It is difficult to grow up in any urban area within any open society
without being confronted by people different from yourself. Whether it's social class, race, ethnicity and
language, we can all feel isolated and different. In fact, even different cultural and social practices as basic as
fashion and popular culture, can make us feel unequal. I've written previously on
racism,
civil rights and also '
The Other' because these are critical themes for children to tussle with. I suspect that while schools have been good at
stressing and celebrating multiculturalism, there is
potential and perhaps an imperative to push the boundaries to more
explicitly address racism and equality. We need to do more than just make children
aware that other races exist, there is a need to encourage them to
understand people and gain some sense of what it might mean to live in
their shoes. As I've suggested in various previous posts on this blog
literature can do many things including serving as "
a vehicle to other places", "
a source of ideological challenge", "
a mirror to enable readers to reflect on life problems and circumstances" and a means for the
"discussion of social issues" (here).
Below
I look briefly at some books that offer the potential to consider these issues. Many of them have appeared on this blog at some earlier stage and some are new. I hope that as a collection they will be a good resource. At the end of the post I offer some ideas for how the
books might be used. I have included a range of books from simple
picture books to adolescent novels.
1. Young Readers (aged 4 to 8 years)
'My Two Blankets' written by Irena Kobald and illustrated by Freya Blackwood (Little Hare Books)
This
is the story of a young girl called Cartwheel. She leaves her
war-ravaged country and heads for somewhere seen as safe. But the new
country is so strange and foreign that she is confused and wonders who
she is. She finds
comfort in a metaphorical blanket. This is a blanket of words and
sounds. A
young girl offers her friendship and teaches her some words. Cartwheel
takes these words and begins to create a new blanket. This is a
blue-grey blanket of angular sounds. And from these words and sounds she
learns new things. At first it is all too hard, but over time her
angular world develops a smoother and more comfortable form and is as
warm and familiar as her old blanket.
Freya Blackwood
is a brilliant illustrator and she takes this complex text and weaves
her magic to create a very special book. In the illustrator's words:
"The metaphorical blanket was a difficult concept to illustrate and took
me a long time to solve. But I was really attracted to the idea of a
visual interpretation of feelings, sounds and words."
'
The Sneetches' by Dr Seuss
Dr Seuss has written a number of stories that deal with the difficult topic of racism. '
The Sneetches'
is an obvious one that tells of two types of creatures (Sneetches)
one with a Star on their bellies and the other without. Needless to
say one felt superior and the other inferior. One day a man arrives
with the perfect solution, a machine that can add a star to the belly.
But without the stars how could the 'superior' group differentiate
itself? The man had the solution; his machine could take the stars off
(!) the Sneetches who were the original 'Star Belly' kind.
But perhaps an example even closer to the theme is '
What was I scared of?'
a funny story about a small creature who while walking at night is
confronted by a pair of pale green pants that are out walking by
themselves. He is terrified when on each walk he sees them. But of
course it turns out that the pants were just as scared of him and
finally all is resolved.
Henry 'Box' Brown
lived in 19th century America and was a slave who escaped to freedom
by mailing himself to some northern Philadelphian Abolitionists who
were against slavery. This brilliantly illustrated picture book for
readers aged 5 to 8 years is a retelling of the true story. Henry Brown
doesn't know how old he is because nobody keeps records of slaves'
birthdays. He dreams about
freedom,
but that dream seems farther away than ever when he is torn from his
family and put to work in a warehouse. When Henry grows up and marries,
he is again devastated when his family is sold at the slave market.
Then one day, as he lifts a crate at the warehouse, he knows exactly
what he must do: He will mail himself to the North. After an arduous
journey in the crate, Henry finally has a birthday — his first day of
freedom.
The book was a 2008 Caldecott Honour Book.
 |
| 'The Resurrection of Henry Brown' Wiki Commons |
“
Let the Celebrations Begin!”, Margaret Wild and Julie Vivas (1991).
This
wonderful Australian picture book was inspired by some simple toys
made by Polish women held in the Nazi prison camp of Belsen. It
tells of the life in Hut 18 and the planning of celebration as they
anticipate their liberation from the camp towards the end of the
Second World War. This is a narrative with a setting that is so
specific that the narrator (Miriam) identifies her bed number (Hut 18,
bed 22). This powerful story could not be told without the place,
and yet, the place (or setting) is very much secondary to the story
told.
'
Where the Buffaloes Begin' by Olaf Baker and illustrated by Stephen Gammell
This
is a mystical story that is a retelling of an old North American
Blackfoot Indian legend. It was originally published in 1915 and
retells a Blackfoot Indian tale. A young boy is curious about Nawa,
the wise man, who tells a story about the origins of sacred buffaloes
from the centre of a nearby lake. The fearless young boy, Little Wolf,
sneaks away in the middle of the night to keep watch over the lake.
