soars with color and energy.
Tony Sarg (rhymes with “aargh”) might not be a household name, but he invented the floats that fill multitudes of TV screens every Thanksgiving Day. Here’s how Sweet opens the story:
images courtesy of author/illustrator
As with her other inventive work, including the Caldecott-Honor book A River of Words by Jen Bryant, Melissa Sweet constructs her illustrations with a bright array of materials. You can see behind the image of young Tony, appearing as if from an old book, she includes a layer of magenta topped with a cut-fabric border featuring whimsical circles. Throughout the book, she intersperses her own lively drawings and paintings with a pleasing variety of objects — rulers, buttons, and even her own actual puppets, to tell this story in an engaging and original way. I can’t imagine the Caldecott committee will overlook this book as a contender for the upcoming annual prize for illustrations.
The story of how Tony Sarg initiated a Thanksgiving rite with his 1928 parade based on street carnivals from around the world makes for a rousing read-aloud. And how many children will be inspired to make their own puppets? For ideas, see Sweet’s appealing activity kit at Houghton Mifflin.
Related Article
“Five Questions for Melissa Sweet” from Horn Book.
What They Found in the Attic
07 Nov 2011 7 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Nonfiction, Young adult Tags: Anne Frank, book giveaway, Buddy Elias, Diary of a Young Girl, Gerti Elias, Mirjam Pressler
One of the most exquisite joys of reading is not knowing when a book will embed itself in your own memories and consequently, in your world view. I was 13 when I first read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. Like so many others, I was a shy, awkward girl when I discovered a tender kindred spirit, a bolder, more talented and more perceptive version of the self I inhabited. I continue to picture Anne at a small desk, writing in her diary (called Kitty), as in this photo from the Anne Frank Museum.
This image of Anne Frank is forever incomplete. Recently, though, a remarkable cache of 6,000 family photos, letters, drawings, poems, and postcards stored in the attic of Anne’s aunt has been curated and published in Treasures From the Attic: The Extraordinary Story of Anne Frank’s Family.
Last week, Anne’s cousin Buddy Elias recalled at a reading in Manhattan how they were “two wild kids” who liked to put on puppet shows, ice skate, and tramp in the Swiss Alps. I inadvertently stumbled upon the site of her summer playground a few years ago when I ventured to the pristine hamlet of Sils-Maria. There, in a stark room of the whitewashed two-story house where Nietzsche wrote parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I found a photo of Anne Frank on the wall. From the window by his old wooden desk I glimpsed the chalet where Anne and cousin Buddy (whom she nicknamed “Bernd”) frolicked. Today, the beauty of
that region Nietzsche called “the land of silver colors” still feels set apart from an often grim world.
One of the touching chapters of Treasures from the Attic focuses on the experiences the two cousins shared. After Anne and sister Margot’s death, Otto sent Buddy a copy of Anne’s diary entry for October 18, 1942, which is reproduced in Treasures … . As an energetic 13-year-old, she anticipated becoming Bernd’s skating partner. Anne imagined “a film later for Holland and Switzerland,” in which she would wear a white costume of her own design. The book enables us to see Anne’s sweet, childish drawing and her strong, slanted penmanship.
Then we get to see the humorous playing cards Buddy drew for the children when they vacationed in Sils-Maria. The sense of loss must descend upon all who read the story of this family who perceived themselves as quite bourgeois. Others, of course, had a very different outlook, and we continue to live with the results of that unfathomable tragedy.
Image via Wikipedia
I am offering a free copy of Treasures from the Attic to one random reader who leaves a comment about this post or about how he or she has been affected by Anne’s diary. The new book by Mirjam Pressler with Gerti Elias is for young adults and older readers and adds much to our understanding and appreciation of the Frank family’s unique legacy. Deadline: November 24, Thanksgiving.
Related articles
- A Dear Cousin Recalls His Childhood Playmate, Anne Frank (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)
Beauty in Numbers
02 May 2011 6 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Nonfiction, Picture Books Tags: Arabic numerals, Fibonacci, Franklin Institute, HarperCollins, Limits on e-books, Math, Middle Ages, Nature
D’Agnese, Joseph. Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci. Illus. by John O’Brien. Holt, 2010. 
Once upon a time in medieval Italy, there lived a boy named Leonardo Fibonacci who loved numbers. He spent so much time thinking about numbers, people called him a blockhead.
