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Please feel free to add reading suggestions here…

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#Chinese & White biracial character

#microagressions

#bullying

#sexism
#dismantling single story - westward expansion

#historical fiction circa 1880

If you enjoyed Little House on the Prairie you’ll love fourteen-year-old Hanna Edmunds, who is half white and half Chinese, and moves to La Forge, Dakota with her father to start a new life after her mother dies in California’s 1871 Chinese Massacre. When townsfolk find out Hanna is part Chinese, all but two classmates stop going to school.  Her father is considering letting Hanna become a dressmaker in their shop but is worried people won’t shop there if she is.  Will she be allowed to finish school?  Will she be able to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a dressmaker? Will the townsfolk accept Hanna?  Read Prairie Lotus to find out Hanna’s fate...

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Thank you for visiting the "Navigating the World Biracial Book Recommendations & Resources Padlet."

I will continue to update this Padlet as I read more books with biracial characters or I come across useful resources.  So please feel free to return to see updates from time to time.  Happy reading!

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I’m a Teen of Mixed Race: Here’s What It’s Like to Grow Up Biracial in America Today

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In this week’s ‘Teen Talk’ column, a teen explains her experience growing up mixed and how parents can help their children navigate the complexities of being biracial with single-race friends and family.

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It's tricky to nail down exactly what makes someone feel like a "racial impostor." For one Code Switch follower, it's the feeling she gets from whipping out "broken but strangely colloquial Arabic" in front of other Middle Easterners.

For another - a white-passing, Native American woman - it's being treated like "just another tourist" when she shows up at powwows. And one woman described watching her white, black and Korean-American toddler bump along to the new Kendrick and wondering, "Is this allowed?"

In this week's podcast, we go deep into what we're calling Racial Impostor Syndrome - the feeling, the science and a giant festival this weekend in Los Angeles that's, in some ways, all about this.

Here's how we got started down this track. A couple months ago, listener Kristina Ogilvie wrote in to tell us that "living at the intersection of different identities and cultures" was like "stumbling around in a forest in the dark."

She asked, "Do you hear from other listeners who feel like fakes?"

Good question. So we took it to our audience, and what we heard back was a resounding "yes."

We got 127 emails from people who are stumbling through that dark, racially ambiguous forest. (And yes, we read every single one.)

Here are excerpts drawn from a few of the many letters that made us laugh, cry and argue - and that guided this week's episode.

Let's start with Angie Yingst of Pennsylvania:

"My mother is a Panamanian immigrant and my father is a white guy from Pennsylvania. I've always felt liminal, like I drift between race and culture. When I was young (20s) and living in the city, I would get asked multiple times a day where I was from, where my people were from, because Allentown, Pennsylvania, clearly wasn't the answer they were looking for ... It always felt like the undercurrent of that question was, 'You aren't white, but you aren't black. What are you?'

"But truthfully, I don't feel like I fit with Latinas either. My Spanish is atrocious and I grew up in rural PA. Even my cousin said a few weeks ago, 'Well, you aren't really Spanish, because your dad is white.' Which gutted me, truly. I identify as Latina. I identify with my mother's culture and country as well as American culture. In shops, I'm treated like every other Latina, followed around, then ignored at the counter. I married a white guy and had children who are blonde and blue eyed, and I'm frequently asked if I'm the nanny or babysitter. And white acquaintances often say, 'You are white. You act white.' And I saltily retort, 'Why? Because I'm not doing your lawn, or taking care of your kids? You need to broaden your idea of what Latina means.' "

Jen Boggs of Hawaii says she often feels like a racial impostor, but isn't quite sure which race she's faking:

"I was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii when I was three. ... I grew up thinking that I was half-Filipina and half-white, under the impression that my mom's first husband was my biological father. I embraced this 'hapa-haole' identity (as they say in Hawaii), and loved my ethnic ambiguity. My mom wanted me to speak perfect English, so never spoke anything but to me. After she divorced her first husband and re-married my stepdad from Michigan, my whiteness became cemented.

"Except. As it turns out, my biological father was a Filipino man whom I've never met. I didn't find out until I tried to apply for a passport in my late twenties and the truth came out. So, at age 28 I learned that I was not half white but all Filipina. ...

"This new knowledge was a huge blow to my identity and, admittedly, to my self esteem. 'But I'm white,' I remember thinking. 'I'm so so white.' After much therapy, I'm happy and comfortable in my brown skin, though I'm still working out how others perceive me as this Other, Asian person."

Indigo Goodson's mom is Jamaican and her dad is African-American. She wrote about the way people's perceptions of her change based on where she lives:

"Culturally we grew up as Jamaican as two California-born black American children could have in the Bay Area. ... We ate mostly Jamaican food (prepared by both our mother and father), our Jamaican family lived with us growing up, and it was my mother that told us Anansi stories and other tales or sayings popular in Jamaica.

" ... Both my parents are black, so no one ever asked 'What are you?' ... But then when folks would meet my mum they would say things like, 'Oh I thought you were black!' or 'You do look Jamaican!' And I would tell people I'm still black and clearly Jamaicans look like black Americans because we are both the descendants of enslaved West Africans. Now that I live in New York City, where if you're black people assume you are first generation Caribbean, I often have to remind people that my dad is black American and so am I."

Helen Seely is originally from California. She told us what it's like for her to interact with different groups as a light-skinned biracial woman:

"White people like to believe I'm Caucasian like them; I think it makes their life less complicated. But I don't identify as 100% white, so there always comes a time in the conversation or relationship where I need to 'out' myself and tell them that I'm biracial.

"It's a vulnerable experience, but it becomes even harder when I'm with black Americans. It may sound strange - and there are so many layers to this that are hard to unpack - but I think what it comes down to is: they have more of a claim to 'blackness' than I ever will and therefore have the power to tell me I don't belong, I'm not enough, that I should stay on the white side of the identity line.

"You know that question we always get asked? 'What are you?' Well, I still don't know. I've never had an answer that I can say with confidence; I still don't know what I'm allowed to claim."

Natalia Romero echoes some of those feelings. Her family left Colombia for the U.S. when she was 9 years old, and she says that while she doesn't consider herself white, she gets treated like she's white all the time:

"My mother doesn't speak English and so when I am home all we speak is Spanish and act like a bunch of rowdy, tight knit Colombians ... I grew up experiencing what many poor young immigrants face - bad schools, hunger, poverty, a lack of resources - but eventually managed to pay my way through college and work now as a musician and teacher, often very white communities.

" ... When people talk about the current political climate, they speak to me as if I were white, not someone who is terrified of the hatred of Latinx and Hispanic people, someone who walks around with my green card in my wallet, knowing that until I am a citizen (which I morally have a huge problem with) I am not safe. I exist and inhabit these white spaces, but my experience is not white. My experiences comes from being the sole English speaker in my house at age 9 and having to speak for my parents at the bank, at school, in apartments. My experience is from pretending my youngest sister wasn't part of our family because the apartment complex only allowed 4 people to a 1 bedroom apartment and we couldn't afford a 2 bedroom one. I come from a place where people speak poorly of Latinx people around me not realizing I am one ... "

Everyone's story is different, and as is discussed on the podcast, we're still learning how to talk about identities that fall outside of our traditional understandings of race in the United States. Luckily, for those who are confused, you're in good company.

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'Racial Impostor Syndrome': Here Are Your Stories

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We got more than 100 letters from our listeners about how y'all feel like fakes. Here are some of our favorites.

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Article that discusses the challenges and coping mechanisms for biracial individuals.

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Author: Mahogany L. Swanson

Although biracial individuals include any persons with parents of differing race, this paper uses the term biracial to identify any individual whose parents are of African and European descent. Biracial individuals, or individuals with one black and one white parent, growing up in the United States develop a necessary coping mechanism whereby they are able to race switch. Race switching (see Wilton, Sanchez, & Garcia, 2013) allows individuals to identify and de-identify with different parts of their identity. This process of identification and de-identification is often dictated by the constraints or opportunities in the social milieu. Although viewed by some as opportunistic, an often-hostile environment may compel the need for racial fluidity in many self-identified biracial and multiracial individuals; however, the consequences of race switching can be deleterious for these individuals.

Multiracial and biracial individuals experience unique challenges with regards to their racial self-identification. Although in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that the criminalization of miscegenation by the state was unconstitutional it was not until 2000 that the children of such marriages were permitted to self-identify as biracial on the national census (Roth, 2005). Additionally, in a study conducted by Herman (2004), biracial individuals with at least one black ancestor reported significantly more perceived discrimination than any other minority monoracial group, including Blacks (Herman, 2004). This finding is disconcerting given that Jackson, Yoo, Guevarra, & Harrington (2012) found individuals expressing greater amounts or perceived racial discrimination concomitantly reported lower levels of psychological adjustment.

This racial discrimination can result in the individual de-identifying with his or her biracial or multiracial identity, and choosing to self-identify with the more accepted minority and monoracial race. Historically, the singularly black identity was given to all biracial and multiracial individuals, regardless of whether they espoused this identity. Coined the "one-drop rule", and often a means of hegemony, an individual with one black ancestor was considered singularly black. Overtime, this method of racial reporting was accepted and used by Blacks and Biracials alike (Roth, 2005).

In addition to the one-drop rule, racial classification is frequently done through a process known as physiognomy, or the practice of making decisions about a person's race based off his or her physical appearance. In a national longitudinal study conducted by Doyle and Kao (2007), 97 percent of self-identified biracial individuals who believed they appeared more black were identified by others as looking more black, where as only 17 percent of self-identified biracial individuals who believed they appeared more white were also described as being white by an outside observer. According to Doyle & Kao (2007), black/white biracial individuals are often compelled by society to self-identify as black due to physiognomy; whereas those minorities with lighter skin color, such as Native and Asian Americans are often given more latitude in terms of self-identification. The last three types of racial self-identification used by biracial individuals include: singularly white, border identity, protean and transcendent identity (see Roth 2005; Hitlin, Brown, and Elder, 2007).

Choosing a racial identity

In addition to the community and society at large, the family of origin also influences how a person chooses to racially self-identify. According to Roth (2005), mother's with a higher than high-school education are more likely to identify their children as biracial, as are white male head-of-households and black female head-of-households. Families that grew up abroad and who have not been indoctrinated with the United States' racial norms are also more likely to identify their children as biracial (Roth, 2005). According to Townsend, Fryberg, Wilins & Markus (2012), the middle class is more likely than the working class to espouse a biracial identity, as are students attending majority white schools. Interestingly, how a person is asked about his or her race can also influence how one will choose to self-identify.

Regardless of the identity reported by the individual, once selected, these racial identities are by no means ossified. Hitlin, Brown, & Elder Jr. (2006) found in their national longitudinal study that individuals who self-identified as biracial were four times more likely to change their race in the future than individuals that self-identified as monoracial, with white/black individuals being more likely to converge and self-identify as black. Furthermore, individuals who selected three or more races at one wave of data collection ultimately viewed themselves as singularly black 6 years later. In a study conducted by Doyle and Kao (2007), 96 percent of individuals who self-identified as black and white respectively did so again six years later; whereas only 57 percent of biracial individuals maintained this self-identification six years later. This study further demonstrates the fluidity in which many biracial individuals identify themselves.

In their study, Hitlin, Brown & Elder (2006) identified some characteristics that made people less likely or more likely to race switch. Characteristics of those who were less likely to switch included individuals from higher socioeconomic status, those whose mothers had higher education, and individuals with higher self-esteem. Furthermore, they found that an individual's skin color and the racial make-up of one's neighborhood influenced the stagnancy and fluidity of one's racial self-identification.

Conversely, Hitlin, Brown and Elder (2006) found that individuals who demonstrated a greater fund of vocabulary knowledge were more likely to race switch. According to the authors, this increase in racial fluidity may be due in part to the individual's increased mental capacity to respond to an often racially charged environment. However, whatever the reasons, race switching can come with a price.

In a study conducted by Sanchez, Shih & Garcia (2009), participants, who demonstrated malleable racial identification, or flexibility in how they self-identify in terms of race, also showed poorer psychological health. The results of their study also demonstrated that low amounts of dialecticalism and greater amounts of malleability were predictive of increased depressive symptomology, decreased psychological wellbeing, and higher amounts of unstable multiracial regard. Conversely, a high amount of dialecticalism was not predictive of depression or unstable multiracial regard.

More importantly, emphasis on racial identity does not necessarily stem from the individual, but from outsiders wishing to classify the individual. These attempts at classification frequently result in stress and frustration for the person being classified (Butler-Sweet, 2011). About a year ago, in an attempt to deal with my own frustration around the frequently broached question, "so what are you anyway," I decided to write a short reflection regarding how I view myself.

You see, I grew up in a middle class military family with a dad who self-identifies as singularly black (raised in Texas) and a mom who self-identifies as singularly white (raised in New York). From a young age, my dad told me that I could self-identify any way that I wanted to; however, he always said that the world would only ever see me one way. My mom, on the other hand, encouraged me to self-identify as bi-racial. To this day, my brothers and I seldom agree on our race; however, we all agree that people never seem satisfied until they can quench their curiosity and place us in a racial box. Much like many multi-racial individuals, I have spent my life attempting to reconcile how I perceive myself with how others report they seem me. One day, out of frustration, I wrote the following:

This is the question that plagues most, if not all, biracial and multiracial individuals. So I decided to make a page dedicated to it. So whenever you are wondering, you can just go to this page and read to your heart's content.

Let's start off with what I am. It's even in alphabetical order.

I am African. I am Cuban. I am Dutch. I am English. I am German. I am Native American. I am Spanish. I am Venezuelan. I am West Indian. Now, let's end with what I am not.

No. I am not Black. Have you seen my mom lately? And no, you cannot touch my hair. Just imagine all of the races/nationalities above, and you will understand what my hair feels like.

No. I am not White. Have you seen my dad lately? So yes, my skin is naturally this way. I didn't just stay in the sun a really long time, and yes someone asked me this.

No. I am not Indian. Yes, I am Native American, but no one in my family is from India. I get this a lot. Although, it would be cool to be part Indian, I have to admit that this is one of the few countries that escaped my family's attention when they were making children.

No. I am not Brazilian, Dominican, Panamanian or Mexican. Although I wouldn't mind being Brazilian, wouldn't you love to have a perfect butt?

No. I am not Malaysian or Asian; although, both would be cool.

No. I am not Ethiopian. No lady, I wasn't lying to you. I am not ashamed of my Ethiopian heritage; I know what Shalom means because half my family is also Jewish. They also used it in Aladdin.

No. I am not Bi-racial. Bi-racial would assume a mixture of two races. As you can see, I have more than two. No. I am not any of the other things that people assume that I am, but for which I have run out of room to explain.

With love, Mahogany, a Child of the Most High God... the Amazing Artist.

Growing up with a biracial or multiracial identity in a racially charged society can be very challenging. How one chooses to self-identify is often influenced by external factors. However, in the end, it is up to the individual to decide and reconcile him or herself to the fact that people are not ready to give up the age old question of, so what are you anyway?

References

Butler-Sweet, C. (2011). 'Race isn't what defines me': Exploring identity choices in transracial, biracial, and monoracial families. Social Identities: Journal For The Study Of Race, Nation And Culture, 17(6), 747-769. doi:10.1080/13504630.2011.606672

Doyle, J., & Kao, G. (2007). Are racial identities of multiracials stable? Changing self-identification among single and multiple race individuals. Social Psychology Quarterly, 70(4), 405-423.

Herman, M. (2004). Forced to choose: some determinants of racial identification in multiracial adolescents. Child Development, 75(3), 730-748.

Hitlin, S., Brown, J., & Elder Jr., G. H. (2006). Racial self-categorization in adolescence: Multiracial development and social pathways. Child Development, 77(5), 1298-1308. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00935.x

Jackson, K. F., Yoo, H., Guevarra, R. r., & Harrington, B. A. (2012). Role of identity integration on the relationship between perceived racial discrimination and psychological adjustment of multiracial people. Journal Of Counseling Psychology®, 59(2), 240-250. doi:10.1037/a0027639

Jamshidi, A., & Navehebrahim, M. (2013). Learners Use of Code Switching in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom. Australian Journal Of Basic & Applied Sciences, 7(1), 186-190.