He waits with his pony for the buffalo to appear from beneath the
waters. As he does, he contemplates the fate of his tribe if the enemy
Assiniboins should attack. As he watches, the myth of the buffaloes
becomes a reality and he runs as the buffaloes stampede towards him.
Little Wolf tries to outrun them, but notices that suddenly the
buffaloes surround him; he has become part of the stampede.
Stephen
Gammell's illustrations are wonderful. The use of lead pencil sketches
of great detail adds greatly to this mystical tale.
The Story of Ruby Bridges by
Robert Coles
When Ruby Bridges was 6-years-old, she was the only African American
student to attend a newly desegregated school in Louisiana. Her
extraordinary ability to withstand a hostile environment while viewing
her tormentors (adult and child) with forgiveness makes her an
inspiration to us all. I devoted an entire post to this story as well as books about this remarkable life that demonstrates how racism can be conquered. My post on Ruby Bridges and civil rights can be read
HERE.
Since the earliest days of slavery, African Americans have called on
their religious faith in the struggle against oppression. In
this book the Beatitudes -- from Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount --
form the backdrop for Carole Boston Weatherford's powerful free-verse
poem that traces the African American journey from slavery to civil
rights.
Tim Ladwig's stirring illustrations showcase a panorama
of heroes in this struggle, from the slaves shackled in the hold of a
ship to the first African American president taking his oath of office
on the steps of the United States Capitol.
This is a remarkable picture book that can be read at many levels. Tim Ladwig's stunning images of the oppressed African Americans in the 18th century as they clung to all that they had, life and a faith based on love and hope are set against the famous text of the Beatitudes. Carole Boston takes the beatitudes and addresses them to African Americans of these dark times:
I was with Harriet Tubman when she fled slavery.
As she led others out of bondage,
I was the star guiding them north.....
Suitable for readers aged 6 to 12 years
2. Independent Readers (aged 9 to 12 years)
'Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles. America’s First Black Paratroopers' Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick Press, 2013)
This
is a true story that has been a long time coming. It tells in a fair
but powerful way of the racism that has often existed in armed forces
around the world. Americans may well have heard of the
Tuskegee Airmen, but few would know of the
555th Parachute Infantry Battalion
- the Triple Nickle. These were the first US black paratroopers. They
showed that black soldiers could do anything their white counterparts
could do. The text and over 100 carefully labelled photographs in this
150 page book offer us an insight into how some brave and persistent
African American men paved the way for others to be a full part of the
US armed forces.
Tanya Lee Stone (author of 'Almost
Astronauts') has done extensive
research to tell her true story for readers of all ages. Boys in
particular will love reading and looking at the historic photos. The
work took Stone almost 10 years and the meticulous care and passion
shows in this wonderful book. This amazing story will challenge all
readers irrespective of age, race or ethnicity. The book recently won the
YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. It is a very worthy
winner.
'
The Burnt Stick' (1995) by Anthony Hill & Mark Sofilas (illustrator)
This
novel for younger readers (8-10 years) is set in Australia prior to
the 1960s. It is the story of a young Australian aboriginal boy named
John Jagamarra, who had been taken (like thousands of other Indigenous
children) from his family. John was taken from his mother by the
Welfare Department of the day, and sent to live with his white Father
at the Pearl Bay Mission for Aboriginal Children. He grew up in this
beautiful place, but he knew it was not like being home with his mother
and his people. He remembers how the 'Big Man from Welfare' had
come and taken him away. His story illustrates how well intentioned
government policy at the time failed to deal with the problems of
Indigenous communities and failed to understand the full needs of
people 'other' than themselves. While the story positions us as reader
to see the tragedy of the 'Stolen Generation' through John's eyes, at
the same time it offers child and adult readers the chance to consider
the issues of racial difference and how we understand, live with and
when necessary, reach out to people other than ourselves.
Mark Sofilas' wonderful charcoal images add a haunting and powerful additional dimension to the story. The
Children's Book Council of Australia named it Book of the Year for Younger Readers in 1995.
'The Jacket' by Andrew Clements & illustrated by McDavid Henderson
A
white boy (Phil) wrongly accuses an African-American boy of stealing
his brother's jacket. He realises that he is racist and asks his
mother the question: "How come you never told me I was prejudiced?"
This incident forces Phil to confront his inner prejudices and
ultimately leads to a great opportunity to learn for the sixth grade
boy. He recognises that there is prejudice in his neighbourhood, his
family and even himself. In the process he finds a new friend in the
process and is changed. The book is suitable for children aged 8 to 12
years.