As an adult, Fibonacci traveled far and wide and noticed how some people wrote numbers in other, sometimes better ways — the Hindu-Arabic numerals, for instance. He marveled as he discovered that many living things exhibited a numerical pattern. O’Brien’s atmospheric, detailed pen-and-ink and watercolor paintings evoke the wonder of the man who became known as the greatest Western mathematician of the Middle Ages. D’Agnese’s accessible and engaging biography of this intriguing man provides educators with a fun way to teach a number of mathematical concepts. Flowers with eight petals, lemons with eight sections, clovers with three leaves: these are all Fibonacci numbers. Then there are Finbonacci spirals to find: in a ram’s horn, an ocean wave, an unfurling fern. Teachers can employ a range of activities, from nature walks to photography to poetry exercises to open children’s eyes to the patterns around us. Fibonacci’s in the air!
For more on D’Agnese, check out this interesting interview. Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci is also available as a CD/book or as a DVD (16:20 min.), with an online teacher’s guide from Spoken Arts.
Educators, check out Nature’s Numbers , lesson plans from the Franklin Institute, and “Developing Young Scientists” from the National Gardening Association’s Curriculum Connections.
Pair Blockhead with Sarah C. Campbell’s gorgeous Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature, 2011 Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12.
Related Articles
Can Publishers Make E-Books Self-Destruct? Librarians Fight Back. How’s this for working the numbers? 
HarperCollins is pushing a policy that limits libraries to only 26 check-outs for electronic books. After that, they disappear! If you think this is a bad deal for readers, click on the link and sign the petition. Then share it with others.
- Divine Composition With Fibonacci’s Ratio (The Rule of Thirds on Steroids) (digital-photography-school.com)
- Numbers in Nature – the Movie (delamagente.wordpress.com)
Women Rock the World
15 Mar 2011 2 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Women's history Tags: 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, Betty Mae Jumper, Donna Jo Napoli, Edel Rodriguez, Green Belt Movement, Jan Godown Annino, Jonah Winter, Kadir Nelson, Lisa Desimini, Sonia Sotomayor, Wangari Maathai, Women's History Month
To get an idea of the fantastic resources exploring women’s crucial contributions to society, take a look at KidLit Celebrates Women’s History Month, a month-long blogging collaboration hosted by The Fourth Musketeer , a library science student, and Shelf-Employed, a children’s librarian. The site features thirty bloggers and authors from across the kidlitosphere. I am happy to be a part of this project; on March 22, look for my post on the unique children’s book author/illustrator Wanda Gág.
Last week, I featured Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of my favorite novel for children. Today I’ll highlight five inspiring picture-book biographies that won a place on the 2011 Amelia Bloomer list.
Annino, Jan Godown. She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader. Illus. by Lisa Desimini. National Geographic, 2010.
Ages 8-12. In an era when many of her people lived “under cabbage palm roofs, without clean water or electricity” and did not understand English, Betty Mae Jumper became the first woman to be elected as a tribal leader of the Florida Seminole Tribe. She surmounted a barrel of obstacles to become educated and to train as a nurse. After she received her nursing degree, she chose to return to her people, even though the pay was so low she had to supplement it by selling crafts and, occasionally, by wrestling alligators. She helped start the Seminole Indian News and served as an interpreter in courtrooms and emergency rooms. Annino’s respectful, nature-filled free verse is enhanced by the lush, saturated colors of Desimini’s illustrations. Included are an afterword by Jumper’s son, a map, chronology, glossary, blibliography, and author’s notes. This fine biography will enhance units on Native Americans or women leaders.
Johnson, Jen Cullerton. Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace. Illus. by Sonia Lynn Sadler. 2010. Lee & Low. Ages 6-10.
What a marvel this little biography is: visually striking and quivering with sensual details and a sense of hope and respect for all living things.We see young Wangari and her mother eating sweet figs, just as the monkeys and an elephant are doing. The Kikuyu people of Kenya, we learn, believe their ancestors rest in the tree’s shade, so Wangari promises never to cut down the tree. While few girls in her village learn to read, Wangari’s parents respond to their daughter’s desire to learn, and arrange for her to go to the local school. At age 11, however, she can advance no more. To continue, she must move to the big city of Nairobi. From there, she goes the U.S. to major in biology. When Wangari decides to return home, she finds a world out of balance. Because the government has sold much land to big foreign companies, the forest habitat has dwindled, and native cedar and acacia trees have vanished. The people of her village have abandoned their custom of not cutting down the mugumo (spreading fig trees). Erosion has caused soil to stream into the rivers. Crops are drying out, and people are hungry. Wangari’s seed of an idea will bring the community together and restore the ecology of the land. Sadler’s lush oil and scratchboard illustrations show the belts of green saplings planted by the women. After being arrested by corrupt police officers, Wangari gets out and takes her case to the world. The woman called Mama Miti, mother of trees, helped get 30 million trees planted, making for cleaner rivers, abundant fruit, and healthy crops. She won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the first African to do so. Seeds of Change is a great story to include in units on ecology, peacemakers, Kenya, or outstanding women. A brief biographical note and sources are included.