Roth, W. (2005). The end of the one-drop rule? Labeling of multiracial children in black intermarriages. Sociological Forum, 20(1), 35-67. doi:10.1007/s11206-005-1897-0

Sanchez, D. T., Shih, M., & Garcia, J. A. (2009). Juggling multiple racial identities: Malleable racial identification and psychological well-being. Cultural Diversity And Ethnic Minority Psychology, 15(3), 243-254. doi:10.1037/a0014373

Townsend, S. M., Fryberg, S. A., Wilkins, C. L., & Markus, H. (2012). Being mixed: Who claims a biracial identity? Cultural Diversity And Ethnic Minority Psychology, 18(1), 91-96. doi:10.1037/a0026845

Wilton, L., Sanchez, D., & Garcia, J. (2013). The Stigma of Privilege: Racial Identity and Stigma Consciousness Among Biracial Individuals. Race & Social Problems, 5(1), 41. doi:10.1007/s12552-012-9083-5

Author bio

Mahogany L. Swanson, MA, EDS, is a certified school psychologist currently earning a PhD in counseling psychology at Georgia State University, with a cognate in military relevant therapies. Her current research interests include investigating the etiology and protective factors in the development of PTSD and comorbid disorders, as well as racial identity development of self-identified biracial and multiracial individuals of dependents and service personnel in the United States Armed Forces. She is currently completing externships at Emory University School of Medicine with the Grady Trauma Project, with the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Trauma Recovery Team, and with the Gwinnett County Detention Center. Her end goal is to earn a commission in the United States Armed Forces.

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Author: Mahogany L. Swanson Although biracial individuals include any persons with parents of differing race, this paper uses the term biracial to identify any individual whose parents are of African and European descent. Biracial individuals, or individuals with one black and one white parent, growing up in the United States develop a necessary coping mechanism whereby they are able to race switch.

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#Black & White biracial character

#microagressions

#bullying

#color blindness

#realistic fiction

What lane?  This is the question 12-year old Stephen asks as he navigates the lanes of middle school life.   Although his white mom sees him as mixed,  the outside world that sees Stephen as black.  One day he begins to notice his white friends treat him differently, especially one “friend” whose racial transgressions toward him turn violent.  Will Stephen fight back, change lanes or find his own identity?

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Torrey Maldonado Discussing & Reading Excerpt from What Lane? 

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Torrey Maldonado Discussing & Reading Excerpt from What Lane? 

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https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3418444181523685

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But first, an ode to the interview process.

Interviewing a subject and moderating a discussion, these are two very similar endeavors. You want the focus to be squarely on the person being featured but, at the same time, you have to make it different from the 500 other interviews they're being forced to conduct in the course of their book promotions. For my part, I always try to make mine just a hair different from the rest. That can be hard when the book is dull or I have nothing to say. And it can be incredibly easy when you've got a man like Torrey Maldonado chucking answers in your general direction. An honest-to-god middle school teacher, this is a guy who knows from whence he speaks.

Today Torrey and I sit down to talk about What Lane?, a book with three starred reviews and a finger firmly on the pulse of the nation right now.
Betsy Bird:

Torrey, thank so much for having a chat with me today. So right off the bat the first thing that really struck me about WHAT LANE? was the fact that this is not your usual 200+ page tome of a book. It's quick and thin and there's not a drop of excess anywhere inside. Was that a purposeful move on your part? To write something middle schoolesque but with a short page count? And what do you see as the true advantages of books that do what yours does?
Torrey Maldonado: Your compliment is music to my ears-"This is not your usual tome of a book". And your second compliment? "It's quick and thin and there's not a drop of excess anywhere". Woah! Here's partly why your compliments are HUGE. I rev my books to read faster and be thinner. Secret Saturdays was 195 pages, Tight dropped to 177, and What Lane? is so thin that I must share how a reluctant tween reader reacted to it. He describes himself as "allergic to books", visits my classroom, flips What Lane? to the end, then nods. "A 126 pages? Say I won't read it ALL tonight." Let's jumbotron the BIG win here: KID WHO HATED TO READ, READS A BOOK IN A NIGHT. I've taught middle school for over twenty years and we know how hard it is for families and educators to hook kids to books. So What Lane? is a "Little Thin Book That Could". Could what? Hook as many to books.

BB: That's right! You're a middle school teacher but now you're in the weird situation where all the schools in the country are closed. How are you handling it all? How are your students doing?
BB: True. Okay, let's get back to your book. There's a real temptation on the part of reviewers and folks that write "think pieces" to call the slight increase in publishers' interest in putting out books by POC a "trend" rather than a change in the publishing industry. Your book also does something that will probably be called a "trend", which is discussing race from a frank and honest p.o.v. with kids. Was that always your initial hope with the book? BB:

Okay, so now I feel a little guilty about my next question, since it's not all that far off in terms of lumping you in with other books. But still, in a lot of ways, I feel like WHAT LANE? is a natural companion novel to our most recent Newbery Award winner NEW KID by Jerry Craft. Both acknowledge microagressions (and worse) from the get-go. What's your take on NEW KID? BB: What was the inspiration for writing WHAT LANE? in the first place? BB: As with your other books you include a LOT of superhero discussions in this novel. You kind of already mentioned it but were you a huge superhero fan as a kid? BB: And what's the reaction you most hope this book has on its readers? BB: This has been great, Torrey. So, finally, what are you working on next?
TM: Um-humm it IS a weird time. I feel as if I now Morse Code my lessons from an underground quarantined bunker. I video-teach, which raises a question. Do I only shave what students see of my head? Mr. Clean in the front? Blown-out fro in my back? I joke, yet maybe to cope with the weirdness of now. Jokes aside, for video-classes I still dress head-to-toe like I'm a teacher on Ellen about to be awarded a check. I do because it's "Eww" for adults in PJs to talk with students. Lots of students enjoy video-time. Some toy with backgrounds behind them. A student made hers a calm tropical beach. Here's the thing: unseen siblings in her room kept making 311 party-level noise. I asked, "Why'd you pick your background?" She replied, "You hear my house? I wish I was on a beach." Yeah, us both. So computer-trickery helps cope with cabin fever and overcrowding. A lot is lost in virtual teaching. I never thought I'd say it, yet I miss seeing bored or disagreeable micro-expressions like peer-to-peer side-eyes and more. Body language in gatherings is useful biofeedback to boost student-engagement. Being present is a present.

TM: There's a thing that happens to me. In a Brooklyn supermarket, this elderly White woman tells me, "Has anyone said you look like Michael Jordan?" That's one week. The next? "Has anyone said you look like Tiger Woods?" Where I teach, students say, "You look like 'The Rock' Dwayne Johnson". At times, it feels that's what reviewers and "think piece" writers do if they pair me and my books with other BIPOC and "trends". I hope What Lane? does what Oprah Winfrey sat me down and privately told me should be my hope. Okay, Oprah said it on TV but I felt like she was talking to me. She said after interviews people ask different forms of the same question-"Did what I do matter?" Oprah called the late great Maya Angelou her godmother. Maya said, '"Be a rainbow in somebody's cloud". I hope What Lane? is a rainbow-book that brightens kids' and families' cloudy situations. So far, tweets from librarians, teachers, and families say it's happening. Here's a tweet from a Virginian librarian. Kannan Cangro says, "The worst days are ones where I read a great book and know at least 3-4 kids I want to recommend it to, but I'm not in my library and can't just hand them it. What Lane? is that book for me right now."

TM: Did you just put What Lane? on the same level with a Newbery winner? Wow. Question: can you tell the Newbery judges that? LOL. There are so many cool things about your pairing. First, Jerry has called me his little brother and he's a big book-brother from another mother. As well as us knowing each other, our journey as readers shapes the books we make. As boys, the only books we liked were comic books so our books have the kaleidoscopic energy of comics. Growing up, we didn't see us in books, which is why New Kid and What Lane? centers boys like us and a diverse cast of races. Also, we like thin books and What Lane? is so light that there's a Twitter photo of me balancing it on one finger. "Great minds think alike" so it's worth noting that you and other librarians pair our books. Ro Menendez-an amazing Texan librarian-uses New Kid and my book, Tight, in book clubs. She says our books help kids analyze their behavior, identify their thought processes, and gives them words to name feelings and space to discuss tough topics in fun ways.

TM: A song lyric relates to my answer. Method Man, the rapper/actor, raps "Let me know it's real son, if it's really real. Something I could feel". I write reality and hope readers feel it. Let's see if What Lane? is real. With the pandemic, are we in a lane we've never been in before? Must we make new choices? Are we unsure of where things will lead? Are allies important? Are we seeing "hate crimes"? Do readers feel What Lane? is real? Beth Parmer-a K-5 librarian in Columbus, Ohio-told me that an Asian girl said what happens in What Lane? happened to her dad. Parmer said, "And I think about how hard that must be for a child to deal with, and while I can't take that pain or challenge away, your book gave us a space to process it."

TM: Another Rap lyric helps answer your question. Biggie raps, "Papa's been in school since days of underoos." Since days of underoos, I've imagined me web-slinging as Spider-Man. Middle school students where I teach visit me at lunch to do what I did as a middle schooler and what Stephen and his friends do in What Lane? They bond over comic books, Sci-Fi shows, and fantasy. A Hamilton musical song comes to mind, "My Shot". As a teacher and author, I know kids often will be what they see, kids are "everyday heroic", and they have seeds of greatness. So I'm not giving up my shot to expose readers to Black and Brown superheroes. Maybe super-input equals super-output and kids' heroism will blossom so they become their own type of real-world heroes that we need. It's why the half-African American and half-Puerto Rican Spider-Man from Into the Spider-verse explodes off of the first page of What Lane? and my book features Black Panther, Luke, and more.

TM: Two reactions of two people from two very different places in our country come to mind. Matthew Winner in Maryland had me on the Children's Book Podcast. He said, "I know that those children that you teach are there in your mind always when you write because I see it on the page. I felt like you've shown me and readers the truth." I hope more realize What Lane? has true unseen, unheard stories of young people. An educator and Minnesota mom- Julie Kirchner-tweeted about What Lane?, "Can't help but think of ALL the kids I want to hand this off to, but first up, my 13-year old! I want him to reflect on how he sees lanes in his own life and those around him". That's my other hope: more tweens and teens see middle school is a crossroads, racism puts us in different lanes, we get to choose who we'll be, and let's question if we're all steered to the same places. If more from different parts of our world have their reaction, maybe we can reroute certain trajectories and unite more as a human family.

TM: Nancy Paulsen and Penguin Kids and I are working on another middle grade book that has what excites readers about my other books. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle gives a nice reveal of what's to come in its compliment of Tight -"Moviegoers who sold out Marvel's 'Black Panther' at the box office will easily relate".

Big big thanks to Torrey for taking the time to answer all my questions. You can find it out at your local Indie bookstore's website, so go one and give it a buy.

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Who, Where, When, Why, What Lane? Talking with Torrey Maldonado - A Fuse #8 Production

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An interview can be hard when the book is dull or I have nothing to say. And it can be incredibly easy when you've got a man like Torrey Maldonado chucking answers in your general direction. An honest-to-god middle school teacher, this is a guy who knows from whence he speaks.

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Reviews:

Kirkus:  Bridges everyday racism and accountable allyship with sincerity. (Fiction. 10-14)

SLJ’s verdict: Maldonado uses a biracial adolescent boy’s perspective to draw his readers into an engaging story of identity and tough choices that will appeal to middle-schoolers everywhere. An ideal choice for school book clubs and advisory. Gr 5-8.

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#Black & White biracial character

#microagressions

#divorced families

#competitive piano

#realistic fiction

What does it feel like to be half white and half black?  To be changing lives and identities each week because your parents are divorced?  Eleven-year old Isabella feels half white and black, completely torn. Just when it seems nothing can bring Isabella’s family together -- Izzy is stopped by the police, her cellphone is mistaken for a gun and...Read Blended by Sharon Draper to find out more.

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Blended by Sharon M. Draper | Book Trailer

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Sharon M. Draper is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Literary Awards, whose books for young readers include Out of My MindCopper Sun, and Stella by Starlight. In 2015, Draper received the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime literary achievement. Draper's new book, Blended, tells the story of 11-year-old Isabella, a biracial girl struggling to define her identity after her parents' divorce. Jason Reynolds is the author of several books for young readers, including When I Was the Greatest, for which he earned the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent; and the Coretta Scott King Honor books All American Boys (co-written with Brendan Kiely), and The Boy in the Black Suit. This month, Reynolds wraps up his bestselling and award-winning Track series with Lu, about an outwardly confident yet inwardly insecure young track athlete who was born albino. We asked Draper and Reynolds to interview each other about their latest works and the similarities between their two characters.

Draper: First question-an easy one. If you had to draw a picture of Lu, how would he look? Facial features, hair, arms and legs, etc. The fact that he's albino is simply how he looks, not who he is (and it's cool that that's only mentioned occasionally). So who is Lu and how did you go about creating him?

Reynolds: That's a good question. I guess when I imagine him, he looks like Caleb McLaughlin, the black kid from the show Stranger Things. Except... albino. He'd be dressed in the coolest, most current style, and would walk with an overconfident bop to mask his insecurity. He's the kind of young man who sneaks a spritz of his father's cologne, is constantly fidgeting with the hemline of his shirt and the bottom of his jeans to make sure they fall onto his sneakers just right, and probably even practices clever things to say in the shower every morning.

I have some friends who are albino (and are nothing like Lu) and I've always been interested in the complexity of being black, but without melanin, which is often the very thing we use to qualify "varying degrees of blackness." We use our outsides to attempt to qualify our insides-or at least we pretend to-but that's just not the way culture and identity works. So I wanted to figure out how to address insecurity and how most times... most times we use outside elements like skin and clothing to actually hide what's happening inside.

I see some of this same motif in Blended. So I'll ask you the same question. Where does Izzy come from? Furthermore, how and why did you choose to have her be so attached to playing piano?

Draper: Izzy is biracial. Dad is black and mom is white, which makes Izzy, uh, what? She spends most of the book trying to figure that out.

Physically, she's a peanut-butter colored girl who's probably way too thin. Kids with lots of internal issues often manifest their confusions through their body image, often by overeating or undereating. She hasn't hit her adolescent growth spurt yet, so she's still "little girl skinny." Her hair is a big issue to her because it's got that wild thing going on-never smooth, never straight, often bunched up and confused just like she is. I think her efforts to control her hair are probably subliminal efforts to make her life smooth and easy, which it isn't and never will be.

It's interesting that both Lu and Izzy are seeking ways to address their insecurities while maintaining an outer, often shaky, sense of control.

The piano playing came from me. I guess I started playing when I was six or seven. My mother (who is one day going to be the subject of an unbelievable book) insisted her children be "cultured" and "proper." So we took piano lessons. Classical only (BTW, I can still sort of play that sonatina-badly!). I liked playing the piano, and got to be pretty good at it, but I always yearned to learn boogie and rock. But my mother gasped at the impropriety (she also had the most amazing vocabulary). So after I finished Blended, Isabella inspired me to go back to my music. I bought myself a keyboard-a Casio just like Izzy's! It's been a real pleasure to go back to the old pieces (I kept all my old sheet music) and I bought some new pieces as well. The music has been hidden in a very deep part of me for a very long time. I am very rusty, but I'm really enjoying digging back in my brain and finding lost music. Truly a joy.

Okay, next question for you-I like Lu's family, and his extended track family, especially Coach. None of them is perfect, but all of them are supportive of the young people. The hospital scene at the end is really cool. Write a description of your definition of "family," however that's defined, and why it's important to include family in novels for young adults.

Also, since I'm in an airport and have lots of time before my flight, here's another question... Lu seems to have a very good self-image, but he doubts his abilities as a hurdler. He second-guesses himself, pulls up short, and disappoints himself and his team and his coach. Talk a little about how this is so very typical of adolescents, and how every single one of them thinks they are the only one who has doubts or fears or uncertainties.

