The World in Grandpa’s Hands

Margaret Mason’s gentle picture book These Hands features a loving grandfather who has much to teach his grandson. He uses his old and capable hands to show young Joseph how to tie his shoes, how to play the piano, to shuffle cards, and how to hit a line drive.

He also reveals a slice of history neither the boy nor many of us readers realized. “Look at these hands, Joseph. Did you know these hands were not allowed to mix the bread dough in the Wonder Bread factory?”

The tender sepia-toned oil-wash artwork by the renowned Floyd Cooper sheds a warm glow on the earth-toned images of the boy and his grandfather. The illustrations contribute to the reassuring tone and message of this simple, yet powerful picture book.

Grandpa tells Joseph how “these hands joined with other hands. And we wrote our petitions, and we carried our signs, and we raised our voices together. Now any hands can touch the bread dough, no matter their color. Yes, they can.”

The author’s note explains how, in the ’50s and early ’60s, African-American workers at the Wonder Bread, Awrey, and Tastee bakery factories were allowed to sweep and load trucks, but were not permitted to work as bread dough mixers. The author relates how she learned the history from Joe Barnett, a leader of the bakery labor union.

Don’t miss this fine inter-generational story, as it provides so many wonderful opportunities to discuss the role of families and the need to work together to battle injustice in its many forms.

And see …

Love’s Arduous Path

How can an author squeeze sweetness from such bitter facts: A mother must give up her son upon his birth. Forced to work in the cornfields 12 miles away, she gets to see her boy only a few times before she dies.

That motherless child would become the famous writer and activist Frederick Douglass, who wrote in his groundbreaking autobiography, “I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master’s farms, near Lee’s Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial.”

In her moving debut, Love Twelve Miles Long, Glenda Armand takes us back to 1820s Talbot County, Maryland, to imagine how precious those few visits could have been for the two. Wrapped in her shawl, Mama arrives late at night, bringing Frederick her full heart and a slice of ginger cake. Mr. Bootman strews soft candlelight in his lush watercolor painting of the reunited mother and son sharing smiles no one can buy or sell.

Of course, the boy longs to spend more time with his mother, but she tells him it’s too far for him to walk. How, then, does she do it?

“The way I walk makes the journey shorter,” she says.

“Tell me how you walk, Mama. Tell me how you make it shorter.”

What follows is a beautiful evocation of the mother’s loving ritual, as she makes each mile special. The first is for forgetting: “I forget how tired I am. I forget that my back hurts and my hands and feet ache. I forget that I’ve worked all day and have to be in the fields again at sunup. And when the forgetting is done, I start remembering. That’s what the second mile is for.”

Other miles are spent observing the stars, praying, singing, remembering happy times, giving thanks, hoping, loving, and dreaming of a good life: “We’ll have our own land, and we’ll work for ourselves. There will be no slaves or masters. . . . You are going to do big and important things one day. But right now it’s time for you to go to bed.”

In a story brimming with hope and love, the real-life horrors of slavery lie elsewhere, where an older audience can grapple with them. The author’s note gives additional information about Frederick Douglass, who changed his surname in order to obscure his identity from the master he escaped. Douglass wrote that his mother, Harriet Bailey, taught him a powerful lesson: that he was not “only a child but somebody’s child.” How remarkable that she accomplished this under such despicable constraints.

But let us leave the mother with her miles to go before she sleeps. We can all use a comforting story of love, even—or especially—if it is ripped from a brutal past.

Reprinted with permission from New York Journal of Books

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Christopher Paul Curtis Recommends Books for Black History Month

Children’s Books: Bookshelf: Black History (nytimes.com)

A Quiet, Lustrous Gift

Park, Linda Sue. The Third Gift. Illus. by Bagram Ibatoulline. Houghton Mifflin, 2011.

Quiet and lustrous, this spare story by the Newbery Award-winning author Linda Sue Park distinguishes itself from the jingly, jangly stuff that crowds most bookstores this time of year. Taking us back more than 2,000 years ago to a desert in the Arabian Peninsula, the author focuses on a son who accompanies his father as they go about their work, which will ultimately play a surprising role in a particular Biblical story.

