Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc

From the Publisher:

Told through medieval poetic forms and in the voices of the people and objects in Joan of Arc’s life, (including her family and even the trees, clothes, cows, and candles of her childhood), Voices offers an unforgettable perspective on an extraordinary young woman. Along the way it explores timely issues such as gender, misogyny, and the peril of speaking truth to power. Before Joan of Arc became a saint, she was a girl inspired. It is that girl we come to know in Voices.

My Thoughts:

This was a book I requested this season based on the Fall/Winter Buzz Books for young adults. As always thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for letting me read an advanced digital copy so I can pass it along. This was published in March, 2019 so it is already available in stores, but let your librarian know that they should buy this. 

As an English teacher, this is an exciting possible mentor text for the middle school classroom. What I look for in mentor texts are evidence of intentional craft that seems seamless as well as a play with nontraditional forms. I also look for readability and a way in for student writers (so not too esoteric and cerebral). As a social studies teacher, I am not sure where in the curriculum this might fit as a text, but definitely as an alternative inquiry paper, this is a great mentor text. Mr. Elliott, in this historical fiction in verse offering gives voice to the questions that intrigue him about this young French martyr. Through his play with medieval poetic forms, he gives voice to Joan as well as the men in power who both helped and hindered her. Most powerful, though, are the concrete poems from the point of view of objects (the sword, the red dress, the armor, etc.). My favorite though is the personified fire that pops up repetitively in the book, using loving familiars towards Joan, calling her "my darling, and towards the end seems to get more frantic, more hungry, more yearning. 

Covering the last days of Joan, this is a powerful way to make history come alive for students.

Strange Fruit II

My Thoughts:

This graphic historical non-fiction highlights vignettes of black Americans living from the period of slavery to right before the civil rights movement. Because of this dark time in history, none of the stories are very uplifting except the story of Victor Green. The rest of them show different kinds of heroism but because these are real people's histories in an anti-black America, most of the lives in here are also about the effects of systemic racism in America. 

The one "uplifting" story is about Victor Green, a postal worker who decided to publish the Green Book for the Negro Motorist. The first printing was in 1936. In it he identified safe gas stations, bathrooms, restaurants and resorts across America for the African American traveler. His goal was to eventually not need to publish this type of book anymore. Although it lasted a few years after the Civil Rights act, the last publishing of the Green Book was in 1967. 

In truth, the rest of the stories are disheartening, however the references at the back, the artwork and the limited text are perfect for the middle school reader to do further research. We need more of these types of graphic works built on primary resources. It is time that our social studies curriculum told history from the point of view of the downtrodden too, and not just the victors. 

Glory In Their Spirit

Glory in Their Spirit is the well researched account of 4 female African American WAC (Women Army Corps) privates who defied orders and walked off the job as a way to protest what they saw as racist working conditions. These women were promised an opportunity in the Army to be trained in and receive skilled positions, but they found themselves relegated to the heavy lifting and menial scrubbing tasks of orderlies while the white WACs were given opportunities to train for the more skilled positions in the Army hospital. 

The four women, along with 50 other WACs were arrested, but these four women chose court martial over returning to the menial positions. This is 1945 and before the height of the civil rights movement, so there is no real happy ending, however, it traces the pattern of institutional racism that is still prevalent in our institutions today. 

This book is not for the classroom, except as a resource, but I think if the women's voices through correspondence home or interviews could have been included (like a multi genre piece), this story would catch the interest of the middle level reader. 

A digital copy of this book was provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review. 

Denmark Vesey's Garden

Like Sachiko by Caren Stilson, I have been on the hunt for a well researched multi genre mentor text on slavery. The introduction to this book promises just that:

Denmark Vesey's Garden - the first book to trace the memory of slavery from its abolition in 1865 to the present - offers historical context for this contemporary divide. 

This book, on the complexity of black history in America, uses  Charleston, South Carolina to tell a much larger story about race relations.  This extensively researched book covers both what is known and what is normally hidden (or forgotten).   Although this is not for my audience of middle level readers, this is definitely a powerful resource for my social studies colleagues who are interested in bringing into their classroom larger ideas around perspective, historic empathy and the grayness of cause and effect. 