Reynolds: Yes! I should've mentioned Izzy existing in two worlds, but I have to say that I'm surprised you didn't mention the metaphor of the black and white keys of the piano also being in relationship to her identity. Or am I reaching? Because it definitely seemed like the piano, an inanimate object that serves as a confidant, this black and white thing that makes beauty when tended to, is representative of-or at least an appendage of-her. Sort of how Lu's hurdles are.

Those hurdles serve as not just "hurdles" and also not just insecurities. They also represent, quite simply, something new. He's been living his life a certain way for a long time and has figured out how to posture and position himself as untouchable. His excellence as a sprinter matched with his fancy clothes has created a kind of force field, but this new race has put him in a vulnerable situation. So does his new sibling. So do his new discoveries about his family. Suddenly everything feels new, and his normal defense mechanisms are being challenged. I went through this as a kid, and sometimes still go through it now. We crave consistency because it helps us manage, and sometimes mask, our insecurities. But when our level ground tilts, our insecurities are often exposed.

As far as writing family in novels for young adults, I think it's imperative. You know, there's this whole thing about killing off parents, or somehow separating them from the young people so that the story can be "more theirs." But I actually think it's far more important to write complex but loving families into books to remind young people that there can be a family member-biological and chosen-who can love and support them while still allowing them to be fully themselves. And if for some reason they truly have no one, well, then at least they'll know they have me.

Family is just as important in your novel, in all your novels, but in Blended, Izzy's family is also, just that-blended. I personally think it's great to see the world reflected, and lots of kids grow up in households where their parents aren't together, but usually people write blended families as objects of resentment on behalf of the child. Why write Izzy as a girl who happens to actually like the new loves of her parents' lives? Does this intentionally say anything about her personality, perhaps her ability to accept a certain change that, say, someone like Lu might not be so comfortable with?

Draper: Izzy didn't plan to like her parents' new romances. I think she's thankful that the fighting is over. Maybe now they can focus on her instead of each other. She's actually happier in a divorced situation. Her "blendedness," if that's a word, has made her stand out in ways that make her feel very uncomfortable. But she ultimately claims who she is with pride. And she learns to accept her blended family-at least it comes with love. Lots of kids only see the hatred in families of divorce, never the love. So Izzy perhaps can give them hope.

I see so many kids who live in unconventional households. Actually, there's no such thing as conventional any more. Adults make decisions and kids simply have to abide by those decisions. In most states, children have no say in custody decrees. It varies by state at what age a child can decide who to live with. But in most states they have to be at least 12. By that time their lives and attitudes about life have been sealed. Many children are unhappy, even mistreated, but the law favors the parents in most cases. Lu has a notably strong family-a mom and dad who love each other and love him. That's not true for so many kids. I hurt for those who have no voice and no choice.

About the black/white piano keys, I think I pretty subtly mentioned several times, but also show that the blending of separate individual notes can create a symphony of possibilities in her life. But whether it's one chord or a whole sonatina, the beauty and power of the black and white keys help her to heal from the black and white conflicts that will arise in her life. It's the Blending of all the elements, both musical and social, that hopefully make her life work.

I think Lu and Izzy would like each other. They've got different problems but strong personalities to persevere, and both have supportive families. I think readers will find enough similarities to see a connectivity between the two.
by Jason Reynolds. Atheneum/Dlouhy, $16.99, Oct. 23 ISBN 978-1-4814-5024-9 by Sharon M. Draper. Atheneum/Dlouhy, $16.99 Oct. 30 ISBN 978-1-4424-9500-5

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In Conversation: Sharon M. Draper and Jason Reynolds

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Sharon M. Draper is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Literary Awards, whose books for young readers include Out of My MindCopper Sun, and Stella by Starlight. In 2015, Draper received the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime literary achievement.

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A Reading Group Guide to
Blended
By Sharon Draper
About the Book
She's Isabella to her dad and Izzy to her mom. She plays a fancy piano at her dad's large house, and a portable keyboard at her mom's small one. Spending every other week with each parent and their significant other, she's a "kid sliced in half." And since her dad's black and her mom's white, her identity and her relationships seem even more complicated. Isabella knows she's loved, but the hostility between her parents and the complexities of juggling two lives make things challenging. Luckily, when things get hard, she has her deep love for the piano, two great friends, and a soon-to-be stepbrother who has her back.
Discussion Questions
1. After finishing the novel, go back and reread the dedication. Why does Isabella feel it's important to try to "meld and merge, synthesize and harmonize, to create family fusion." What does the author mean by "family fusion"? Do you think Isabella and her family create fusion by the end of the book? Explain your answer. Can you relate to any of Isabella's family dynamics? Why do you think it's important to have supportive people in your life?

2. Find examples throughout the book where Isabella uses music and musical terms, especially harmony, to talk about her blended family. Why is music a good metaphor for her situation? How do piano keys specifically reflect her life?

3. The first chapter opens with seven words that evoke the senses. Talk about the words, including the made-up word, boomble. What do you hear or see when reading each of the words? Why do you think the author started the book this way?

4. Isabella lets the reader know early on that she feels like "a kid sliced in half." She also makes the related comment, "There's pretty much two of me." What is it about Isabella's situation that causes her to feel this way? Do external and internal factors play a role? How would you react if you were in her place? Discuss whether this feeling changes over the course of the book, and if so, how.

5. How would you describe the relationship between Isabella's mother and father? Give examples that illustrate your description, and analyze why her parents act like they do. Why does her father call the police in chapter 54, and how do Isabella and her mother react? Why is this an important moment?

6. Of her mother, Isabella says, "Mom is sensitive, so I have to be careful." What are some examples of her mother's sensitive nature? What does Isabella keep to herself so that she doesn't make her mother feel bad? What are the consequences of trying to protect her mother instead of expressing her own needs and preferences? Have you ever been in a situation like this? What advice would you have for Isabella?

7. Describe Isabella's father, including his personality, work ethic, strengths, and weaknesses. What is his relationship like with Isabella? Identify times she enjoys being with him, and discuss why. What makes Anastasia a good match for him?

8. When Isabella teases her father about ironing his jeans, he explains, "I think it's important we look our very best at all times." By "us," he means "people of color . . . Black folks." What incidents in the story show you why he might think that way? How does that make you feel? How does his approach to looking his best contrast with Isabella's mother's way of dressing? Why do you think that is?

9. Describe Anastasia's personality. Give specific examples of what she does to welcome Isabella into the house she shares with Isabella's father, and what Isabella likes about her. Do you think Anastasia treats Isabella like her daughter? How is she different from Isabella's mother? How does Isabella feel about having a stepmother? Do you think adding a new family member can sometimes be a difficult adjustment? Explain your answer.

10. Describe Darren's appearance, personality, interests, and hopes. How does Isabella feel about him? How does he treat her? What brings them closer together? What kind of qualities make for a strong friendship or sibling relationship?

11. Talk about John Mark's personality and circumstances and his role in Isabella's life. How does he reach out to Isabella to show he cares about her? How does he approach his proposal to Isabella's mother? Discuss the format of chapter 43 and how it reveals Isabella's uncertainties about John Mark's proposal. Do you think Isabella is right to be concerned? Do you ever find it challenging to voice your opinions, especially to adults? Explain your answer.

12. A salesgirl says to Isabella, "You are so pretty-really exotic-looking!" Then she asks, "Are you mixed?" Clint later says, "Mixed kids are always pretty." Discuss both of these encounters, explaining what they show and why they are upsetting to Isabella. How could the salesgirl or Clint have better handled these situations?

13. Recount the incident with the noose in Imani's locker. Think about what happened in the classroom earlier that was related to the noose. How does Imani react on both occasions, and why? What does the school do about the incident? What does the incident show about at least one of Imani's fellow students? How does Isabella feel about what happened? What might you do to make Imani feel safer and respected at school and in the community?

14. Isabella's father explains to her that in stores, "Black folks are followed more often than others" by security people. How does Isabella feel about this? Relate it to the incident when Isabella and Imani go into an upscale store at the mall and the security guard asks them to leave. How do they react? Why don't they tell Imani's mother about it? Are you surprised to see kids your age treated this way? Why do you think people stereotype others?

15. It comes as a shock to Darren and Isabella when they are pulled over by the police and accused of robbing a bank. Describe the episode in detail, and think about why it escalated so quickly. Why do the police throw Darren on the ground? Why does the police officer shoot her gun? Analyze the scene in terms of how it affects the two young people and what it shows about racism. What actions don't you agree with? What actions do you agree with? How could the police have acted differently?
Extension Activities The Real You
Mr. Kazilly assigns an essay called "The Real Me," saying, "I want each of you to consider your personal identity. . . . Each of you is uniquely wonderful. I want you to think about that as you write." Ask students to write a four-paragraph essay using this same theme.
Musical Notes into Words
Mr. K. also introduces the class to Langston Hughes's poetry. After reading some of his poems, Isabella says, "Poetry is kinda like my music-it paints a picture in my head, only with words." Have students research poetry, finding different styles, formats, and poets. Ask them to identify a poet they like, and select one poem by that poet. Using this poem as a model, have students write their own. Then have a class discussion about their experiences writing their poems, and whether they felt the same way as Isabella. Consider having volunteers read their personal poems or their favorite poet's poems aloud, and discuss the differences between reading and hearing a poem spoken.
The Music Is Me
In chapter 47, Isabella uses vivid imagery to describe the way music makes her feel. Review the two-page chapter with your students. Then choose a selection of music to play for the class and have them react to the music by jotting down sentences and phrases like Isabella does, making the language as vivid as possible. Have a class discussion to share their responses.
Black Lives Matter
The scene where Darren and Isabella are pulled over and a police officer shoots her gun is unfortunately similar to incidents across the US in recent years. Have students work in pairs to identify and research cases of police shootings of unarmed black children or teenagers. Each pair should prepare a presentation for the class about the facts of their case, the effects on family and community, and the consequences, if any, for the police involved. Finish with a class discussion about groups speaking out against these injustices, and any steps that are being done on local or state levels to address and try to prevent future incidents.
Two Families Blend
How are Isabella's two families and households alike? How are they different? Have students each create a large Venn diagram. Where the circles intersect, they should put Isabella/Izzy's name and the similarities between her two homes. They should label the other parts of the circles as "Mom's House" and "Dad's House" and fill in the space with descriptions of the differences between these two places.
Guide written by Kathleen Odean, a youth librarian for seventeen years who chaired the 2002 Newbery Award Committee. She now gives all-day workshops on new books for children and teens. She tweets at @kathleenodean.
This guide has been provided by Simon & Schuster for classroom, library, and reading group use. It may be reproduced in its entirety or excerpted for these purposes.

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Blended by Sharon M. Draper - Eleven-year-old Isabella's blended family is more divided than ever in this "timely but genuine" (Publishers Weekly) story abou...

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#Black & Japanese biracial character

#microagressions
# sexism
#girls in science
#novel in verse
#historical fiction circa 1969

Imagine you couldn’t take classes because you are a girl.  Imagine people doubted you because of your skin color.  This is the life of 12-year-old half Japanese, half black Mimi in 1969, who dreams of being an astronaut but is dragged back to earth by the microaggressions and bigotry she faces on a daily basis. Will Mimi’s protest of sitting in shop class and demanding to take it make a difference?  Will she get suspended for standing up for what is right?  Will her classmates accept her for who she is?  Read Full Cicada Moon to find out...

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KidLit Craft is pleased to welcome Marilyn Hilton to the blog!

San Francisco Bay Area-based author Marilyn Hilton writes lyrical middle grade novels in both prose and verse. As I read novel-in-verse, , I was struck by how beautiful storytelling can be when an author use poetic techniques. And Marilyn's first middle grade novel, , is a lovely example of prose with a poetic soul. We are delighted to share Marilyn's reflections on her writing, including her insights into historical research and the revision process for a novel in verse.
Read a full craft review of Full Cicada Moon, if you haven't yet.
Welcome to KidLit Craft, Marilyn. Let's start at the beginning. What inspired you to write this story?
Marilyn Hilton: I wanted to tell a story that featured a protagonist who looked like my children, who are mixed-race. I wanted to tell a story from their perspective so that they could have a voice and a presence in literature.

Why did you write in verse rather than prose? When I began writing this story, I felt it so urgently that I just began writing in verse form to get the story down. But the more I worked on the book, the more I realized that poetry was the perfect form for telling the story. And I loved writing that way! It was extremely freeing to include only what was necessary to say-and from the depths of the character. As you noted in your previous blog post, it's a very intimate way of telling a story.

What came first? Mimi as a character or this particular historical setting? Definitely, Mimi came first. I could picture her and hear her voice. I knew her family and their history. I knew Mimi's situation. Then I chose to place her in a small Vermont town in 1969, when it would have been likely that no other families would look like the Olivers, and at a time of great social change. Having grown up in New Hampshire and Massachusetts...er, many years ago...I knew that the fictional town of Hillsborough, Vermont, in 1969 would be portrayed realistically.

Given the pivotal time in history and the story's specific setting, how did you go about tackling your research?Researching for Full Cicada Moon was a wonderful experience, and I could write a whole book about it! But to make it short, I studied documentaries, books, and magazine and newspaper articles, I talked with people who'd lived then and had experiences similar to Mimi's, I remembered my own experiences growing up in New England. I consulted pop music charts and fashion magazines, and scoured eBay for historical artifacts (such as the coin that Timothy gives to Mimi). Also, I had studied in Kyoto for a year after graduating from college (with a degree in Japanese), so I understood some nuance of language and culture. And I had consultants who reviewed the text as I wrote. For the time I was writing this book, I was virtually living in the 1960s.

Did you write your poems sequentially or did you write them out of order? Can you talk a bit about that process?For the most part, I wrote the poems sequentially. I used a spreadsheet that tracked each poem's title, what the poem was about, and what it had to accomplish (as if each poem were a mini-chapter). I followed that outline pretty closely. I also had columns for the date and time of day each poem took place, the phase of the moon, the weather, and notes. These columns were critical to the book, because I wanted the story to be as grounded in reality as possible. Finding the moon phases was easy, as it was on the Internet. Finding accurate weather conditions was harder, because 1969 weather records for central Vermont weren't always available. But-so lucky for me-my great-grandmother had kept a diary nearly every year of her life and recorded the weather at the top of each page. She lived in central New Hampshire, which I figured was close enough to Hillsborough, Vermont, so I used a little poetic license by applying those conditions to Mimi's story.

What was your revision process like?
After I handed in my first draft, my editor felt the story arc was pretty solid, but she asked me to fill in some holes, strengthen some threads with new poems, and do a bit of reorganization. Over the course of revisions, we decided to cut two poems that ultimately didn't fit this book. The rest of the process was about tightening the content of poems and rewriting parts of poems for clarification.

Was this your first novel in verse? If so, what did you learn about craft from this writing experience? Full Cicada Moon was my first novel in verse. I was nervous about starting it, but so often, practice is the best teacher. I wanted to tell this story, so I plunged in anyway, sensing I'd figure it out as I went along. And I did: I learned that each poem had to have its own arc, but some larger arcs took three or more poems to be completed. Sometimes the poems were interspersed throughout the story, and sometimes they appeared contiguously. I also played with line breaks and where to place lines and stanzas on the page.

How has writing a novel in verse informed your prose efforts?
When I first entered graduate school (for creative writing), I wanted to focus on writing prose. But I ended up taking lots of seminars in writing poetry as well. Poetry forced me to think about each word I chose, asked me to consider how my words could do double duty, and led me to create fresh images and metaphors that could sustain themselves throughout the poem. I'm so glad I had that training because it helped me apply those lessons to my prose.

For writers tackling a novel in verse, do you have any resources you recommend?
The best resources are the books that have been written in verse. Study how the poems are structured individually and then collectively as they tell the overall narrative. Look for poetic techniques-such as recurring metaphors or motifs-read the poems out loud for rhythm and internal or end rhyme, notice how the visual layout of a poem on the page expresses emotion. You might also take a poetry class or join a critique group that lets you experiment to find your poetic voice and style. Then, write your verse novel, trusting that you'll figure out the unknowns as you go along.

