Standing Up Against Hate

Farrell, Mary Cronk. Standing Up Against Hate: How Black Women in the Army Helped Change the Course of WWII. New York: Abrams Book for Young Readers, 2019.

In her latest book, Mary Cronk Farrell has uncovered yet another little-known story of women who played a significant role in our country's history. As the United States geared up to enter WWII, thousands of African American women volunteered to join the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, or WAAC (later just WAC). Throughout the book, Farrell recounts the stories of particular women, highlighting their accomplishments as well as their difficulties, including the racial prejudice that pervaded the American military during WWII. These women became telephone operators, secretaries, auto mechanics, pilots, and nurses, among other occupations. One battalion, the 6888th, or six-triple-eight as it was known, was the only group of WAACs sent overseas. In Birmingham, England, they were assigned to direct or redirect several thousand pieces of mail that had accumulated over several years. Working 3 8-hour shifts every day, the women of the 6888th sifted through piles of bagged and boxed letters, matching names, some barely legible, to lists of regiments stationed in various places throughout the European Theater of Operations. They accomplished their mission in half the time time that had been expected. They also experienced something entirely new to them - a land without segregation laws. These women didn't have to ride in the back of any buses in Birmingham, England.
      By connecting young readers to the stories of these pioneering women, Farrell also connects them to the underlying  roots of many of the social problems we still face in this country. History matters!

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World

Ignotofsky, Rachel. Women in Science:  50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World
  Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2016

Of the 50 women scientists featured in this delightfully illustrated book, I recognized the names of only 9. Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actress of old, also invented the "frequency-hopping spread spectrum" still in use in today's GPS systems. Marjorie Stoneham Douglas I knew only because of the tragic events that occurred in the school that bears her name, and Katherine Johnson, who helped John Glenn return safely to earth, is known today because of the movie Hidden Figures. Thanks to books such as this, the names of the women it portrays will no longer be so "hidden." The detailed profile of each of the women describes their backgrounds, including the difficulty they had in gaining recognition for their discoveries. For some, that recognition came only after their deaths. We can hope that today's budding inventors, both male and female, will not suffer the same fate.

Donald Hall and Ox-Cart Man

Remembering Donald Hall

Hall, Donald. Ox-Cart Man. Illus. by Barbara Cooney. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.

I first read the poem, which is the text for this picture book, when it appeared in The New Yorker magazine in the late '70s. I was immediately drawn to the simplicity and the strength of both the poem and the oxcart man himself. I was working in an adult literacy program at the time. Reading the poem, then discovering the picture book soon after, was one of my earliest recognitions that  certain pictures books could be used with adults learning to read. 

The book depicts a nineteenth century New England farmer and his family who use or sell everything they raise, even their beloved ox. The illustrations match the quiet lyricism of the text and capture the integrity of a life lived in harmony with the cycles of nature. 

Donald Hall died on Saturday, June 23, 2018. He was 89 years old. 

The Camping Trip that Changed America

In honor of our National Parks



Rosenstock, Barb. The Camping Trip that Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks. Illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012.

John Muir was well ahead of his time. It was 1903. Muir, an avid hiker and outdoorsman, already recognized the threat that growing land development was to the extraordinary landscapes he explored in the American west. He also recognized that President Theodore Roosevelt was something of an outdoors man as well, so he invited the President to join him on a camping trip to one of his favorite places. Just as Muir had hoped, Roosevelt was overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of the towering sequoias, majestic mountains, and massive glaciers he observed. Traveling on horseback and camping in the wilderness, the two men bonded over their love of the natural world and their recognition of the need to preserve the most spectacular parts of the nation's geographic heritage. Roosevelt's creation of the National Park system was the result. 

Illustrator Gerstein, who also illustrated The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, portrays the two very different characters - the rambunctious Roosevelt and the studious and steadfast Muir - amid the cathedral-like splendor of the land that would become Yosemite National Park.  

  

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

In Remembrance of Courage and Hope 



Gerstein, Mordicai. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2003.

On the morning of August 7, 1974, before the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City actually opened, New Yorkers walking on the streets below the towers witnessed an amazing sight. With his balancing pole in hand, French high-wire artist Philippe Petit stepped on to a tightrope that he and a few friends had stretched between the towers the night before. A quarter mile above the busy streets of a New York morning, Philippe walked, danced, and even lay down on the wire, as a gathering crowd of astonished New Yorkers looked up. After almost an hour, he stepped off the wire into the waiting hands of the New York City police who arrested him and brought him into court. The judge, after scolding him for endangering himself and others, ordered him to perform his feats for children in the city parks. He was happy to comply.  

Gerstein's Caldecott Medal-winning illustrations convey the courage as well as the playfulness and sheer beauty of this amazing act of human artistry and skill. They, too, are part of the legacy of those once imposing towers. 

Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir

A poetic description of a life in two languages. 



Engle, Margarita. Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015.

Margarita Engle is the daughter of a Cuban mother and an American father. Born before the Cuban revolution, she grew up mostly in California, but spent her summers with her grandparents in Cuba. There, she learned to love the land, the language, and its people. In free verse that is both detailed and evocative, she speaks of the "otherness" she recognizes in each place. She calls the first half of her book "Magical Travels." Then the Cuban revolution changes everything. She can no longer travel to Cuba; even letters back and forth between the families become difficult. Her Cuban-American family is caught in a web of suspicion, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

For young readers, it is both a history lesson and an evocation of a life bifurcated by immigration, lost contact with family, and dual languages. It is also an example of the power of language to enable readers to feel as well as understand the experiences of others, and a timely reminder of how world events intrude upon the everyday lives of ordinary people.  

Engle notes at the end of the book that as she was writing it, she was hoping for normalization of relations between the two countries. "That prayer has been answered," she writes. Well, maybe.   

Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei

Sis, Peter. Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei. New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1996. 

Sis's many children's books range from the whimsical to the profound. The Starry Messenger is the story of a young boy fascinated by the world around him, spending hours watching the sun, the moon, and the stars. It is also the story of a man who stands up to the authorities who are threatened by his findings, even at the cost of his freedom. Though many people believed his revelation that the earth travels around the sun and not the other way around, others were threatened by this new idea, especially the leaders of the Catholic Church, a powerful force in 16th century Italy. But Galileo remained faithful to the truth as he saw it, and spent the last years of his life under house arrest for his "heretical" beliefs. 

Sis brings his own vivid imagination and delight in the natural world to the illustrations in this book, which at first glance appear almost childlike, even as they convey a profound sense of wonder and a wealth of information. 

I had the pleasure of meeting him at an ALA conference years ago, and he signed my copy of his book in his own inimitable way.