An early digital copy was provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review. 

Turning 15 On The Road to Freedom

From the publishers:
As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.
Straightforward and inspiring, this beautifully illustrated memoir brings readers into the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, complementing Common Core classroom learning and bringing history alive for young readers.

My thoughts:

Like John Lewis' March graphic novels this is a first hand account of the civil rights movement. The author takes readers through a multi genre experience to paint an intimate picture of the fear and determination shared by these young protesters. Her use of photography, lyrics and illustrations help to set the tone for the reader friendly text. This truly is a coming of age memoir about Blackmon Lowery turning 15 in he midst of the march to Montgomery and how all of these young students put into action the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for "steady, loving confrontation." 

Other historical non-fiction works around civil rights using photography as the medium: Controversy of hope: The civil rights photographs of James Karales and This is the day: The march on Washington. 

Under a Painted Sky

From the Publishers:
All Samantha wanted was to move back to New York and pursue her music, which was difficult enough being a Chinese girl in Missouri, 1849. Then her fate takes a turn for the worse after a tragic accident leaves her with nothing and she breaks the law in self-defense. With help from Annamae, a runaway slave she met at the scene of her crime, the two flee town for the unknown frontier. 
    But life on the Oregon Trail is unsafe for two girls. Disguised as Sammy and Andy, two boys heading for the California gold rush, each search for a link to their past and struggle to avoid any unwanted attention. Until they merge paths with a band of cowboys turned allies, and Samantha can’t stop herself from falling for one. But the law is closing in on them and new setbacks come each day, and the girls will quickly learn there are not many places one can hide on the open trail.   

My thoughts:
I have been on an Asian character kick so this is the latest YA Asian female character book but this one is pleasantly different. Taking place in 1849, it is more like Mulan meets Huck Finn if Huck were a 15+ year old Chinese girl and Jim was a young slave running away to find her older brother. 

Barefoot Gen

From the publishers:

This harrowing story of Hiroshima was one of the original Japanese manga series. New and unabridged, this is an all-new translation of the author's first-person experiences of Hiroshima and its aftermath, is a reminder of the suffering war brings to innocent people. Its emotions and experiences speak to children and adults everywhere. Volume one of this ten-part series details the events leading up to and immediately following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

My thoughts:

I think with any story that is painful to tell, the listener must also be in the mood to hear said painful stories. I am not saying that we must be silent, but I was listening to a podcast of a woman whose father was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp and he would not tell his story to her. She kept asking and when he was dying, she asked him to please tell her his story. Her father said once I open that door, it cannot be closed. That is how this is. Even if this is a manga, if you open the door, you cannot close it again. Painful stories, told in comic form, are still painful. This is Nakazawa's life. If you are thinking of reading this series, be ready to open the door or leave it closed and walk away.

March: Like Deja Vu

March is a graphic memoir trilogy by and about Congressman John Lewis' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. It is co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. 

The first book in the trilogy focuses in on the early years of John Lewis' life in Alabama juxtaposed with a modern view of him getting ready for the first inauguration of our first African American President of the United States, Barack Obama. Book two recounts the Freedom Riders and their work to try and register voters in the south. Book three continues their efforts after the Freedom Rider summer to continue to find ways to register voters and try and get southern blacks to stand up for themselves and demand their rights in a living democracy. It ends with John Lewis invited to witness the signing of the 1965 voting rights act and travels again closes on the inauguration of the first black president of the United States, Barack Obama. 

The book focuses on Lewis' beliefs in both civil rights and non violence. It shows his early commitment as a young college student to righting injustice through his help in forming the Nashville Student Movement and their preparatory training for the non violent lunch counter sit ins. This is not a holier than thou account. Mr. Lewis shares the struggles of the group as well as his own personal struggles to try and do what he believes, even when he finds himself standing alone. He candidly shows a moment when he almost lashes back and breaks his non violence stand. He also shares his frustration about getting so many northern blacks and whites mobilized to help southern blacks who seem to just complacently accept the inequality and also see these young blacks as outsider instigators for violence in their own community.