What is next on the horizon for Marilyn Hilton's fans?
I've been writing more poetry over the past year (and two of my poems will appear in the March 2017 issue of Glassworks Magazine ). As for my novels, I'm finishing one middle-grade story, with a few other books waiting in line.

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Author Marilyn Hilton on Writing a Novel in Verse * Blog

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interview by Kristi Wright KidLit Craft is pleased to welcome Marilyn Hilton to the blog! San Francisco Bay Area-based author Marilyn Hilton writes lyrical middle grade novels in both prose and verse. As I read novel-in-verse, Full Cicada Moon, I was struck by how beautiful storytelling can be when an author use poetic techniques.

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FULL CICADA MOON by Marilyn Hilton Book Trailer

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Kirkus: Perhaps a few books manage to capture tweendom's chaos, but too few catch its poetry.  In her acknowledgments, the author states that Mimi is “for anyone who has big dreams but is short on courage. By the book’s end, readers will be moved by the empathetic lyricism of Mimi’s maturing voice. (glossary, pronunciation guide) (Verse/historical fiction. 8-12)

SLJ’s Verdict: An excellent addition to the growing shelf of novels in verse with culturally diverse protagonists. Gr 4-8.

Awards:

Jane Addams Children's Book Award Nominee for Older Children (2016)

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2017)

Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature for Children (2015)

Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee (2018)

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Linda Sue Park’s Dismantling of the single westward expansion story and Prairie Lotus book talk:  

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Linda Sue Park’s Dismantling of the single westward expansion story and Prairie Lotus book talk:  

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Gyy5aZ6Ag

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Excellent Resources to Support Reading Prairie Lotus:  

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Excellent Resources to Support Reading Prairie Lotus:  

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"...captivating...The parallels to the Little House series are deliberate-and at times delicious...For Little House fans, novels such as Prairie Lotus...expand Wilder's fictional terrain in ways that are not only deeply satisfying but crucial to our national identity. Prairie Lotus is an independent work.

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Kirkus:  Remarkable. (Historical fiction. 8-12)

SLJ’s Verdict: A sometimes uncomfortable yet triumphant story from the world of “Little House on the Prairie” told through a marginalized perspective; this is a must-read for middle grades and beyond. Gr 5-8.

Awards:

​​Amazon.com Best Children’s Books of 2020: Ages 9-12

ALSC Notables Books 2021

Asian/Pacific American Award 2021, Children’s literature honor book

Capitol Choices 2021

CCBC Choices 2021

Chicago Public Library Best Fiction for Older Readers 2020

Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Historical Fiction of 2020

New York Public Library’s Best Books for Kids 2020

NPR’s Best Books of 2020

Parents Magazine Best Children’s Books of 2020

Shelf Awareness Best Children’s & Teen Books of 2020

Washington Post Best Children’s Books of 2020

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Kirkus:  A book that offers readers a stark look at the apartheidlike reality that exists for black people in America. (Fiction. 8-12)

SLJ’s Verdict: This is Draper at her best, penning a current and ultimately uplifting story. It deserves a place on library shelves along with her other outstanding works. Gr 4–7.

Awards:

CCBC Choices (Cooperative Children's Book Council)

Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award Master List

Mark Twain Award (MO)

Georgia Children's Book Award Finalist

YARP Award Nominee (SD)

Bluestem Book Award Master List (IL)

Choose to Read Ohio Booklist Selection

Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year Selection Title

Ohioana Book Award Finalist

YouPer Award Top Ten Title

Colorado Children’s Book Award Nominee

South Carolina Children's Book Award

South Dakota Teen Choice Award Honor Title

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This is Just a Test by  Madelyn Rosenberg & Wendy Wan-Long Shang

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This is Just a Test by  Madelyn Rosenberg & Wendy Wan-Long Shang

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#Jewish & Chinese biracial character

#coming of age

#family tensions

#Cold War hysteria

#laugh-out-loud humor
#historical fiction circa 1983

While 12-year old David Da-Wei Horowitz and his friends are dealing with the fear of nuclear war, a WWIII is looming for David’s cultural allegiance from his Jewish and Chinese grandmothers as they plan for his bar mitzvah.  To relieve part of his stress, David agrees to build a bomb shelter but his new popular friend, Scott, doesn’t want to include David’s best friend Hector.  With anxieties mounting, will David be able to live with his guilt of discluding Hector?  Will he live through the planning of his bar mitzvah to become a man?  Or will a nuclear bomb get them all?  Find out by reading This is Just a Test...

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Madelyn Rosenberg & Wendy Wan-Long Shang Book Talk & Reading at 2017 National Book Awards:

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Madelyn Rosenberg & Wendy Wan-Long Shang Book Talk & Reading at 2017 National Book Awards:

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Madelyn Rosenberg & Wendy Wan-Long Shang: 2017 National Book Festival

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Kirkus: A nostalgic and heartwarming period coming-of-age comedy. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 8-12)

SLJ’s verdict:  Giggle-inducing, light, and charmingly realistic fiction that will resonate with a wide variety of readers. Gr 4-8.

Awards:

Children’s History Book Prize Finalist

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Lupe Wong Won't Dance by Donna Barba Higuera

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Lupe Wong Won't Dance by Donna Barba Higuera

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#Mexican & Chinese biracial character

#microagressions

#friendship

#racism in square dancing
#baseball fan

#realistic fiction

Lupe Wong is half Chinese and half Mexican and dreams of becoming a major league pitcher and meeting her hero Fu Li Hernandez the first Asian Latino pitcher in the major leagues.  After her grandfather promises that she can meet him if she gets straight As, Lupe Wong makes it her mission to get square dancing canceled in PE because she has no rhythm and will not get the A she needs.  Although she originally tries to get square dancing canceled for selfish reasons and alienates her two best friends and her whole class in the process, what she uncovers makes her stand up for what is right.  Why can’t girls choose each other as partners? Why would a racist song like “Turkey in the Straw” be used in these units of study?  Why should we engage in a dance that doesn’t include everyone?  While issues of heteronormativity, identity, equity and inclusion are explored, does Lupe eventually get square dancing canceled?  In the process does she win her friends back and defeat the bully?  Read Lupe Wong Won't Dance...

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Donna Barba Higuera on Lupe Wong Won't Dance

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NAywwWvdI0

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If you live in the United States, chances are high that, growing up, you had to take square dancing in gym class. I myself spent a week at my Rochester, New York, high school learning to allemande left and right-skills I was highly unlikely to ever need again. At the time, although I thought it was odd, I was merely grateful for not having to change into my gym clothes.

As it turns out, there's an unusual reason why so many American students spend their formative years learning to do-si-do. Twenty-eight out of 50 states have declared square dancing their official dance. This is part of a coordinated campaign-a dancespiracy, if you will-to make square dancing the official dance of the United States, in the hope that doing so "would give square dancing and its related activities more visibility and have a positive effect on recruiting new dancers."

But the institutionalization of square dancing isn't just about the joy of dance. It's also about America's legacy of racism and anti-Semitism-and the surprising tools that get used in the effort to uphold whiteness.

Henry Ford was scared of jazz

To understand how square dancing became a state-mandated means of celebrating Americana, it's necessary to go back to Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Vehicles. Ford ; he hated the Charleston. He also really hated Jewish people, and believed that Jewish people invented jazz as part of a nefarious plot to corrupt the masses and take over the world-a theory that might come as a surprise to the black people who actually did invent it.

In volume three of Ford's The International Jew series, written in 1921, he writes:

"Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent homes and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin."

Like Hitler, who greatly admired Ford and even mentioned him approvingly in , Ford believed that Jewish people were evil geniuses diabolically planning to control the world. Black people, he thought, were not necessarily evil, but certainly not as swift as white people, and were particularly prone to being manipulated and controlled by "the Jews."

Ford believed he would be able to counteract what he saw as the unwholesome influence of jazz on America.

His view of race now forms the basis of the "Democratic Plantation" theory that many of today's conservatives have embraced, arguing that liberals and Democrats are "the real racists" in that they nefariously support social welfare programs only in order to manipulate black people into not voting Republican.

Ford hired black workers, and paid them the same as his white workers. But he was very concerned that they, along with his other workers, would be morally corrupted by the evil forces of jazz. Jazz, he believed, would lead them astray, propelling them toward liquor, tobacco, sex, and all kinds of other sins.

Ford and his wife had long had an interest in what he termed "old fashion dancing." When he bought the Wayside Inn in Sudsbury, Mass, in 1923, he hired a man named Benjamin Lovett to not only teach square dancing to him and his wife, but also to guests of the Inn. At this time, however, the dance form was already seen as old-fashioned and, well, . Even in the country, where these kind of dances had once been popular, jazz and swing were taking over.

Square dancing as sanctuary

By bringing back square dancing, as well as other primarily Anglo-Saxon dances like waltzes and quadrilles, Ford believed he would be able to counteract what he saw as the unwholesome influence of jazz on America. People, he imagined, would leave the dance halls and cabarets in droves to swing their partners round and round at liquor-free square dance clubs. If jazz was the cause of America's moral decay, he reasoned, the road to repair it could be as simple as replacing it with fiddles and square dances.

In order to bring his dream to life, Ford poured tons of money into square dancing and country music in general. In 1926, he published an instruction manual for aspiring square dancing instructors titled "Good Morning: After a Sleep of Twenty-Five Years, Old-Fashioned Dancing is Being Revived by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford." He also required his employees to attend the square dancing events he created for them, funded fiddling contests and radio shows promoting "old time dancing music," as well as the creation of square dancing clubs across the US-where modern, Western-style square dancing as we know it now was really created.

Perhaps ironically, given Ford's intent to squash the influence of black music, America's square dancing tradition-like nearly everything else- was in fact built by black people. While European dance traditions like the French quadrille certainly informed the evolution of square dancing, the addition of the call-and-response form of calling out dance moves initially started with the black slaves, who were required to perform at white dance balls in order to reproduce the steps themselves without formal dance training.

Nonetheless, Ford saw these dances as intrinsically white, and thus more intrinsically wholesome. Along with his wife and their square dance instructor Benjamin Lovett, he campaigned to bring square dancing to the physical education classes of students across the country, believing it would teach children "social training, courtesy, good citizenship, along with rhythm." The schools agreed, and by 1928, almost half the schools in America were teaching square dancing and other forms of old-fashioned dancing to students.

Although Ford never fully supplanted jazz, he did spark a revival of interest in square dancing. Newspapers published full-page dancing instructions; 34 colleges across America started teaching early American dancing. It was practically a national rage again for a few years-before dying out again.

Square dancing for America

But square dancing did not go quietly into that good night. In the 1930s, another square dance aficionado-a Colorado school superintendent named Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw -helped revive the tradition once again, and continued Ford's quest to spread square dance to schools across the country. He added to Ford's "Good Morning" instruction manual and created the "Lloyd Shaw Folk Dance Program," traveling the country in the hopes of getting schools to implement it into their physical education programs. As you might have guessed, he was successful in these ventures.

Through the next few decades, Modern Western square dance clubs popped up all over the country. In 1965, these clubs-initially led by the California-based National Folk Dance Committee-began their long quest to establish square dancing as the official folk dance of the US.

From 1973 to 2003, there were over 30 bill proposals to make square dance the official folk dance of the United States. Curiously enough though, those who were most opposed to this were folklorists and square dancing purists, who thought that the Western-style square dancing promoted by these clubs was tainted by newfangled moves and their tendency to use recorded music rather than live fiddlers.

The plot to designate square dance as the official folk dance of the country was somewhat doomed from the start.

The attempt to nationalize square dancing was granted in 1982-but only temporarily. Sponsored by the late West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, a bill passed by the House and Senate and signed by then-president Ronald Reagan declared square dancing the national folk dance of the US for the years 1982 and 1993. The bill praised square dancing because "the American people value the display of etiquette among men and women which is a major element of square dancing," and as a "traditional form of family recreation" that "dissolves arbitrary social distinctions."

The temporary status of the US national dance had a lot to do with the country's general caution about declaring national symbols. The US has a national bird (the bald eagle), a national tree (the oak tree), a national flower (American rose), and a national mammal (the bison)-but not much else. Declaring a national symbol is a very big deal. Thus, the plot to designate square dance as the official folk dance of the country was somewhat doomed from the start.

Yet, the square dancers would not be thwarted so easily. National groups like the United States Square Dancers and the American Folk Dance committee of LEGACY, International coordinated local and state square dance clubs to lobby their legislators to make square dance their official state folk dance. By convincing two-thirds of the states to do this, they hoped to be able to reintroduce the bill to Congress. To what end? Having more people to square dance with, I suppose.

There's nothing inherently wrong with square dancing-but there is something wrong with declaring it to be more valuable than any other form of dance.

Since no states at the time even had previously established "state folk dances," square dance didn't exactly have a lot of competition. Leaders of these clubs pushed the idea of square dancing as emblematic of "family values" and "American heritage" upon legislators in hopes of getting them to sponsor such bills, to great success. In a letter to the Washington Post defending the push to make square dance the official state dance of Maryland, Richard Peterson, state chairman for Maryland for the American folk dance bill, pleaded, "If we don't begin to preserve our true American heritage now, what will we have to leave our children?" To which one might respond: Oh, I don't know-maybe jazz?

Indeed, as Eric Zorn wrote in 1990 for the Chicago Tribune, there's nothing inherently wrong with square dancing-but there is something sinister about declaring it to be more valuable than any other form of dance. "Legislatively recognizing one folk dance form, or any art form, and placing it above all others is wrong because it denies the diversity of cultural, ethnic and social traditions in America," he explained. At a 1988 hearing in Washington DC, Zorn wrote, the people testifying against a motion to make square dancing the official American folk dance included "an African-American tap dancer, a Puerto Rican folk music and dance leader, [and] a Native American Indian dancer." The tap dancer, Honi Coles, noted, "I could walk up and down 125th Street [in Harlem] and shout, `Square dance! Square dance!` and no one would have the faintest idea what I would be talking about."

As innocuous as state-sponsored square dancing may seem, it's just one of the many small ways that oppression has shaped the history and culture of the US. If Henry Ford hadn't been a racist and anti-Semite who believed jazz would be the ruin of our country, square dancing would probably not be a state dance anywhere. And you almost definitely would not have had to do it in gym class.

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America's wholesome square dancing tradition is a tool of white supremacy

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If you live in the United States, chances are high that, growing up, you had to take square dancing in gym class. I myself spent a week at my Rochester, New York, high school learning to allemande left and right-skills I was highly unlikely to ever need again.

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"Jazz is a Jewish creation," automative tycoon Henry Ford wrote in his anti-Semitic publication, The International Jew. "The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin."

Ford had a solution: square dancing. He saw jazz and its related dancing styles as a force for moral decay, and sought to cure it by bringing back traditional folk dances. In doing so, Ford rewrote the cultural history of the dance form and set the stage for a pantheon of racist ideas that still animate modern white supremacist movements.

Most Americans rightly think of jazz as an African-American art form. But Ford, the only American personally praised by in Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, saw jazz dancing as part of a conspiracy to throw America into a dark age.

Henry Ford, the nation's first billionaire and the publisher of such anti-Semitic literature as 'The International Jew.'Getty Images

Ford sparked a national movement in the by pouring a small fortune into revitalizing square dancing in the 1920's, decades after it was abandoned by American pop culture. He funded radio shows and dance clubs and invited hundreds of dance instructors to his home. Thirty-four colleges added "early American dancing" to their curricula.

Ford's attempt to vitalize square dancing as a white supremacist project made headlines again in the last few weeks after Wonkette's Robyn Pennacchia excavated it for her Twitter followers. Pennacchia was researching the history of state symbols when she realized that her state, Illinois, had an official state dance.

"Henry Ford thought that because jazz was getting all these people to go out and drink and smoke cigarettes and have sex, that replacing jazz with square dancing and old-time music and things he thought of as more white and more gentile would make people more moral again," Pennacchia told Mic on Thursday. "Because he was creepy and racist and hated Jewish people."