Napoli, Donna Jo. Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya. Illus. by Kadir Nelson. Simon & Schuster, 2010. Ages 5-8.
Napoli employs simple, engaging words and images to tell the story of Wangari Maathai. The source of her wisdom, the author notes, sprang from the stories she heard from the village elders. This biography centers on the role of the community; the land was transformed tree by tree, woman by woman by woman. Nelson captures this aspect with his large, layered images of oil and printed fabrics. Each time Wangari gives a woman a sapling, she tells her, “Peace, my people.” The restoration of the environment takes place alongside the renewal of a strong and peaceful nation. “A green belt of peace started with one good woman offering something we can all do: Plant a tree.” Napoli includes an afterward on Maathai’s life, a Kikuyu glossary, an author’s note with sources, and an illustrator’s note.
Pinkney, Andrea Davis and Brian Pinkney. Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride. Disney/Jump at the Sun, 2009. Ages 6-10.
This dynamic husband-and-wife team has crafted a lively yet sensitive biography of Sojourner Truth, whose slave name was Isabella. She was a big, bold, beautiful woman who booted out her slave name and chose the more evocative one, Sojourner Truth. Andrea Davis Pinkney uses a lively, conversational tone as she traces Truth’s early enslavement and separation from her family, her escape, her abiding religious faith, and how she came to tell her life story to the abolitionist Olive Gilbert. Truth traveled extensively, speaking for the causes of freedom and women’s rights. The author quotes from Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech — modulated by a “Bam!” from her strong fists. Brian Pinkney’s energetic dry-brush lines and earthy watercolors match Truth’s feisty spirit. Author’s note and bibliography are included.
Winter, Jonah. Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in Brooklyn/ La Juez Crecio en el Bronx. [bilingual] Illus. by Edel Rodriguez. Atheneum, 2009. Ages 6-10. 
The glow of a loving family infuses this story of how Sonia Sotomayor excels at school, becomes a stellar lawyer, and then a Supreme Court justice. The reader gets a sense of the obstacles she had to overcome and the culture shock she experienced at Princeton, where she heard crickets for the first time. She couldn’t help but wonder, “Where were the subways? Where was the merengue music? Where were the people who looked like her?” It was in college that she first felt inferior and self-consciously Latina. But she did not let this deter her from her goal. She read voraciously, graduated at the top of her class, and became the court’s first Latin American judge, distinguished not only by her outstanding record but by her life experience as one who knew poverty and prejudice firsthand. The warm, sprightly illustrations, done in pastel, acrylic, spray paint and oils, provide a pleasing match to Sotomayor’s optimistic approach. Additional details and an author’s note are included, and the Spanish translation allows for multiple curricular uses for this engaging biography.
Ashley Bryan’s Bright and Beautiful Books
14 Feb 2011 7 Comments
in Biographies/Autobiographies, Folk and Fairy Tales, Music, Picture Books Tags: Ashley Bryan, Coretta Scott King Award, Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, multicultural literature, Regina Award, respect
d author/illustrator by opening Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life’s Song (Atheneum, 2009). This engaging autobiography shines with light, color, and love. Bryan, 87 and still thriving, invites us to hear his story, enlivened with his own poetic language and with a potpourri of photographs that reveal his childhood world, his family, his artwork, his Bronx neighborhood, his parents’ home back in Antigua, as well as his life on Little Cranberry Island, off the coast of Maine. We get a sense of how he evolved as an artist; one touching painting shows him as a wide-eyed child, book in hand, staring out the window at night. Images of birds — which filled the family’s living room — and the echoes of his mother singing will pop up in Bryan’s books, as shown in the illustrations reproduced in this book. Bryan’s childhood was punctuated by drawing, painting, reciting poetry, and listening to the Bible stories his mother read to him and his siblings. He recalls how they were the first black family to join the pretty St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church — where he would one day design a stained-glass window over the altar, showing a magnificent, dark and honey-hued image of Jesus rising from the tomb. After high school, he went, portfolio in hand, to a prominent art institute. A representative there told him his artwork was the best he had seen and that “it would be a waste to give a scholarship to a colored person.”
Of Ashley Bryan’s nearly three dozen books, which do you like best? One of my favorite read-alouds for children ages 7-9 is Beautiful Blackbird.
All Things Bright and Beautiful. Atheneum, 2010. All ages. Bryan’s cheerful illustrations make this lovely old hymn by the Irish woman Cecil F. Alexander come alive. The vibrant cut-paper collages celebrate the diverse people, animals, and plants that fill our multicolored Earth. An illustrator’s note and musical notation are included in this richly rendered interpretation, which should be considered the definitive version of the several children’s editions that have been published. 