Throughout The Third Gift, Mr. Ibatoulline (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane) provides finely detailed acrylic-gouache paintings that focus on the white-robed pair. He first shows them resting beside a tough, gnarled tree with spiky-looking tufts of dull green sprouting here and there. The backdrop of bright desert light reflects motley shades of tan, gray, bisque, and alabaster. This harsh region is where the two go about collecting “tears” of myrrh.

We follow the boy and father as they trudge through the heat and dust, looking for the right trees to cut for the precious sap that provides their livelihood. Touchingly, the father saves the best for his son. “Look,” he says, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pointing to the biggest tear. The double spread shows how the boy carefully twists off the sap, just as he has watched his father do. Then he holds it in his palm and sniffs “its sharp, bitter sweetness.”

In time, the two walk to the market, where the father knows the spice merchant will pay him good money for his harvest of tears. The myrrh will be used for medicine, flavoring, or, in the case of superior ones, as incense at funerals. On this day, three men in splendid robes are eager to buy one more gift to add to their already-purchased gold and frankincense. The strangers select the very best tear, the one the boy collected. Strangely enough, it turns out the men are intent upon presenting such gifts to a baby.

We last see the boy in a state of silent wonder, as the three men ride on their camels through the desert toward Bethlehem.

The Third Gift is an unusually thoughtful and bittersweet story that shines a light on ordinary people in a historic place and time. The author’s note provides details on myrrh, on her inspiration for this work, and on the Nativity story.

Reprinted with permission from the New York Journal of Books.

For other sensitive holiday picture books, see my post “A Time for Peace” and these fine new ones:

                                                                                                  
For laughs, try …

                              

A Dickens of a Tale

Deedy, Carmen Agra and Randall Wright. The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale. Illustrated by Barry Moser. Peachtree, 2011.

“Fleet of foot, sleek and solitary, Skilley was a cat among cats. Or so he would have been, but for a secret he had carried since his early youth. A secret that caused him to live in hidden shame, avoiding even casual friendship lest anyone discover — “

A whack of the dreaded broom interrupts the authors’ fine opening description of a cat that deserves to find a spot in many a reader’s home. Skilley is a common alley cat with an  uncommon problem: he has a taste for cheese instead of mice. This leads Skilley to embark upon a bold plan: to escape the streets for the comfort of nothing less than … Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. There on Fleet Street, amidst the tantalizing scent of London’s best cheese,  the famous writers flock  — William Makepeace Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, and, especially, Charles Dickens, who takes a fancy to our feline protagonist, a “handsome blue with a most comical tail.”

Life at the tavern, however, brings with it plenty of  complications. Most notably, a clever, word-loving mouse named Pip discovers Skilley’s secret. Can a cat and a mouse learn to trust each other? The two decide to make a deal, that Skilley will guard the mice in return for them giving him bits of the luscious Cheshire cheese for which the inn is known.

The unfolding of the friendship between this improbable pair makes for delicious reading. Any adult who reads this aloud to children will encounter myriad opportunities to discuss the nature of trust and the precious yet precarious role it plays in the quality of one’s life. In the course of the characters’ growing appreciation of each other’s differences, the plot honors the motley nature of our world.

Providing another prism on the complexities of trust is the wounded raven Maldwyn, one of Queen Victoria’s Tower guards. The dour but wise old bird saw his life turn topsy-turvy after he encountered a vicious tomcat. Skilley realizes with horror that the bully who maimed Maldwyn is also his own nemesis: Pinch, a rascal always ready to rumble.

Of course, Pinch is the very cat who arrives at the pub to bring misery to all his potential prey. Skilley’s peaceful new life vanishes, as he not only fears for his own security but also for his dear friend, Pip; as well as the multitude of mice under his protection.

Dire circumstances require audacious planning and action. The broken-winged raven must return to the Tower, and it is up to the literate mouse Pip to mastermind the bird’s escape. In a charming touch, the authors show how a famous writer unwittingly assists in the grand scheme.