As it turned out, 28 states had made square dancing the state dance as a part of a larger push in the late 1960's to make folk dancing the country's national dance. President Ronald Reagan capitulated briefly in the 1980's, declaring square dancing the national dance.

The states in dark green are where the traditionalist dance movement was able to lobby for square dancing to become the official state dance.George Steptoe/Mic

So where do Jewish people come into all of this? In The International Jew, Ford outlined a conspiracy wherein Jewish elites were attempting to re-engineer society to replace white protestants with a compliant black underclass. He wrote:

If the conditions in America continue to develop along the same lines as in the last generation, if the immigration statistics and the same proportion of births among all the nationalities remain the same, our imagination may picture the United States of 50 or 100 years hence as a land inhabited only by Slaves, Negroes and Jews, wherein the Jew will naturally occupy the position of economic leadership.

If that sounds absurd, consider that this is still popular theory with modern white supremacists, who've held rallies in Tennessee and Charlottesville, Virginia, where a popular chant was "Jews will not replace us!"

Ford was a great innovator of racist ideologies that are popular today. The perceived demographic threat to white Protestants outlined above is still trotted out regularly by the far right in describing Europe's refugee crisis. He also was an early articulator of the theory that African-Americans only vote for Democrats in order to expand the welfare state.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that square dancing isn't a lily-white style of dance at all. It was largely invented by slaves, who used the "swing your partner do-si-do" call-and-response technique to do away with the need for a dance instructor. White people found all of that shouting vulgar, until they'd fully adopted the dance style themselves. It's a story of appropriation that's repeated every generation since with blues, rock, rap and countless other black innovations.

In an attempt to cure the United States of an alleged plague of immoral music, Ford re-enacted the same trope used by white supremacists throughout world history: Selling a vision of a racially homogenous future using a fable about an America that never existed.

Dec. 19, 2017, 10:25 a.m.: This article has been updated.

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How square dancing became a weapon of white supremacy against an anti-Semitic jazz dance conspiracy

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"Jazz is a Jewish creation," automative tycoon Henry Ford wrote in his anti-Semitic publication, The International Jew. "The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin." Ford had a solution: square dancing.

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History of the song, "Turkey in the straw"

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History of the song, "Turkey in the straw"

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Editor's note: This article is about a virulently racist song. Read no farther if you wish to avoid racist imagery and slurs.

"Nigger Love A Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!" merits the distinction of the most racist song title in America. Released in March 1916 by Columbia Records, it was written by actor Harry C. Browne and played on the familiar depiction of black people as mindless beasts of burden greedily devouring slices of watermelon.

I came across this gem while researching racial stereotypes. I was a bit conflicted over whether the song warranted a listen. Admittedly, though, beneath my righteous indignation, I was rather curious about how century-old, overt racism sounded and slightly amused by the farcical title. When I started the song, the music that tumbled from the speakers was that of the ever-recognizable jingle of the ice cream truck. (For the record, not all ice cream trucks play this same song, but a great many of them do.)

As quickly as it began, the music paused, and this call-and-response ensued:

Browne: "You niggers quit throwin' them bones and come down and get your ice cream!"

Black men (incredulously): "Ice Cream?!?"

Browne: "Yes, ice cream! Colored man's ice cream: WATERMELON!!"

My mouth dropped. The music immediately resumed and so did the racism. I soon realized that the ice cream truck song was forever ruined for me, especially once the chorus began:
Origin of the song

Nigger love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

Nigger love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

For here, they're made with a half a pound of co'l

There's nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon

I wondered how such a prejudiced song could have become the anthem of ice cream and childhood summers. I learned that though Browne was fairly creative in his lyrics, the song's premise and its melody are nearly as old as America itself. As often happens with matters of race, something that is rather vanilla in origin is co-opted and sprinkled with malice along the way.

For his creation, Browne simply used the well-known melody of the early 19th century song " Turkey in the Straw," which dates to the even older and traditional British song " The (Old) Rose Tree." The tune was brought to America's colonies by Scots-Irish immigrants who settled along the Appalachian Trail and added lyrics that mirrored their new lifestyle.

The first and natural inclination, of course, is to assume that the ice cream truck song is simply paying homage to "Turkey in the Straw," but the melody reached the nation only after it was appropriated by traveling blackface minstrel shows. There is simply no divorcing the song from the dozens of decades it was almost exclusively used for coming up with new ways to ridicule, and profit from, black people.
Blackface minstrels steal the show

In the late 1820s, the music was given new lyrics, which dripped with racism, and titled " Zip Coon." The blackface character of the same name parodied a free black man attempting to conform to white high society by dressing in fine clothes and using big words. Fifty years later in post-bellum America, the character became an archetype of the black urbanite and propelled minstrel shows to the height of their popularity. Zip Coon was the city-slicker counterpart to the dimwitted, rural blackface character whose name became infamous in 20th century America: Jim Crow. These two characters would often interact onstage and were the inspiration for the hugely successful Amos 'n' Andy act decades later.

The lyrics of "Zip Coon" follow the namesake through encounters with possums, playing the banjo and courting a woman whose skin was so black that he calls her "ol Suky blue skin." A century later, it was still celebrated and inspiring America's music. The recognizable melody aside, we've all sung a variation of the lyrics. The chorus goes:

O zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.

(If this sounds similar to the Academy Award winning " Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," it's because that song was derived from this chorus.)

At the turn of the 20th century, one of the nation's most popular collectibles was the coon card - a postcard with racist artwork, such as bug-eyed, clown-face blacks eating watermelon. These items were essentially the racist version of trading cards and were nearly ubiquitous. Browne meshed the theme of the popular coon cards with the familiar melody, and voilà: "Nigger Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The ice cream crossover happened concurrently: 19th century ice cream parlors played the popular minstrel songs of the day. After World War II, the advent of the automobile and the ensuing sprawl required parlors to devise a way to take their products to customers. Ice cream trucks were the solution, and a music box was installed in them as a way to announce their presence in neighborhoods. Naturally, the traditional minstrel tunes of the previous century were employed to evoke the memorable parlor experience.
Race, ice cream and America
And this is the story of why our beloved ice cream truck plays blackface minstrel music that sends kids dashing into homes in a Pavlovian frenzy searching for money to buy a Popsicle.

Here in the nation's capital, the cherry blossoms have come and gone. This means the warm weather will soon bring out the ice cream trucks, and I'll be confronted once again by their inconvenient truth. It's not new knowledge that matters of race permeate the depths of our history and infiltrate the most innocent of experiences, even the simple pleasure of ice cream (who can forget Eddie Murphy's famous, NSFW routine about the poor black experience with ice cream trucks?). However, when the reach of racism robs me of fond memories from my childhood, it feels intensely personal again.

Whenever I hear the music now, the antique voice laughing about niggers and watermelon fills my head. I can live with this, but what's to be done on the summer day when my children's eyes light up at the far-off sound of the familiar melody, and they dash in a frenzy toward me for change? Do I empower them with the history of our country, or encourage the youthful exuberance induced by the ice cream truck? Is it my responsibility to foul the sweet taste of ice cream with their first taste of racism?

The answer is intellectually complex, but parental intuition provides clarity. When teeth fall out, I blame the dollar under their pillow on the tooth fairy. When presents appear overnight under the fir tree, I say Santa Claus is the culprit. And so when a song about niggers and watermelon fills the suburban air, I will smile and hand over money from my pocket. The sight of my children enjoying a Good Humor ice cream bar will fight back the racist song that lampooned black people who happened to be in good humor. The delivery of the cold hard truth can wait until another day.

Theodore R. Johnson III is a writer, naval officer and former White House fellow. His writing focuses on race, society and politics. " Talking About Race And Ice Cream Leaves A Sour Taste For Some" is the author's response to critics of this article.

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Recall That Ice Cream Truck Song? We Have Unpleasant News For You

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This is the story of why our beloved ice cream truck plays blackface minstrel music that sends kids dashing into homes in a Pavlovian frenzy searching for money to buy a Popsicle.

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It's not often a fiddle tune becomes controversial, but that's happening this week, thanks to a blog post by Theodore R. Johnson, III over at National Public Radio. Johnson discusses a well-known tune, with many versions in Library of Congress collections, and raises interesting and important issues, so I thought we might feature the piece here on Folklife Today.

The tune in question is "Turkey in the Straw," one of the most widely-distributed American tunes, and one that in popular culture has become iconic of rural America. In case you don't know what the tune sounds like, here's a version that comes with a nice story: when John A. Lomax was collecting folk music in Texas with his wife Ruby in 1939, he was introduced to a fiddler named Elmo Newcomer. Newcomer was tickled to meet Lomax, because twenty-eight years previously, he had bought Lomax's first book, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, directly from Lomax by mail. He greeted Lomax with the following words:

Shake, boy. I've heared about you all my life. Me an' a neighbor boy was both left to live alone with our fathers. We read in a paper when we was about fourteen years old, that you was sellin' a book of cowboy songs. So we scraped our savings together an' sent' em to you an' sure 'nough here come the book. Here, Clyde, Bring me that cowboy song book. Can you reach it? (It's put away up high where the baby can't reach get to it). We read it and sung from it so much and loaned it out so much that it's might nigh tore up.

Like many old-time fiddlers, Newcomer knew words for the tune, but he played it mostly as dance music, so he rolled the tune over many times and only occasionally sang a verse. The two verses he came out with in this performance were the following:

Went out to milk an' didn't know how
I milked a goat instead of a cow.
Saw a turkey settin' in a pile o' straw
Winkin' at his mother-in-law

I went out to milk an' didn't know how
I milked a goat instead of a cow.
Picked up a rock an' whacked him on the jaw
And he kicked up a tune called "Turkey in the Straw."

Let's hear it:

Most Americans probably recognize the tune, and associate it with stereotypes of rural southerners and westerners, mostly white, doing square dances on farms and in mountain hollers. The reason for the controversy, though, is that, as Johnson points out, "Turkey in the Straw" has been associated with other stereotypes as well. Specifically, it has been used to carry virulently racist words. Not wishing to repeat anything hurtful or derogatory here, I'll just say that Johnson's blog post details what those words are. I'll also mention that one common title for the piece was "Zip Coon."

The racist associations of the tune are only part of its legacy, though, and are neither the oldest part nor the most recent. The tune has roots in much older music, and has continued in forms largely devoid of racial connotations. The origins of "Turkey in the Straw" hearken back to British and Irish dance music. In her 1939 book Folk Songs of Old New England, Eloise Hubbard Linscott (whose collection of recordings and photographs is part of the AFC archive) identified "Turkey in the Straw" as a variant of the British tune "The Rose Tree," which is also related to the Irish piece "The Rose Tree in Full Bearing." You can hear a cylinder recording of William Nathan "Jinky" Wells playing "The Rose Tree" in the player below, from the James Madison Carpenter Collection. The recording is AFC 1972/001 Cylinder 110.

The identification of "Turkey in the Straw" with "The Rose Tree" was independently made by Alan Jabbour, who says of the two tunes:

The only conspicuous difference in the melodic contours is that 'The Rose Tree' drops to the tonic in the third phrase of the second strain, while the American tunes thrust up to the octave for rendering much the same melodic material.

Jabbour cites "The Rose Tree" as appearing in a 1795 manuscript, predating any of the racist versions of the song. Samuel P. Bayard concurs with Jabbour, adding several more useful notes and references. Jabbour's main touchstone as a fiddler was Henry Reed, who had several versions of the tune, including the one below:

In addition to its use for dancing, "The Rose Tree" has been used for a number of songs over the years, including "My Grandmother Lived on Yonder Little Green" and "The Miller Boy." Once the tune came to America, possibly in connection with these songs, it developed several related variants, and several different titles. Common names for the tune include the racist "Zip Coon," but also many neutral ones, such as "Sugar in the Gourd," "Natchez Under the Hill," and "The Jolly Old Miller."

In the early days of commercial recording, "Turkey in the Straw" was often recorded in medleys with other tunes, especially on the banjo. Below, hear virtuoso banjo player Vess Ossman play the tune; it turns up at 1:46 in the medley, which also includes "Dixie" and "The Arkansas Traveler."

"Turkey in the Straw" also became the basis of classical and jazz compositions such as Otto Bonnell's "Ragtime Fantasy," which, judging by the cover art, clearly drew on the song's racial connotations. Pietro Deiro recorded this piece on the accordion-hear it below.

Both before and after the advent of commercial recordings, "Turkey in the Straw" turned up in folk tradition as a fiddle and banjo tune. Some of these bear the typical "Turkey" title and sound like standard versions of the tune, like the one played by Mrs. Ben Scott and Myrtle B. Wilkinson for Sidney Robertson Cowell in 1939:

Others are more unusual, such as the one Vance Randolph got from Lon Jordan, who called it "Natchez Under the Hill," and realized it was a little different from most versions:

One of our most interesting versions of the tune is the one played by Burl Hammons, because it comes with a ghost story. Hammons recalled a skeletal ghost who visited his home when he was a child. The skeleton entered the house with his fiddle, played "Turkey in the Straw," and left:

Well, I was-where we lived, we lived down on the Williams River, when the-when I saw this thing, and so-And we always went to bed pretty early, my dad did, and-about eight, nine o'clock we always went to bed-and I laid down and I, didn't seem like I could go to sleep. And I laid there a while and just directly I heared the click, open come the door, and in walked this skeleton of a man. And he was the tallest man, Lord, I've - he was really tall, a-must've been six or seven feet tall or looked like that.

And he had - I noticed he had a fiddle in his hand when he walked in; and he walked about the middle of the floor where I was a-sleeping. And he took off on that "Turkey in the Straw," and boys I never had heared nothing played like that in my life. And I shut my eyes to keep from looking at the skeleton of a man, but I was still listening at that tune. And, when I opened my eyes, he'd - I waited till he finished the tune before I opened my eyes, but he - when he finished it he was still a - standing but he just turned and walked to the door, and just "click" open come the door, and out he went.

You can hear the rest of the story, and the tune itself, in the player below.

When the tune entered twentieth-century pop culture, it usually didn't refer to African American people, or at least it didn't seem to. In fact, it sometimes didn't refer to people at all: it was a major part of the Disney animated short Steamboat Willie, which introduced the characters of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. In the film, while Minnie turns a goat's tail into a crank and plays the animal like a barrel-organ, Mickey plays music using a variety of found objects, including other unfortunate animals: a cat becomes a musical saw, a goose becomes a bagpipe, a litter of suckling piglets becomes an organ, and a cow's teeth become a xylophone. On all of these hapless animals, Mickey plays "Turkey in the Straw"-although, strangely, no turkey appears in the sequence! As the first cartoon with synchronized sound, Steamboat Willie gave "Turkey in the Straw" very prominent placement in the history of film. As a pioneering work, it was placed on the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1998.)

Later in the twentieth century, "Turkey in the Straw" was used for other purposes. A 1941 "soundie" (what we'd call a music video today) by the Schnickelfritz Band shows Freddie Fisher and his bandmates in a barn wearing overalls and straw hats, as stereotypical white country bumpkins, playing the tune on their signature mix of jazz and jug-band instruments; a 1983 ad for Murphy's Oil Soap shows a white suburban family singing the tune with the words "now the dirt is finished, but the finish is fine;" and, as Johnson notes in his blog post, many ice-cream trucks employ the song as well.

Throughout this period, the tune continued to be used in old-time music, primarily as a dance tune, but also as a nonsense song. In 1959, Alan Lomax recorded Charlie Everidge playing the tune on a mouthbow, or as he called it, a "pickin' bow." Neil Morris, a talented singer and guitarist, performed dance calls with Everidge. You can hear that version at this link.