I gave this book to one of my teacher prep students, a history major and future social studies teacher. He devoured it quietly and when he was done he said "this book is like deja vu." When I asked him what he meant, he just said that it is obvious that John Lewis really remembers what happened at that time and lived that life because it just mirrors and gives life to the primary source photos from that time and it makes it come alive from his perspective as if we are there and have been there before. 

What I liked about this book is that we see the historical figures in the movement including Martin Luther King Jr. as mentors and friends. It does not put them up as heroes but shows that in the midst of their now historic work, they continued to be human with missteps, insecurities and fear even as they kept doing the work they felt necessary. 

When I think about how little has changed and how violence and segregation still occurs, this trilogy holds more power to propel the next generations to non violent change.

Sachiko

Publication date: October 1, 2016

From the Publishers:

August 9, 1945, began like any other day for six-year-old Sachiko. Her country was at war, she didn't have enough to eat. At 11:01 a.m., she was playing outdoors with four other children. Moments later, those children were all dead. An atomic bomb had exploded just half a mile away.
In the days and months that followed, Sachiko lost family members, her hair fell out, she woke screaming in the night. When she was finally well enough to start school, other children bullied her. Through it all, she sought to understand what had happened, finding strength in the writings of Helen Keller, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Based on extensive interviews with Sachiko Yasui, Caren Stelson shares the true story of a young girl who survived the atomic bomb and chronicles her long journey to find peace. Sachiko offers readers a remarkable new perspective on the final moments of World War II—and their aftermath.

My Thoughts:

With the mix of poignant storytelling and sidebars of historical facts, this multi-genre novel will be a wonderful resource for middle level students to learn about World War II from the perspective of a Japanese atomic bomb survivor. It chronicles the moment right before the Nagasaki bomb as well as the devastating after effects that continues to be felt in Japan today. Sachiko's loss is devastating and unfathomable, and yet through it all, she continues to speak out for peace. Like the late Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, Sachiko has found her voice and continues to push for a peaceful world, lest we forget the atrocities of history. 

This is a well researched book and a good model for student research.

This advanced copy provided by Net Galley (dot)com and the publisher for an honest review. 

Guest Post - Author Sharon Dogar

Annexed  by Sharon Dogar comes out on October 4, 2010 from Houghton Mifflin, so I'm thrilled to have the author here to talk about her book. Annexed tells the Anne Frank story from the point of view of Peter van Pels, the teenaged boy who also hid in the annex. Ms. Dogar is a children's psychotherapist who lives in Oxford, England, with her family. She discovered Anne Frank's diary as a child and then again recently when her daughter started reading it. While writing and researching this book, she spent many hours soaking up the atmosphere of the Annex. This is her third novel for young adults. Aloha Ms. Dogar and welcome to Minding the Middle.

Peter van Pels

By Sharon Dogar,
Author of Annexed

What we know of Peter van Pels is almost entirely limited to Anne Frank's diary, and her own personal view of him. He was, it seems, a shy boy, helpful and good with his hands. Reading between the lines of Anne's diary I've tried to imagine what Peter was "really" like. How do I do that? Here's an example: on Peter's arrival in the Annex, Anne describes him as a "hypochondriac" who "won't amount to much." She's fed up and dismissive of his histrionics, as most clever, early adolescent girls would probably be.

Anne describes a boy who sleeps all the time, lacks any type of motivation, has strange physical symptoms and believes he might be dying. If a child in my counseling room felt this way, I'd suspect depression. In fact, from an occupational point of view Peter's depression makes sense; it's a reasonable response to real events. Having to go into hiding to save your life isn't merely depressing, it's terrifying. Peter's "symptoms" and his fear that he's "dying" reflect the reality of both his own situation and of those in the attic. It's possible that this is partly what makes Anne so angry and dismissive of Peter, she doesn't want to be reminded of how dire a situation she is in (not at this stage). She wants to believe that she's safe. Peter's constant 'whinging' (as she calls it) keeps on reminding her that she's in danger.