Readers will feast not only on the novel’s well-paced plot, the vivid characters, and Moser’s arresting, expressive drawings, but also on the authors’ themes of the power of words and the worth of each creature on earth. Dickens, whose thoughts weave in and out of the animal tale, is having a heck of a time coming up with the opening for his latest novel. We discover how the writer’s most famous line comes from an unlikely and lovable source. We should all be so lucky.

Here, readers, is a tale worth savoring.

You can discover more about how this fantasy came to be in this interview at James Preller’s blog.

More Great Read-Alouds with Cats or Mice:

A Storm Called Katrina

Uhlberg, Myron. A Storm Called Katrina. Illus. by Colin Bootman. Peachtree, 2011.

“Don’t you worry now,” Mama told Louis. “After some huffin’ and puffin’, Katrina will blow away and land up the coast just like all those other hurricanes.” What no one anticipated, however, is that the hurricane that landed August 29, 2005, would break the levees and alter the landscape and even the language of New Orleans.

By focusing on the experiences of a particular fictional family, Myron Uhlberg renders a moving story built around that event and its chaotic aftermath. The narrator is ten-year-old Louis, named after the legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. As the storm rattles his darkened bedroom window, Louis hugs his shiny brass cornet and somehow feels better.

At last the rain stopped, but when Daddy opened the door the next day, something worse appeared: water seeped in. With no time for packing or planning, Louis and his parents join others desperate to escape their inundated neighborhood. Louis snatches his precious horn from the coffee table before leaving.

Realistic, well-chosen details suffuse the oil paintings by award-winning artist Colin Bootman, who also illustrated Uhlberg’s picture book Dad, Jackie and Me.  He situates the family’s simple, well-loved abode in its neighborhood of shotgun houses of many hues, lived in by people of various races, but mostly by other African-Americans. He captures the folks’ worried expressions and especially the family’s care for each other as they venture through flooded streets, holding hands.

Employing a striking palette of deep marine blues and mutable shades of turquoise, Mr. Bootman immerses readers in a watery world where normalcy vanishes. Can a porch become a boat? Can streets become rivers? Can a neighborhood disappear in one day? Such is the stuff of nightmares or Alice-in-Wonderland fantasies – or of the real world that families such as Louis’s encountered that day. Brightness occasionally pierces the illustrator’s dark images – the glint of Louis’s cornet, a dazzling, blue sky; an artificial Christmas tree drifting by, ornaments still attached; and most troubling to Louis, a lost dog with a red ball. Mama, Daddy, and Louis keep floating on a piece of someone’s torn-off porch, unable to care for the pup.

As the waters rise, so does the tension. Louis grabs a broom to help steer their “lifeboat.” Who wouldn’t wonder what might lie beneath those murky waters? The author hints at the existence of dead bodies in the water, as Louis’s broom hits a pile of clothes. Mama quickly covers his eyes and tells him not to look.

The family’s tortuous journey takes them to the higher ground of the Superdome, where multitudes of people are crowding the gates. The bewildering bigness of the Dome, its white roof punctured by storm winds, comes across in Mr. Bootman’s painting of the family surveying the football field from their perch in the distant stands. In a story filled with irony, the family’s predicament seems even darker in the stadium that when floating on the bit of porch.

Yet, Mr. Uhlberg does not offer us a story of helpless victims. Children will thrill to the quick thinking of Louis, who comes up with the perfect solution when Daddy loses sight of the family. And, interestingly, thanks to Mama’s decisiveness, the family eschews the yellow schoolbuses that finally arrive to take the stranded elsewhere.

The author and illustrator beautifully balance this troubling tale with just the right amount of optimism.  Even the dog with the red ball has reason to yelp with joy, as it gets to join Louis and his parents on their way back home. Adults will no doubt notice the vague, muted horizon confronting the family and will wonder how they will cope with the obstacles ahead. The simple answer evoked by Mr. Bootman’s concluding image is this: by putting one foot in front of the other.

The somber facts of the flooding that killed 1,800 people show up in the author’s note, along with three photographs relevant to the picture book. The author’s suggestions for additional books and websites will prove helpful for young researchers.