One more unusual version from our collections deserves a mention: the fiddling and singing of Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd was well-known as a fiddler, from the Grand Ole Opry stage to the TV show Hee-Haw, and he often played his fiddle at political rallies and events on Capitol Hill. In 1975, Library of Congress researchers Alan Jabbour and Carl Fleischhauer visited the Senator at his home and recorded his fiddle tunes, including "Turkey in the Straw." In 1977 and 1978, the Senator came the Library, and the team re-recorded many of his tunes on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium. They captured several versions of "Turkey in the Straw" in that session, too. You can hear a recording of Byrd singing and playing this tune at this link, provided by the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies.

So what do we make of the song and its racist connotations? Johnson says that, for him, "there is simply no divorcing the song from the dozens of decades it was almost exclusively used for coming up with new ways to ridicule, and profit from, black people." I think we can soften this slightly: for one thing, there's no evidence the melody was "almost exclusively" used for any one set of ideas. In fact, there's plenty of evidence that it was used steadily as a fiddle tune, a nonsense song, and a ballad air, with no mention of black folks at all, before, during, and after its more offensive employment in racist songs. For another thing, there aren't dozens of decades between the time the tune seems to be first associated with racist ditties and the time it was again primarily about rural whites, as in the Schnickelfritz soundie; there are possibly a dozen decades there, but it's a stretch.

But still, these are quibbles. Johnson's main point is one we must consider: when do the uses of a piece of music spoil it for listeners? The answer is likely to be personal, and different for each of us. Our best defense is to inform ourselves about the music's history and let our minds and hearts give us the answer.

Note:
For more information on the recordings above, and to hear more, please follow this link.

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It's not often a fiddle tune becomes controversial, but that's happening this week, thanks to a blog post by Theodore R. Johnson, III over at National Public Radio.

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Two decades have passed since Rednex released "Cotton Eye Joe," the earworm from Europe that swept across the Atlantic to infect our airwaves in the winter of 1995. It peaked at number 25 on Billboard charts that May, but remains trending at sports arenas and weddings across the nation today.

Its lyrics present an unsolved puzzle. We are certain that, had it not been for Cotton-Eyed Joe, the narrator would have been married a long time ago. And yet questions remain: Where did Joe come from? And, perhaps more important, where did he go?

The Huffington Post launched an investigation into these queries and scrounged up some answers. But also one uncomfortable truth, which becomes increasingly plain the more we actively listen: "Cotton Eye Joe" is a song about slavery. Here's what we found.

Rednex, a Swedish house music group peculiarly obsessed with American folk and bluegrass, dusted off the tune and massaged it into the global dance hit it is today. But "Cotton Eye Joe," or "Cotton-Eyed Joe," was popular throughout the American South over a century and a half before that. Its lyrics might have changed somewhat over the decades as the tune passed from fiddle to fiddle, but they all stem from the same roots.

According to Dorothy Scarborough, Texas-born folklorist, the ballad is "an authentic slavery-time song," predating the Civil War. In her history On The Trail Of Negro Folk Songs, published in 1925, she explains:

The air and some of the words were given by my sister, Mrs. George Scarborough, as learned from the Negroes on a plantation in Texas, and other parts by an old man in Louisiana, who sang it to the same tune. He said he had known it from his earliest childhood and had heard the slaves sing it on plantations.

The version Scarborough documents includes outrageous descriptions of Joe as a man who ran away with a pretty black woman whom the narrator loved. Joe's "teeth was out," "nose was flat" and "eyes was crossed," the narrator sings, painting a cringeworthy caricature by today's standards.

Another lyric states Joe "was de n*g dat sarved me so" -- and here's where we get a glimpse at who the narrator might be. If taken as "served" (and there are other examples of "sarve" used in place of "serve"), Joe is probably the narrator's slave. Alternatively, if the line was meant as a twist on "serve me right" -- with the narrator suggesting, perhaps, he might have prevented Joe and the woman from leaving together -- Joe and the narrator may have simply known each other, most likely as fellow slaves. The song, then, either tells the story of a man whose runaway slave stole the woman he'd presumably planned to marry, or the story of another slave whose friend betrayed him.

In both cases, Joe comes from the Deep South during a shameful period in American history. As for where he went, Joe, apparently, "hoodooed" or bewitched the woman "to Tennessee." Mystery solved -- except that's not where this tale ends. The tune evolved from its antebellum days as its popularity endured. ( In an 1884 copy of The Fireman's Magazine, it's mentioned as a song a fiddler knew well.)

At some point, a different story than the one Scarborough published emerged. "Way down yonder a long time ago / Daddy worked a man called Cotton-Eyed Joe," the lyrics go, presenting Joe as either a slave or a field hand to, in all likelihood, a white narrator. Some anthologies we read provided one surprisingly dark expository detail -- Joe had made a fiddle out of his dead son's coffin.

Other lyrics collected over the decades refer to "Cotton-Eyed Joe" also as a song title ("Couldn't play nothin' but Cotton-Eyed Joe"), a dance ("If I hadn' a danced that Cotton-Eyed Joe") and a man who'd recently been sold.

Sometimes several of those traits converged at once -- as in the rendition documented by black folklorist Thomas Talley, a child of former slaves -- presenting an interesting twist on the alleged slave song's earliest known lyrics by muddling Joe's identity even further.

Even his nickname -- "cotton-eyed" -- contains a variety of possible meanings. According to an Internet folk song database and various anthologies, Joe could have cataracts, trachoma, or syphilis. He could've been blinded by homemade alcohol. The whites of his eyes could have simply been prominent on his face, especially in contrast with dark skin. Joe's eyes are as enigmatic as the rest of him.

When Rednex got ahold of the tune, though, they came up with just a slightly modernized version of the song's slave-owner narrative. It adds a female voice; she sings about being entranced by the mysterious fiddler: "He rode through the fields so / Handsome and strong." But as told in so many other iterations of the song, Joe still came from some Deep South place, leaving to repeat his pied piper act in the next town, probably.

The Swedish pop group is a hilariously awful slice of pop music history. It made a global name for itself by fetishizing the American South -- each member of the group went by a stage name, including Mary Joe, Ken Tacky, Billy Ray, Bobby Sue and Mup. In a bizarre 1995 MTV interview, one member claims the group "brought a big sack of goat s**t to put [gestures to her clothing]."

The group is, notably, white, as are the Germans who roleplay as Native Americans as part of their longtime love for the Western adventure novels of Karl May. Such a spectacle looks terribly naive to those of us on this side of the Atlantic, much like the image of Swedish kids leaping around onstage in cowboy boots and goat manure. The difference, however, seems to lie in fans' knowledge of actual cultural history -- some of May's followers take pride in pointing out the inaccuracies in his work.

Rednex, on the other hand, quite clearly exists for shallow amusement. And it's a bit strange to see wedding parties jive to a song that once belonged to black slaves -- or, as it evolved, a song for white guys about a black fiddler who stole their women. Indeed, many of the musicians whose "Cotton-Eyed Joe" recordings survive, from Dykes' Magic City Trio to Bob Wills, along with the authors of folk songbooks available today, are white men.

Like any oral tradition, the tale of the mysterious fiddler was passed from hand to hand, each one smudging it with fingerprints. And while "Cotton-Eyed Joe" may have come from the South years ago, he doesn't seem to be leaving playlists anytime soon.

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Cotton-Eyed Joe: Where Did He Come From, Where Did He Go?

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Two decades have passed since Rednex released "Cotton Eye Joe," the earworm from Europe that swept across the Atlantic to infect our airwaves in the winter of 1995. It peaked at number 25 on Billboard charts that May, but remains trending at sports arenas and weddings across the nation today.

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The Rednex are a Swedish band obsessed with American folk tunes. (Photo by Reiche/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Everyone hits the dance floor when the D.J. plays "Cotton Eye Joe," the 1995 hit from the confusingly Swedish techno punk band Rednex, but the catchy melody actually goes back much further than the days of Toy Story. In fact, historians have traced the original folk song back to pre-Civil War days.

Where Did He Come From?

"Cotton Eye Joe," sometimes known as "Cotton Eyed Joe" or "Cotton-Eyed Joe," was a mainstay among slaves on Southern plantations. The lyrics varied from place to place and year to year, but the root of the story remained the same: A handsome fellow named Joe caught the eye of the narrator's girlfriend and swept her away, leaving the narrator tragically single. (This differs significantly from the Rednex incarnation, in which Joe leaves an entire town womanless after charming all the women and forcing them to flee in shame.) In 1882, Harper and Brothers published the first official lyrics for the tune, which read:
Cotton-eyed Joe, Cotton-eyed Joe, What did make you sarve me so, Fur ter take my gal erway fum me, An' cyar her plum ter Tennessee? Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er been married long ergo. His eyes wuz crossed, an' his nose wuz flat, An' his teef wuz out, but wat uv dat? Fur he wuz tall, an' he wuz slim, An' so my gal she follered him. Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd er been married long ergo. No gal so hansum could be foun', Not in all dis country roun', Wid her kinky head, an' her eyes so bright, Wid her lips so red an' her teef so white. Ef it hadn't ben fur Cotton-eyed Joe, I'd been married long ergo. An' I loved dat gal wid all my heart, An' she swo' fum me she'd never part; But den wid Joe she runned away, An' lef' me hyear fur ter weep all day. O Cotton-eyed Joe, O Cotton-eyed Joe, What did make you sarve me so? O Joe, ef it hadn't er ben fur you, I'd er married dat gal fur true.
Rednex "Cotton Eye Joe" CD single cover. (Battery Records/Wikimedia Commons)

Where Did He Go?

Although it seems like a fairly simple song, much of the meaning of "Cotton Eye Joe" is a mystery lost to time. For one thing, the identity of the narrator is unclear, and different interpretations change the song drastically.

These days, there's no reason to assume a woman who is clearly described as black was dating a man of the same race, but back then, any other situation would have been very unusual indeed. However, varying interpretations of the word "sarve" (old-timey for "serve") in the line " What did make you sarve me so?" could mean Joe was a slave working for the narrator, which would make his relationship with a black woman a lot more dicey and probably nonconsensual. It doesn't help that, in one version of the song, the line reads " He was de [expletive] dat sarved me so," identifying Joe as a black man with a diminutive form of a racial slur that's considered outrageously offensive today.

It was, sadly, not uncommon for plantation owners to sexually abuse their slaves, but it was considerably less common to marry them, as the narrator apparently intended to do. As such, it's more plausible that he meant "served" as in "treated," i.e. "Why'd you do me like that?"

"Cotton Eye Joe" music video. (Battery Records)

Where Did You Come From, Cotton Eye Joe?

But why is he called Cotton Eye Joe, anyway? According to historical sources, it was actually a common slang term at the time for someone who had "prominently white eyes," which could mean any number of things. Maybe the whites of his eyes were simply very noticeable. Maybe he was a drunk, his eyes turned milky white from a powerful moonshine habit. A number of medical conditions can also cause the eyes to cloud, including cataracts, glaucoma, or-most intriguingly-syphilis.

There's a fairly good argument to be made that at least the modern dance song is about a dude spreading sexually transmitted disease, which is why all the women "ran away so nobody would know." In some versions of the folk song, too, the narrator's girlfriend isn't "carried off" to Tennessee but "runs off." According to urban legend, "cotton" is a reference to the swabs used to test for such infections, but it couldn't have been the original writer's intention, as such swabs didn't exist back then. It's entirely possible that it's a double entendre applied by the Rednex, though.

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Cotton Eye Joe: The History Of The Rednex Classic Based On A Pre-Civil War Folk Song

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The Rednex are a Swedish band obsessed with American folk tunes. (Photo by Reiche/ullstein bild via Getty Images) Everyone hits the dance floor when the D.J. plays "Cotton Eye Joe," the 1995 hit from the confusingly Swedish techno punk band Rednex, but the catchy melody actually goes back much further than the days of Toy Story.

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Kirkus:  Grab your partners and do-si-do—this one is simply delightful. (Fiction. 8-12)

SLJ Verdict: A humorous, fresh #OwnVoices title sure to appeal to social justice advocates and reluctant square dancers everywhere. Gr 3-7.

Awards: ​​

Pura Belpré Award Nominee for Author (2021)

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#Mexican & White biracial character

#family

#voice
#road trip
#Oaxaca radish carving
#realistic fiction

Fifth-grader Naomi Soledad León Outlaw has insecurities - her difficulty speaking up and her status at school as "nobody special." But she is guided by her Gram’s positivity, has her soap carving to feel proud of, and has her brother Owen’s love.  The three are peaceful and happy until Naomi’s mother reappears for the first time in seven years, bringing trouble and questions.  Will Naomi’s mother really try to take her away from Gram and Owen?  Where is her father? Will Gram’s plan to find him in Oaxaca, Mexico work?

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Pam Munoz Ryan speaking about her inspiration for Becoming Naomi Leon:

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Pam Munoz Ryan speaking about her inspiration for Becoming Naomi Leon:

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Pam Muñoz Ryan introduces and shares some of the backstory for creating Becoming Naomi León.

This Meet-the-Author Recording with Pam Muñoz Ryan was exclusively created in April 2016 by TeachingBooks with thanks to Scholastic.

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TeachingBooks Book Reading | Becoming Naomi León

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Pam Muñoz Ryan introduces and shares some of the backstory for creating Becoming Naomi León. This Meet-the-Author Recording with Pam Muñoz Ryan was exclusively created in April 2016 by TeachingBooks with thanks to Scholastic.

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Interview with Pam Munoz Ryan on Becoming Naomi Leon

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Interview with Pam Munoz Ryan on Becoming Naomi Leon

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Inside Oaxaca's radish-carving festival | CNN

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Get a different slice of Mexico at Oaxaca's radish-carving festival, where creativity and tradition come together.

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“I am a reader, writer, author, and pilgrim. Every book is a journey.” 2024 Children’s Literature Legacy Award Recipient The Children’s Literature Legacy Award honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial

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Kirkus: Ryan’s sure-handed storytelling and affection for her characters convey a clear sense of Naomi’s triumph, as she becomes “who I was meant to be.” (Fiction. 10-14)

SLJ’s verdict:  Ryan has written a moving book about family dynamics. While she explores the youngsters' Mexican heritage and gives a vivid picture of life in and the art of Oaxaca, her story is universal, showing the strong bonds and love that make up an extended family. Gr 5-8.

Awards:

Schneider Family Book Award for Middle School Book (2005)

Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2006)

California Young Readers Medal Nominee for Middle School/Junior High (2007)

Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award (2005)

Pura Belpré Award Nominee for Narrative (2006)

Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award Nominee (2007)

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Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, 135p.

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Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith

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Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith

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#American Indian & White biracial character

#loss

#friendship

#photographer

#realistic fiction

Fourteen-year-old Rain is half German/Irish descent and a member of Creek Nation (a tribe linked to the Seminoles). Mourning the deaths of her mom and best friend, Galen, Rain retreats from friends until she gets a job taking photos at her aunt's tribal summer camp. She tentatively begins to explore her roots but this is complicated by Galen’s mom, who is a local politician wanting to close the camp to save taxpayer dollars. Will Rain stand up to Galen’s mom to save the camp? Will she mend her relationship with old friends? Or will she further retreat into her depression?

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Light and Darkness Official Novel Trailer

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Light and Darkness Official Book Trailer

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Rain is Not My Indian Name - official trailer

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Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Official book trailer by Shayne Leighton

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Article by Cynthia Leitich Smith about her writing:  

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Article by Cynthia Leitich Smith about her writing:  

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A request for a blurb about a favorite book with a Native teen character prompted me to re-read Cynthia Leitich Smith's Rain Is Not My Indian Name. I've recommended it several times, here on AICL and elsewhere, but I haven't done an in-depth review essay about it yet.

Smith is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. "Citizen" means that she is amongst the people the Muscogee Nation counts as a citizen. Their page on Citizenship has a lot of useful information.

A lot of people don't know that each Native Nation has its own way of determining who its citizens or tribal members are. A lot of people claim they're Native but don't know what Nation. For them, it is more of a romantic idea based on a family story about an ancestor who someone in their family said was Indian. Often, that ancestor was "a princess." A common experience for me--indeed, for a lot of Native people--is the well-meaning person who approaches me at a lecture (or online) and tells me they are part Indian. If they reference an Indian princess, I--as gently as I can--tell them there was no such thing, that the idea itself is rooted in European's who erroneously viewed Native peoples with a European lens in which royalty was the rule. There's a lot to read about Native identity. I suggest Eva Marie Garroutte's Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America.