'Peaceful Protest: The Life of Nelson Mandela' by Yona Zeldis McDonough & illustrated by Malcah Zeldis
This
is a biography written for upper primary children (aged 8-11) that
tells the story of Nelson Mandela. It commences with his childhood and
ends with his retirement in 1999. It covers the major events you
would expect, including his imprisonment for opposing apartheid, his
election as the first black president of the Republic of South Africa,
and his award of the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against
racism and apartheid.
Mother and daughter Malcah
Zeldis and Yona Zeldis McDonough have worked together to create a
wonderful and challenging tribute to Nelson Mandela's “long road to
freedom” that helped to free an entire nation. The illustrations by
McDonough are striking and unusual, using
gouache on watercolour paper.
'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit', by Judith Kerr
Anna
was only 9 years old in 1933 when Adolf Hitler emerged in the
Germany of her youth. But as a Jewish girl she was soon to find that
her world had changed when her father went missing. With a leader filled
with hatred for an entire race of people, and determined to see them
eliminated Germany is transformed. Anna's father is a well-known
Jewish writer, and someone warns him, just in time that he might soon
lose his passport. Her father leaves by night for Switzerland and Anna,
her brother and mother are left behind in Berlin. He sends for his
family to meet him in Switzerland and they escape just a day before the
German elections. Hitler sweeps to power all Jewish property is seized
in Berlin and they are now refugees in Switzerland, with no way back.
This wonderful story tells the story of the horror of Germany in the
reign of Hitler through the eyes of a little girl.
3. Older Readers (Aged 12 to 14+ years)
'
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice' by Phillip Hoose.
This multi-award winning book - including being named as a
Newbery Honour book in 2010 - is about Claudette Colvin. On March 2, 1955, this inspirational teenager, fed up with the daily
injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white
woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being
celebrated, as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later,
fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her
classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later
she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in
Browder v. Gayle,
the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery
and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 by
Christopher Paul Curtis
This is a wonderful work of historical fiction written by
Christopher Paul Curtis in 1995. It was republished in 1997. It tells the story of an African-American family living in the town of Flint,
Michigan that goes to their grandmother’s home in
Birmingham, Alabama. This
middle-class black family move to Grandma's because she's strict and they hope she will sort him out over summer. But they happen to be in Birmingham when Grandma’s church is
blown up, the
16th Street Baptist Church.
The book was Curtis’ first novel, and was named as a
Newbery Honour book and won the
Coretta Scott King Award. Curtis is also the author of the Newbery Award winner
Bud, Not Buddy.
It was released as a film in 2013
HERE
'
Requiem for a Beast' by Matt Ottley
Another
more recent exploration of this theme is Matt Ottley's epic picture
book 'Requiem for a Beast' (which I have reviewed in full
here).
Essentially, Ottley wrote, drew, and composed a work that uses the
Australian Stockman’s life as the centrepiece of a work that offers a
different story of this much romanticised figure in the Australian
psyche. In his own words, shared just after the award announcement
when responding to some of the
controversy surrounding the choice of the book, he suggested that:
"We
have a romanticised view of what a stockman's life is like, a Man
From Snowy River-view, and I wanted to present life in a stock camp as
it really is, in all its grittiness."
And
‘gritty’ it is. As he explores the parallel lives of a young man
working on an outback station coming face to face with a rogue bull,
the story of his childhood, and the stories of dispossessed Aboriginal
people. Within this narrative he explores other significant themes -
the stolen generation (international readers might need this link),
conquering one’s demons, loss, separation, guilt and forgiveness,
separation and loneliness, family and community.
The
book is in four parts, each with a title in Latin. Part one is Dies
Irae (Day of wrath), presumably tied intertextually with the 13th
Century hymn about the day of God's judgement. The opening pages, with
its five magnificent oil paintings of the Australian landscape and
three haunting statements, offer some clear clues to the reader:
“It’s our memories that make us”
“This country, these hills you see; this is my mother’s country, and her mother’s too.”
“I’m supposed to be a fully initiated woman, but that knowledge, that memory, is gone. Aboriginal Elder”
Ottley's
ambitious work is set against the backdrop of Indigenous suffering
and alienation. Ottley weaves multiple narratives of the boy’s life
and Indigenous memories. This work is a riot of rich visual and verbal
imagery.
The book won the 2008
Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards for a Picture Book.
'Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry' (1976) by Mildred Taylor
This
book won the 1977 Newbery Medal Award, tells the story of a poor
African American family living in Mississippi during the Great
Depression. This novel is set in the Depression-era in Mississippi and
centres on the lives of the Logans, an African-American family Logan
family. The Logans are fortunate compared to many African-Americans and
own their own land when many black and white Americans are working
as sharecroppers on plantations owned by others. It is a time when
racially-motivated crimes are common. The 'Berry Burnings' mentioned
the first chapter and the act of tarring and feathering Mr Tatum were
incidents that were sadly not uncommon as 'nightmen' took the law into
their own hands at the expense of African-Americans. It is a novel
that traces the life of young Cassie Logan as she learns the hard
realities of life for African-Americans. This is a moving and
confronting novel.