A portion of the proceeds from sales of A Storm Called Katrina will be donated to the Norman Mayer Library, which is being rebuilt in the Ninth Ward neighborhood of Gentilly, New Orleans, the setting for this story.

Reprinted by permission of NYJournalofBooks.com

Related articles

• LSU faulted for firing prof critical of post-Katrina construction (chron.com)
• The Big Uneasy: A Film by Harry Shearer. “Natural disaster? You don’t know the half of it.” You must see this moving documentary on the mind-boggling mistakes of the Army Corps of Engineers, who built the levees that didn’t do the job. Thanks for this eye-opening film — and thanks for coming to my little city, Harry!
• POGO (Project on Government Oversight): Release the Hounds. Here’s an update on a whistleblower interviewed in Shearer’s recently released film The Big Uneasy.

Architects of Memories

Wells, Rosemary and Secundino Fernandez. My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood. Illus. by Peter Ferguson. Candlewick, 2010. Ages 8-12.

Memories can move us forward or backward, depending on how we use them. My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood evokes the intensity of one child’s connection to his home in 1950s Havana. Prolific children’s book author Rosemary Wells once heard a radio interview with the Cuban-American architect Secundino Fernandez and years later located Fernandez and worked with him to produce this resonant little historical novel burnished with hope and light.

Secundino, or Dino, relishes his city avenues “lined with coral-stone archways, ancient doors, and window frames painted bright as birds-of-paradise.” As twilight arrives, neighbors begin their checker games, and the cafes fill with people. Dino loves to sketch the buildings, with their porticoes and marble columns. The first time Dino leaves the city of his heart, he crosses the Atlantic to spend time with his grandparents in Spain. When he finally returns home, he expects to stay. Dictators — first Batista, then Castro — take over, though, and the family abandons their restaurant to join relatives in New York City.

So homesick in this dark and dreary new environment, Dino relies on his memory to recreate his beloved Havana in the confines of his bedroom. With great care, he cuts out cardboard to represent its archways, balconies and cafes. Aluminum foil glued to plywood and glazed with blue nail varnish becomes a sparkling turquoise harbor. The double-spread illustration depicting the imaginative boy, scissors in hand, beautifully captures his resourceful nature. The novel closes with Dino adapting to his new world: “New York sunlight, shimmering with the promise of summer, settles round my shoulders like the arms of my mother. It is almost like my Havana.” This brief novel would brighten units on immigration, Cuba, or architecture.

Macaulay, David. Built to Last. Houghton Mifflin, 2010. Ages 9 and up.

In my decade as a school librarian, I often watched children poring over Macaulay’s remarkable architecture books. Rather than merely compiling his acclaimed books, Castle, Cathedral, and Mosque, Macaulay has created new colored illustrations, revised the text, and clarified some explanations.

While some might still long for the previously published cross-hatched illustrations, Macaulay’s changes enhance the reader’s experience of the architecture of the past. He ushers us into his Castle, for instance, with a double-spread illustration of a purple-robed king surveying a map, with pawns awaiting strategic placement. The castle Macaulay highlights is imagined but based on castles built for the conquest of Wales between 1277 and 1305, His interesting perspectives of the workers and how they go about building still capture the hearts of readers, young and old. In Cathedral, Macaulay was inspired by the 13th-century Gothic cathedrals of France. It’s hard to resist sharing Macaulay’s passion for the plans, methods and tools used by those builders “whose towering dreams still stand today.” Finally, the least changed and most recent of the three, Mosque, is another dazzler. The section opens with a map showing the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe, with major cities such as Mecca, Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Damascus noted. This time, Macaulay’s model is based on structures built around Istanbul, between 1540 and 1580, when the Ottoman Empire was the largest Muslim empire in the world. Again, Macaulay uses color to great effect, as when the intricate designs of ceramic tiles from Anatolia shine with heavenly shades of blue. Built to Last includes a glossary that will further enhance readers’ understanding of significant architectural feats.