Quick! What comes to mind when you hear "American Indian" or "Native American"? Chances are, the image you have is one of Native peoples of the past, not present. And, that image in your mind is likely one that reflects a stereotype, not reality, in terms of who we were and who we are. Smith's book can interrupt that stereotypical imagery. Set in the present--not the past--it is a terrific story.

Let's take a look, together, at some parts of it that stand out to me.

Cassidy Rain Berghoff is the main character in Rain Is Not My Indian Name. When the story opens, it is New Year's Eve. Rain is minutes away from being 14. She's out with Galen--a childhood friend--but they're tentatively moving from friendship to a romantic relationship. He's got a birthday gift for her: a pouch that she immediately recognizes (p. 6):

I remembered seeing it last June, displayed on a Lakota trader's table at a powwow in Oklahoma City. Aunt Georgia had taken Galen and me on a road trip to visit family, and he had trailed after me down crowded aisle after aisle.

Later that day at the powwow, Galen had gone off to get popcorn, but clearly--he'd been observing Rain as they walked down those aisles and seen her linger over that pouch. Sweet! In her description of that pouch, Smith tells us it has seed beads. Most readers probably won't notice that detail, but Native ones do! There's a huge difference in a pouch made by a Lakota person and one you'd buy at a tourist shop that sells "Indian" beaded items. The one with seed beads is exquisite. The one from the tourist shop is tacky. Rain knows the difference; Native readers of Rain Is Not My Indian Name will know the difference, too.

After Rain and Galen say goodnight and head for their homes, Galen is struck by a car and dies on his way home. Rain learns about it the next morning (her birthday). The phone rings, waking her. She stretches, beneath her star quilt. She's devastated when her grandpa tells her about Galen. Of course, she doesn't say more about the quilt, but it is another point that Native readers will notice. Star quilts figure prominently in Native culture. Here's one (to the right) made by a dear friend, Chantelle Blue Arm.

I chose this one (Chantelle has done many beautiful quilts) because she titled it Cotton Candy. In the moments before Galen gives Rain the pouch, she thinks back to second grade field trip when Galen had persuaded her to leave the group with him in search of turquoise cotton candy.

Understandably, Galen's death is a blow to Rain. She pretty much retreats from life for six months, which moves the story to the end of June. Her aunt, Georgia, is coordinating an Indian Camp. Her brother, Fynn, has been hinting that he wants her to sign up for it (p. 12):

But Indian Camp? It sounded like the kind of thing where a bunch of probably suburban, probably rich, probably white kids tromped around a woodsy park, calling themselves "princesses," "braves," or "guides."

My guess is that many of you--especially if you are regular readers of AICL--are nodding your head. Indian-themed camps are a mainstay of American culture that feed stereotypes! Rain's aunt, however, is not doing a camp for white kids. This one is for Native kids. Rain speculates that her aunt is thinking about what Native kids learn in school (p. 13):

At school, the subject of Native Americans pretty much comes up just around Turkey Day, like those cardboard cutouts of the Pilgrims and the pumpkins and the squash taped to the windows at McDonald's. And the so-called Indians always look like bogeymen on the prairie, windblown cover boys selling paperback romances, or baby-faced refugees from the world of Precious Moments. I usually get through it by reading sci-fi fanzines behind my textbooks until we move on to Kwanza.

Rain's got some attitude--and I love it!

See the baby-faced refugee to the right?! Rain is obviously indignant at having to deal with this sort of thing year after year.

She has a way to cope, but let's step into reality for a moment. Native kids in today's schools have to deal with this every year. Why should they have to deal with that at all?!

What Rain did was check out. She disengaged. I'm using "disengaged" deliberately. The word is in a 2010 report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, about Native youth and their experiences in school.

And the complexities of African American and American Indian history

Now let's take a look at a racial issue Rain struggles with.

The character, Queenie, is African American. Prior to the time of the story, Rain and Queenie were good friends. That started to shift when Rain learned that Galen and Queenie were interested in each other, romantically. In one of her journal entries (they open each chapter), Rain recounts a conversation she and Galen had about dating African Americans (p. 28):

Galen's bangs fell forward: "Would you go out with a black person?" he asked.

Somewhere in my memory, I'd been told it was okay to be friends with black people, but not more than friends. "I guess," I answered. "Worried about your mom?"

Later (but still in the time before the story opens), Rain and Queenie's friendship ends when Rain learns that Queenie has hurt Galen.

Rain ends up going to Indian Camp--not as a participant--but as a journalist. Her assignment is to take photos of the camp for a news story about the camp. She is surprised to see Queenie there. The reporter, Flash, asks Queenie a question (p. 69):

"What brings you here?"

Queenie squared her shoulders and asked, "Don't you mean 'Why is an African-American girl at a Native American program?"

"Sure," the Flash answered, pen perched, "that's exactly what I meant."

The three Native kids at the camp and Rain observe this interaction, which suggests they have the same--but unspoken--question (p. 70):

Queenie spoke clearly, like she wanted to make sure the Flash didn't misquote her--like she'd have a lot to say about it if he did. "My aunt Suzanne has been tracing our family tree for the reunion next month at her place in Miami," she explained, "and, come to find out, one of my great-grandfathers was a Native American."

The word cousin sneaked onto my tongue, and I didn't like the way it tasted. As if stealing Galen hadn't been enough, now Queenie was barging in on my cultural territory. Granted, she was no guru-seeking, crystal-wearing, long-lost descendent of an Indian "princess," but still...

Then, Flash asks her (p. 70):

"What tribe, Nation, or band?"

We'll come to find out that Queenie's great grandfather was Seminole. The Black Indian thread in Rain Is Not My Indian Name is important. It speaks to Black readers with similar family stories, but it does so with integrity. Rain could so easily have been dismissive of Queenie, but Smith went elsewhere, smoothly describing what-to-do with that family story: research. Queenie's aunt is doing research.

More and more stories about Black Indians are appearing in the news media and taken up in museums and documentaries. Read, for example, Gyasi Ross's Black History Month, Indian Style: Natives and Black Folks in This Together Since 1492. See, too, the National Museum of the American Indian's exhibition, Indivisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas.

All of this makes the Black Indian thread in Smith's book especially important in today's society.

Coming out this year (2015) are two books in which writers take on Black Indians. I read--and love-- Gone Crazy in Alabama-- by Rita Williams Garcia. I'm waiting for the published copy to review it.

Already out is The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage by Selina Alko and Sean Qualls. I haven't read it yet, but what I can see online indicates that Mildred Jeter is identified as "part African-American, part Cherokee."

In my initial research about Jeter, I saw her described as Cherokee, but I also saw her described as Rappahannock. In my second round of research, I read a chapter about her in That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia by Arica L. Coleman, an assistant professor in Black Studies at the University of Delaware. I'll say this for now: in that chapter, Coleman chronicles the way that race and racial identity are put forth, used, and manipulated by the justice system and the media. It is astonishing.

I opened this post by noting that someone's question prompted me to re-read Rain Is Not My Indian Name. I read it when it came out in 2001. It won Smith distinction from Wordcraft Circle as one of 2001 Writers of the Year in Children's Prose.

That same year, Smith wrote an article for Book Links that offers incredible insights about developing Rain and Queenie, and about insider/outsider perspective. It is online at ALA: Native Now: Contemporary Indian Stories. In 2011, Smith wrote a reflection on the books tenth anniversary: 10th Anniversary of Rain Is Not My Indian Name.

Rereading it now--14 years after I first read it--I want to shout from the rooftops to everyone about Rain Is Not My Indian Name. If you don't already have it on your shelves, get a copy and read it. And share it. It is exquisite and has something in it for every reader.

Updating to include books I'll use as I research this topic more:

Chang, David. The Color of the Land

Forbes, Jack. Africans & Native Americans

Krauthamer, Barbara. Black Slaves, Indian Masters

Littlefield, Daniel. The Cherokee Freedmen; Africans & Creeks; Africans & Seminoles

Miles, Tiya. Ties that Bind

Miles, Tiya and Sharon Patricia Holland (Eds). Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: Diaspora in Indian Country

Naylor, Celia. Africans Cherokees in Indian Country*

Purdue, Theda. Slavery & the Evolution of Society

Saunt, Claudio. Black White & Indian

*Thanks to Gibson Wirth for letting me now I did not have the correct title of Naylor's book. Please do let me now when you see errors!

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Seed beads, Indian Camps, and Black Indians in Cynthia Leitich Smith's RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME

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A request for a blurb about a favorite book with a Native teen character prompted me to re-read Cynthia Leitich Smith's Rain Is Not My Indian Name. I've recommended it several times, here on AICL and elsewhere, but I haven't done an in-depth review essay about it yet.

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De-bunking the monolithic American Indian image via photography

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De-bunking the monolithic American Indian image via photography

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Pine Ridge Community Storytelling Project

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When Aaron Huey first visited South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation in 2005, he didn't expect that it would be a world-altering experience. He began the project as an objective photojournalist's look at poverty in America. But after spending eight years documenting the residents of Pine Ridge, his professional and personal outlook has changed dramatically.

Before Huey arrived at Pine Ridge, all he knew about the Oglala Lakota tribe were the statistics: a startlingly low life expectancy along with a startlingly high rate of unemployment, poverty, violence, and infant mortality. Once Huey became embedded in the community and started talking to the people there, he knew the mechanisms of traditional journalism wouldn't suffice to do the type of work he wanted to do with the Lakota people. "People there were telling me the most epic stories I'd ever heard, and people were talking about a history of genocide. I knew that word would never be used in the mainstream press. I knew right away I wasn't OK with that, that I wanted a bigger piece of the truth than just more statistics and more pictures of poverty," he said.

Huey's talk at TEDxDU in Denver in 2010, which presented a history of Lakota relations with the United States government alongside his photographs, represented the first in a series of steps toward a larger commitment to the Lakota and a personal shift away from the observational perspective often associated with photojournalism. "For the first several years at Pine Ridge, I didn't really get it. I knew [their stories were] more than statistics, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it," Huey said. "It was really dark and hard to process, and I kept giving up over and over again but then getting sucked back in."

"[Life there] is just too hard; it's the saddest and scariest thing I'd seen on the face of the Earth. But I loved the people and the families I became a part of, and I think over time I learned how to hear them," he said. "It took four years to figure out what I was doing. The Ted talk was the moment where I chose a side. I didn't do the Ted talk as a journalist; I did it as an advocate. I did a Ted talk about a history I knew magazines wouldn't run."

Since then, Huey's extensive work on the subject has included a National Geographic cover story about Pine Ridge, a street art collaboration with Shepard Fairey and Ernesto Yerena, a storytelling project, and a nonprofit organization called Honor the Treaties that funds collaborations between Native American artists and Native American advocacy groups. His book, Mitakuye Oyasin, which was published by Radius Books in July, is perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of Huey's work with the Lakota. "The whole book was almost more like a prayer or a poem than a documentary. It was like a ceremony, and I didn't realize it until the end. I didn't experience that place in a linear way and, at the end of the day, I didn't want to put it together in that way," Huey said. "It's a big stack of images that a lot of people wish there was more explanation for and I didn't want to give it. I didn't want to walk everybody through every image."

Huey has now moved on to other National Geographic features, but he says his experience at Pine Ridge has forever shaped the way he works. "I think that it taught me I will never be satisfied as just an impartial witness, as a person who just goes and does a story," Huey said. "I want do stories about communities I care about, stories that have the ability to make a real impact, and so I'm only investing my time after Pine Ridge in stories that really matter, stories that have heart."

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Powerful and Moving Photos of the Pine Ridge Reservation

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When Aaron Huey first visited South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation in 2005, he didn't expect that it would be a world-altering experience. He began the project as an objective photojournalist's look at poverty in America. But after spending eight years documenting the residents of Pine Ridge, his professional and personal outlook has changed dramatically.

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#Indian & White biracial character
#Graffiti
#Parkour
#Mystery

How does a past theft, a lost cache of uncut diamonds, a suspicious death, threatening gang members, a secret family history and graffiti relate?  Twelve-year-olds Indian American Myla and African American Peter, originally strangers, aim to figure this out as they try to find Randal, Peter’s missing brother.  Will the two figure out Randal’s graffiti clues to solve the mystery or will the baddies prevail?

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By Suma Subramaniam

We're thrilled to welcome Sheela Chari to Cynsations today.
Could you tell us about your latest book?
It's great to be back! I was interviewed here when my first novel, Vanished (Hyperion, 2011), was published. Right now, I'm working on two "latest" middle-grade projects, which include The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel mystery sci-fi series (Walker Books US, 2020), and Karthik Delivers(Abrams, 2022), a contemporary novel that will be out from Abrams next spring 2022.

The Mars Patel Series is based on the popular Peabody-Award-winning podcast mystery with the same title, developed by Gen-Z Media. The original podcast, which consists of three seasons, follows eleven-year-old Mars Patel, and his search high and low for his missing friends, whose disappearances might involve the elusive billionaire inventor, Oliver Pruitt.

In my novelization, I try to take the same story and bring it to book form, while playing with group texts, transcripts, emails, and other alternate forms to recreate that same quality of spoken drama. It's been an exciting project, unlike anything I've done before, and has made me look at dialogue, plot, and writing characters in a completely different way.

The other middle-grade project I'm currently working on is Karthik Delivers, which unlike the other books I've published so far, is not a mystery. Karthik Delivers is about a 14-year-old who is working in his father's ailing Indian grocery store one summer during the Financial Crisis when he gets secretly cast in a play about the young Leonard Bernstein. I revised this book for nearly 12 years before sending it out and selling it, so it's a project near and dear to my heart. I've been working on this project for more than half the time I've been writing for young readers. Karthik Delivers has shaped my ideas on what it means to write about characters in my Indian-American community, and also on the often lengthy process of revision.
Reflecting on your personal journey (creatively, career-wise, and your writer's heart), what bumps did you encounter and how have you managed to defy the odds to achieve continued success?
From my last year of college when I first decided to become a professional author, I've been on a mostly straight track. I've been fortunate to do writing that I love, and I'm also a teacher, which has brought me so much satisfaction and joy. It's been nearly 25 years of a career devoted to writing, and looking back I can see that even my setbacks prepared me for other accomplishments, or put me in place for taking on more challenging work.

But it also meant that over the years, I've had to do many things twice, or a different way, or with different expectations. Vanished began as a gift to my then 8-year old niece and ended up launching what became a completely unexpected career in children's writing. Until then, I'd fully expected to write adult literary fiction. But with Vanished, I found my voice and my audience, and use the mystery form to write about my experiences of growing up as an Indian-American. Vanished brought me so many happy successes, from an Edgar nomination to an interview on the Today Show in front of millions of people. Despite this critical acclaim, the book didn't make it to paperback, and went out of print. After Vanished, I went through a dry spell, taking nearly six years before my next mystery novel, Finding Mighty, was published. During this time, I worked and worked on Karthik Delivers, but while the characters and setting were clear to me, the book lacked a spine - a streamlined trajectory that would take its characters towards a satisfying end. It would take me writing two more novels to understand how to go back and revise thoughtfully.

In hindsight, I realized that I wasn't ready to write this book; I had to wait to become a stronger writer. I can't stress the importance of this lesson for me, and hope other writers might consider this with their own mid-stage projects. Sometimes we're simply not ready to write a book. We haven't lived the right experiences yet, we haven't tackled a particular craft in the right way, or even met the right people. Regardless, we have to be patient in our revisions, even putting away the project, knowing we will return when our writing muscle is further developed. And sometimes the painful truth is that the book is meant to be shelved for good. That's okay, too, and the ability to do that can come later after you've stepped away.