We all have our own ways of managing fear and difficulty. Anne creates a safe fantasy world for herself (as many writers do) whilst Peter turns his distress into physical symptoms. Looked at in this way, Peter's character takes on a potentially different meaning from the one presented by Anne.

By carefully considering Anne's brilliantly vivid descriptions of Peter, and analyzing what they might mean, I slowly created a picture of how I thought Peter might be, and he came to feel very real to me. Most writers have that feeling of "hearing" their characters voices. Peter's voice (as I heard it) was quiet, thoughtful, questioning, full of feeling and in the end, quite stubborn and determined to be his own person. I can't, of course, know what the "real" Peter van Pels was like, but then again, how well do any of us know each other? How well did Anne know him, and how much was her view coloured by her own needs and desires?

I miss thinking and writing about Peter. I will always feel heart-broken and horrified at the waste of his young, promising life, and the lives of millions of others that the Nazis judged worthless. When it came to researching, imagining and writing about Peter's life in the camps I already felt very close to the character I'd created. I no longer really wanted to take the novel (and Peter) on into Auschwitz. I put off writing every day. I read survivor's testimonies. I went for long walks. I had very bad dreams. I decided that if I was going to go on, and imagine a life in the camps for Peter, then I had to make sure that every part of the "story" of what happened was rooted in reality.  I studied the mechanics of life as a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz. I also realized that in imagining an ending for one person -- Peter van Pels -- I could try to describe the horror and systematic destruction of human life that was a Nazi concentration camp. And so I began to write the final section of the novel. It was written very quickly, almost in one go, and the words came surprisingly easily. Nonetheless, it's not something I would want to do again.

It may sound odd, but for me a part of the horror of human mass destruction is the total disregard those who kill fellow human beings show for the story that each and everyone of us holds within us; the story of our life. So in the end I gave Peter a story. It's probably not the story he would have told himself, but it tries to acknowledge that his story did not end with his arrest on August 1st, 1944, and that there is a story to be told. It may be horrific, it may not be something we want to think about, but Peter, and millions like him had no choice, they had to live it, and unlike the survivors who can give testimony, they died. In their millions. That doesn't mean that they can't be thought about, or that we don't have the right to imagine their story; for me it was the opposite, I felt compelled to create a story.

© 2010 Sharon Dogar, author of Annexed
 

Tween Tuesday: Mailing May

 

Title: Mailing May

Author: Michael O. Tunnell

Illustrator: Ted Rand

Reading level: Ages 4-8

About the book: (from Amazon)

Based on an incident that occurred in Idaho in 1914, this story tells of little May, who longs to visit her grandmother. May's parents cannot afford a railway ticket for the 75-mile trip, but with the help of cousin Leonard, who mans the mail car on the train, May's father takes advantage of the new parcel post regulations: he presents his daughter at the station post office as a package he's mailing to Lewiston. Affixing 53 cents in stamps to the back of her coat, the good-natured postmaster checks May in as poultry ("biggest baby chick on record"), and Leonard delivers her to Grandma's house the next day.

My thoughts:

Yes, I realize that this picture book is not a tween book, but I got to visit the National Postal Museum in Washington DC, and ever the teacher, I went into the gift shop to buy pencils for my homeroom kids and read books.  I am constantly on the lookout for non-fiction picture books to help my struggling tween and teen readers and this gorgeous picture book was so precious. Living on an island, I've always wanted to put myself in a bag and send myself to some other place on the plane, so when I read about this true story of a family sending their five-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff on the mail train from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho for 53 cents, this is just too precious to pass up. 

For my struggling readers, this book is perfect to give them a glimpse of the time period that they're studying in social studies, but also the format of the picture book gives them multiple entries into a non-fiction piece that isn't always possible from their textbook. The text is engaging, Rand's watercolor illustrations pop off the pages and the author's note at the end gives additional information and sources for further study. 

I would love to get more non-fiction picture books like this one to bring into our middle school library.  What are your suggestions? 

This meme was started by Green Bean Teen Queen