Freedom on the Menu

Carole Boston Weatherford is the vibrant author of some of the best children’s books  exploring African-American history.  I met Carole a year ago after she flew up from North Carolina to come visit our school library. As a snowstorm barreled in that day, we felt forced to change our schedule. Carole mastered the situation with grace and verve, adjusting each of her three sessions to relate perfectly to the age group. She recited poems to the youngest; she had children participating by chanting, jingling bells and tapping a triangle. They left the library joyous and inspired!

Image via Wikipedia

With the fourth and fifth-graders, she discussed Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins and presented a sensitive and nuanced look at Jim Crow as it still existed when she was a child in Baltimore. She showed a photograph of the park where she and her family were not allowed to go. The students were solemn and spellbound. Carole Boston Weatherford knows how to make history real to children.

Freedom on the Menu (Dial, 2004), is one my favorite read-alouds for Black History Month. Told from the point of view of eight-year-old Connie, the story takes readers to the Woolsworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. Connie and her mother often stop there for a soda after shopping downtown. Connie would like to sit down and have a banana split instead, but can’t; only whites may sit at the counter.  “All over town signs told Mama and me where we could and couldn’t go,” Connie lamented. Lagarrigue’s somber, impressionistic paintings show the hateful Jim Crow signs that warp the community. Changes are in the air, though, as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes to town. Connie sees her older siblings become politically involved and join in the lunch counter sit-ins. As the protests spread through the South, laws change. Six months later, Connie gets to savor her banana split at the counter, and it tastes like so sweet — like freedom. The author’s note about the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins provides additional information that will help young people understand the Civil Rights movement. See Weatherford’s web site for lesson plans inspired by this exemplary picture book, which works well with ages 6-10.

And don’t miss these treasures …

For older children:

The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights. illus. by Tim Ladwig. Eerdmans, 2009. Ages 7-12. Anyone looking for a picture book to illustrate the role of religion in helping people survive and eventually overcome tragedy should take a look at this beautiful book. Weatherford illuminates the path from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to African-Americans’ long struggle for freedom and equality. From the dark Middle Passage in the bowels of slave ships to the inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama, people have found hope, strength, and inspiration in their religious faith. Concise biographical profiles of famous African-Americans are included.

Birmingham, 1963. Wordsong, 2007. Ages 10+ This stunning little masterpiece pairs actual black-and-white photographs with Weatherford’s poems to describe the ruthless bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four girls, an event that became a turning point in the struggle for equality. Told from the perspective on an unnamed fictional girl, we hear how

The day I turned ten
Our church was quiet. No meetings, no marches.
Mama left me in Sunday school
With a soft kiss and coins for the offering plate.

In addition to her moving poems, Weatherford provides a section that profiles the four young girls who died in the bombing. Additional historical background and photo citations are included, as well.

Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. illus. by Kadir Nelson. Jump at the Sun, 2006. Ages 7-12. This fictionalized story of Harriet Tubman focuses on the spiritual journey of the woman who risked her life time after time to help others escape from slavery, as she had done. In spare, poetic text, we hear how she flees Maryland, in hopes of reaching Pennsylvania. “A boatman rows her upriver. Back on shore, hounds snarl, sniff for Harriet’s trail. She races as fast as she can. Lord, I can’t outrun them. God speaks through a babbling brook: SHED YOUR SHOES, WADE IN THE WATER TO TRICK THE DOGS.” As Tubman encounters a series of dangers along the way, she calls upon God for help each time. When she reaches the free state of Pennsylvania, she finds her journey has just begun. Now it is time to help others. Nelson’s grand, atmospheric oil and watercolor paintings won a Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award. Weatherford provides an accessible foreword on the institution of slavery, as well as an author’s note with a brief biography.

For younger children …

Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane. illus. by Sean Qualls. Holt, 2008. Ages 5-7. Read it and then put on some Coltrane and dance!

First Pooch: Malia and Sasha Pick a Pet. illus. by Amy Bates. Marshall Cavendish, 2009. Ages 5-8. Light-hearted story of the First Family choosing their first dog.

Jazz Baby. illus. by Laura Freeman. Lee & Low, 2002. Ages 4-7. Rollicking, rhyming fun for little ones