The book has a sequel,
Let the Circle Be Unbroken, which was released in 1981. It also has a prequel written in 1975,
Song of the Trees and a related prior book
The Land
that tells the story of the Logan grandfather who purchased the land
that is central to this novel. It is suitable for readers aged 11-14
years.
'
Somehow Tenderness Survives: Stories of Southern Africa', by Hazel Rochman
This
South African book is about the reality of Apartheid and the impact on
real people. It shows the ugliness of racism played out in the
stories of people who suffered and experienced violence. It includes
ten stories and autobiographical accounts by a range of writers from
southern Africa writers of various races (five black and five white).
It includes well-known writers like Nadine Gordimer, Mark Mathabane
and Doris Lessing as well as writers who mostly won't be known outside
South Africa. The stories together and individually are a moving and
challenging set of narratives that do not hide the ugly side of
racism. At times they offer a shocking and powerful portrait of life
under the oppression of racism that is sustained by the law.
'Sounder', by William H. Armstrong
This is the story of an African-American boy who lives with his family.
The
boy's father is a sharecropper and the family is struggling through
hard times. He has a dog, named 'Sounder', mixed a coon/bulldog.
Sounder goes out hunting with the boy's father each and every night
they come back empty handed. But one morning, to his amazement the boy
wakes to the unfamiliar smell of his mother cooking a hambone.
Everyone is overjoyed, but a few days later the joy is shattered as
three white men arrive and take his father for stealing a ham. The
sheriff cruelly shoots Sounder who chases the cart that takes his
father away and life suddenly becomes even harder. But he hungers for an education and his resilience and perseverance is remarkable.
'Sounder' won the
Newbery Award in 1970, and was made in to a motion picture in 1972.
This book tells the story of a boy called Jessie Bollier who witnessed first-hand
the savagery of the African slave trade. The book not only includes an
historical account, but it also touches upon the emotional conflicts
felt by those involved in transporting the slaves from Africa to other
parts of the world. The book received the Newbery Medal in 1974.
'
Number the Stars', by Lois Lowry
This
fictitious story recounts the real life salvation of 8,000 Danish Jews
who escaped to Sweden by sea. It is 1943, during the German occupation
of Denmark, and ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and
courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.
Annemarie and Ellen are best friends. Their life is ordinary. Annemarie
is Christian and Ellen is Jewish and they are good friends. But there
is a great threat from the Nazi soldiers who have invaded and are on
their streets. The girls believe that the Danish King Christian will
protect them. One night their families learn that all Jews of Denmark
are about to be sent to concentration camps. With the help of Danish
Resistance Annemarie’s family hides Ellen and attempt to get her to
safety in Sweden. This is a gripping tale that will be enjoyed by 10-14
years old children.
Using the books in the classroom
The
major purpose of the post is to show that there are many good books for
children of all ages that focus on the theme of racism. My aim in
presenting such books is straightforward.
a) I want
children to experience books that offer narratives that deal
authentically with the issue of racism. The initial aim is simply for
children to enjoy the books as good stories.
b) I also
want children to engage with the story at a deeper level and be able to
see the characters as authentic and at times to even to identify with
them. This might be as a victim, or as someone who struggles to
understand and deal with people other than themselves.
c)
My aim is
not to indoctrinate, but I do want to raise the issues,
provide historical and factual details as appropriate as supplementary
material.
d) I want children to have an opportunity to
respond and discuss the literature as narrative and in relation to the
themes and issues raised. This might involve a variety of formats for
response:
- Structured and guided response in discussion groups
- Free written response
- Aesthetic response through drama, music, drawing (see for example 'Sketch to Stretch' here)
- Opportunities for further research on time periods, events and people
One final comment. All literature needs to be experienced as
narrative not as enabling material for lessons on topics that may or may
not be related to the author's story and intent. I always want to trust
the story to teach and try to avoid turning a wonderful narrative, with
an authentic treatment of an important issue, into a series of
decontextualised lessons. Such lessons can easily destroy the enjoyment
of the story and fail to engage children at the deep level necessary to
grasp and deal with complex life themes.
Other related resources
All previous posts on 'Key Themes in Children's Literature'
HERE
Ann M. Neely (2011).
Literature of Social Transformation: Helping Teachers and Students Make Global Connections.
Language Arts, Vol. 88, No. 4, pp 278-287.
I've written many posts about Key Themes in children's literature. While cats haven't taken over the children's literature field quite as much as they've seized the Internet, there are MANY books about them. Here is a sample. I'd love to hear of some of your favourites as well.
12. 'Madeline and the Cats of Rome' (from the Madeline series) by John Bemelmans Marciano