In the meanwhile, I went on to write more mysteries. I began to better understand and learn this form, and the kind of plotting I did, were skills I could take back and apply to revising Karthik Delivers. Also during this time when I was publishing less, I turned to another area that deeply interested me: teaching. I first start by teaching a children's writing class at a local community center. I hardly knew what I was doing, but with a handful of dedicated students and over several seasons, I began to learn how to teach and what to expect. From there I went on to teach for over four years at the college level, this time with 20 students a semester. I learned to devise writing lessons, run workshops, deal with different communities of students, and revise my teaching practices. Today I'm so lucky to teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts where I get to work with graduate students who are all committed to writing for young people.

My writing journey has shown me that it's important to keep developing and updating your skills, even when you're not publishing. It might be teaching, another area of writing, or a completely different passion or interest. I've also learned to expect that you can't accomplish everything you want, and not all at once. Time can make you a different person and a better one. After twenty-five years, I'm not just a published author but a teacher, wife, and parent of two children.
How has your writing evolved over time? Does the editing process for your novels offer any insights that you use in your writing process?
Until Vanished, I was an unabashed pantser. I began my stories the night or two before they were due in college and graduate school, and then wrote until the early hours of the next morning to produce an "inspired" story written "in the zone." After I became a parent, I had to throw this process out the window and discipline myself to write a little bit every day.

This structure has allowed me to write, revise, and publish in a far more meaningful way. I've also learned to rely on outlines, even going back to the early practice of beginning, middle, and end. This simple organizing principle has helped me plan better and stay on track when working on a new project.

Today, I use a combination of pantsing and outlining. I generally allow myself the freedom to explore a story for the first 50 pages or so. By then, when I have a better sense of the story, I begin a simple outline that describes the beginning, middle, and end in bulleted form. This outline grows more complex over time as I keep working on my novel.
What's been the biggest surprise about the author life?
So...while I thought being a published author was all about the thrill of having your work read by people you don't know around the world (I still am surprised to read about someone on Goodreads who lives in Singapore and has read one of my books), it's the writing-every-day part of my life that has surprised me the most. The routine is the best part!

I do know that when I was a young parent, this routine was harder to come by. Little kids don't always nap, they fall sick, and just require so much of your undivided and unstructured attention. Parent writers will have to learn to weather the uncertainty of those early years and know that it really does get better. It does.

Writing regularly was a practice I had to fight hard for, and now it's a habit that sustains me. This is the biggest surprise and has been the best part of being an author.
Cynsational Notes
Sheela Chari is the author of the upcoming Karthik Delivers (Abrams, 2022); The Unexplainable Disappearance Of Mars Patel (Walker Books, 2020) series, based on the Peabody Award-winning mystery podcast; Finding Mighty (Abrams, 2019), a Junior Library Guild Selection and Children's Choice Award Finalist; and Vanished (Hyperion, 2011), an APALA Children's Literature Honor Book, Edgar finalist, and Al's Book Club Pick on the Today Show. Sheela has an MFA in Fiction from New York University, and is a faculty member in the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives with her family in New York. You can visit her online at www.sheelachari.com.

Suma Subramaniam is the contributing author of The Hero Next Door (Penguin Random House, 2019). She is also the author of Centaurs (Capstone, 2021), Fairies (Capstone, 2021), She Sang For India: How MS Subbulakshmi Used Her Voice For Change (Macmillan FSG, 2022), and Namaste Is A Greeting (Candlewick, 2022). She is the Chair of the Children's Internship Grant Committee at We Need Diverse Books and Mentorship Program Coordinator for SCBWI Western Washington. She hires tech professionals for a leading software company during the day and is a writer by night. Suma has an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and degrees in computer science and management. Visit her website at https://sumasubramaniam.com.

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Author Interview: Sheela Chari On Her Writing Process & Personal Journey - Cynthia Leitich Smith

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By Suma Subramaniam We're thrilled to welcome Sheela Chari to Cynsations today. Could you tell us about your latest book? It's great to be back! I was interviewed here when my first novel, Vanished (Hyperion, 2011), was published.

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The sport originally termed Art du Deplacement, now also often referred to as Parkour or Freerunning, was founded in France in the 1980s by a group of nine young men. The founders are David Belle, Yann Hnautra, Chau Belle, Laurent Piemontesi, Sebastien Foucan, Guylain N'Guba Boyeke, Charles Perriere, Malik Diouf and Williams Belle.

The term 'Parkour' was first introduced by David Belle in 1998. Parkour derives from the French word Parcours meaning 'route' or 'course'

The term 'Freerunning' was the creation of Guillaume Pelletier, a representative of a group of French practitioners involved in the production of a Channel 4 documentary, Jump London, in 2003. This term was used in order to communicate this amazing new sport to an English-speaking audience.
What is Parkour / Freerunning / Art du Deplacement?
Parkour / Freerunning / Art du Deplacement is the primarily non-competitive physical discipline of training to move freely over and through any terrain using only the abilities of the body, principally through running, jumping, climbing and quadrupedal movement. In practice it focuses on developing the fundamental attributes required for such movement, which include functional strength and fitness, balance, spatial awareness, agility, coordination, precision, control and creative vision.

It is a sport that encourages self-improvement on all levels, revealing one's physical and mental limits while simultaneously offering ways to overcome them. It is a method of training one's body and mind in order to be as completely functional, effective and liberated as possible in any environment.

The sport aims to build confidence, determination, self-discipline and self-reliance, and responsibility for one's actions. It encourages humility, respect for others and for one's environment, self-expression, community spirit, and the importance of play, discovery and safety at all times.
The description above is to describe Parkour as a sport and does not fully describe the art / discipline / philosophy of Parkour as a whole. Council of Europe definition of sport: "Sport" means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels. Parkour UK recognises that there are sporting risks of injury to participants in Parkour/Freerunning as with many sports/physical activities. These exist regardless of Parkour UK intervention/engagement. Participants in Parkour/Freerunning should be aware of and accept these risks and be responsible for their own actions. Further information is available in the Information, Advice & Guidance (IAG) section of our website on Risk & Benefit.

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The sport originally termed Art du Deplacement, now also often referred to as Parkour or Freerunning, was founded in France in the 1980s by a group of nine young men. The founders are David Belle, Yann Hnautra, Chau Belle, Laurent Piemontesi, Sebastien Foucan, Guylain N'Guba Boyeke, Charles Perriere, Malik Diouf and Williams Belle.

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Dobbs Ferry is a village in Westchester County, New York. The population was 10,875 at the 2010 census. The Village of Dobbs Ferry is located in, and is a part of, the town of Greenburgh. The village ZIP code is 10522. Most of the Village falls into the boundaries of the Dobbs Ferry Union Free School District.

Dobbs Ferry was ranked seventh in the list of the top 10 places to live in New York State for 2014 according to the national online real estate brokerage Movoto. Dobbs Ferry is also the first village in New York State certified as a Climate Smart Community, honored in 2014 with the highest level given out in the state.

Dobbs Ferry was named after Jeremiah Dobbs, a descendent of William Dobbs, of Swedish and Dutch ancestry whose family ran a ferry service that traversed the Hudson River at this location. Jeremiah [Dobbs] was a fisherman and settled near the southern part of what is now Dobbs Ferry, and he "'added to his meager income by ferriage of occasional travelers across the Hudson. He used a style of boat known at that day as a periauger, a canoe hollowed out of a solid log. . . From this primitive ferry the village took its name.'"

Dobbs Ferry played a vital role in the American Revolutionary War. The position of the village opposite the northernmost end of The Palisades gave it importance during the war. The region was repeatedly raided by camp followers of each army; earthworks and a fort, commanding the Hudson ferry and the ferry to Paramus, New Jersey, were built; the British army made Dobbs Ferry a rendezvous, after the Battle of White Plains in November 1776, and the continental division under General Benjamin Lincoln was here at the end of January 1777.

In July and August, 1781, during the seventh year of the war, Continental Army troops, commanded by General George Washington, were encamped in Dobbs Ferry and neighboring localities, alongside allied French forces under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau. A large British army controlled Manhattan at the time, and Washington chose the Dobbs Ferry area for encampment because he hoped to probe for weaknesses in the British defenses, just 12 miles (19 km) to the south. But on August 14, 1781, a communication was received from French Admiral Comte de Grasse in the West Indies, which caused Washington to change his strategy. De Grasse's communication, which advocated a joint land and sea attack against the British in Virginia, convinced Washington to risk a march of more than 400 miles (640 km) to the Chesapeake region of Virginia. Washington's new strategy, adopted and designed in mid-August 1781, at the encampment of the allied armies, would win the war. The allied armies were ordered to break camp on August 19, 1781: on that date the Americans took the first steps of their march to Virginia along present-day Ashford Avenue and Broadway, en route to victory over General Cornwallis at the Siege of Yorktown and to victory in the Revolutionary War.

The village was originally incorporated in 1873 as Greenburgh, but the name was changed to Dobbs Ferry in 1882.

The current local government of Dobbs Ferry is headed by Mayor Hartley S. Connett; an independent, Connett was elected in November 2009.

The Estherwood and Carriage House, Hyatt-Livingston House, South Presbyterian Church, and United States Post Office are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 10,622 people, 3,792 households, and 2,570 families residing in the village. The population density was 4,350.0 people per square mile (1,680.8/km²). There were 3,941 housing units at an average density of 1,614.0 per square mile (623.6/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 80.70% White, 7.38% African American, 0.08% Native American, 7.56% Asian, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 1.93% from other races, and 2.26% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.00% of the population.

There were 3,792 households out of which 34.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.8% were married couples living together, 10.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.2% were non-families. Of all households, 27.6% were made up of individuals and 8.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.13.

In the village, the population was spread out with 26.0% under the age of 18, 7.3% from 18 to 24, 27.4% from 25 to 44, 24.1% from 45 to 64, and 15.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 95.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84.5 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $70,333, and the median income for a family was $93,127. Males had a median income of $65,532 versus $50,091 for females. The per capita income for the village was $35,090. About 1.8% of families and 5.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.8% of those under age 18 and 7.2% of those age 65 or over.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 3.2 square miles (8.3 km ²), of which 2.4 square miles (6.2 km ²) is land and 0.7 square miles (1.8 km ²), or 23.03%, is water.

The village is bounded on the west by the Hudson River, and on the east by the Saw Mill River. Wickers Creek (name derived from the indigenous Weckquaesgeek) runs east to west through the center of the village from its main source in the Juhring Nature Preserve, Todd's Pond.

The village consists of a series of neighborhoods as defined in the 2010 Vision Plan, the Master Plan for the Village. These neighborhoods are not popularly recognized as of 2014. As the Vision Plan states, "Sometimes the boundaries of these neighborhoods are clearly defined, but other times less so. Where necessary, boundaries have been interpolated." The neighborhoods are: Broadway, Wickers Creek, Waterfront, Old Town, Fairmead, Riverview Manor, Villard, Osborne, Belden, Maple, Walgrove, Virginia, Beacon Hill, Campuses and Woods, Parkway, Southfield, Knoll, Northfield, and Juhring. (Homes in "Juhring" are commonly referred to by real estate brokers as part of the "Ardsley Park" neighborhood, which encompasses the Juhring neighborhood in Dobbs Ferry and the Ardsley-on-Hudson neighborhood of Irvington, New York.).

Public transit

Almost 10% of households do not own a car and rely on public transit, bicycling, and walking.

Several lines of the Bee-Line Bus System run through Dobbs Ferry, facilitating north-south travel along the Broadway/Route 9 corridor and east-west along Ashford Avenue. The village operates a shuttle bus from the train station in the afternoon and evenings.

Commuter rail service to Grand Central Terminal is available via the Dobbs Ferry train station, served by Metro-North Railroad. The train runs on the Hudson Line, and travel time from Dobbs Ferry to Grand Central Terminal is approximately 37 minutes on an express train and 43 minutes on a local train. Many Metro North riders connect to the New York City Subway at Marble Hill to reach destinations on the west side of Manhattan, or at Harlem-125th Street for the upper east side.

Amtrak inter-city rail trains travel on the Hudson Line tracks, but trains do not stop in the village. The closest Amtrak stations are: Stamford and New York Pennsylvania Station for the Northeast Corridor Line, and Yonkers and Croton-Harmon stations for the Hudson River Line.

Parks and recreation

The village's Recreation Department runs a variety of programs out of the Embassy Community Center, including art and dance classes, sports leagues, summer camp, and other activities open to the public. Programs for older adults are also well-funded and used. Additional sports leagues for baseball and soccer are run independently but use village facilities.

There are a variety of village public parks, in order of size:

Memorial Park on hillside overlooking the Hudson River with single wading pool, baseball field, basketball court, and bocce court (an indication of the longstanding Italian heritage in Dobbs Ferry). In 2014, the American Legion Post 148, which leased space in the park, collapsed and was razed.

Two linear parks used for active transportation and recreation traverse Dobbs Ferry as well. The Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway, a linear State Park, runs north-south through the village on its western side. The South County Trailway, a linear Westchester County park also runs north-south through the village, but on its eastern side along the bank of the Saw Mill River.

Images for kids

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Dobbs Ferry is a village in Westchester County, New York. The population was 10,875 at the 2010 census. The Village of Dobbs Ferry is located in, and is a part of, the town of Greenburgh. The village ZIP code is 10522. Most of the Village falls into the boundaries of the Dobbs Ferry Union Free School District.

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A book that explains why everyone has a different skin tone and what melanin is in simple terms.

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Excellent book to read with children to help them understand racism in simple terms.

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Excellent book to read with children to help them understand what white privilege is in simple terms.

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It wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme Court ruled that different races could marry. This is the story of the Lovings who paved the way...

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Wonderful picture book of a girl questioning her skin color and coming to terms with her uniqueness.

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Kirkus:  A quick, agreeable caper, this may spark some discussion even as it entertains. (Mystery. 10-12)

SLJ Verdict: The plot is solid and the familial bonds strong. Exploring urban graffiti as a legitimate art form is a great discussion topic. Recommended for mystery fans and for most medium to large collections. Gr 4-7.

Awards:

Junior Library Guild Selection

Children’s Choice Award Finalist

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Rain is Not My Middle Name Reviews & Awards

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Rain is Not My Middle Name Reviews & Awards

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Kirkus:  “Tender, funny, and full of sharp wordplay…” Fiction. 11-14.

SLJ Verdict:  A wonderful novel of a present-day teen and her patchwork tribe. Gr 5-8.

Awards:  2001 Writers of the Year in Children's Prose

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This post is part III of our four-part series on this year's finalists for our annual Children's History Book Prize. Join us here on our History Detectives blog over the next few weeks as we meet the authors and learn more about their amazing books. Read all four finalists, then help us choose the prizewinner by voting for your favorite in our online poll! Polls open the week of April 30. The winning author receives a $10,000 prize! Learn about the process of choosing the book prize winner.

This week we are joined by two hilarious ladies, Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang, who co-wrote This is Just a Test. Their novel is set in the not-too-distant past of the 1980s and features a Jewish Chinese American protagonist busily preparing for his bar mitzvah...and the possibility of nuclear fallout.
DiMenna Children's History Museum: Two of the funniest characters in This is Just a Test are David Da-Wei Horowitz's bickering grandmothers. Why did you think humor was an important element to include throughout the story?
Madelyn: We live for funny moments-in books and in real life. When something is scary or awkward or sad, humor gets us through. And humor had always been a part of what Wendy and I wrote individually, so it made sense it would be part of whatever we did together. So this meant we both knew that whether David was worrying about girls, his bar mitzvah, or nuclear war, having a grandmother that was an expert on avoiding scooping up dog poop was what he needed to put things in perspective.

Wendy: Humor also makes connections. When you laugh with someone, you are saying, we see things the same crazy way! The 1980s are a long time ago for readers of today (yikes!), but when they can share a funny moment with a character from that time, they can realize how much they have in common.
DCHM: Why did you choose to set this story in Virginia during the 1980s? What did you want kids to learn about that place during that time?
Madelyn: When you're writing with a partner, it helps to have a familiar landscape. For us, the landscape was 1980s Virginia because that's when and where we both grew up. We both felt like "onlies"-the only Chinese American kid at an elementary school in Fairfax, and the only Jewish girl in the 7th grade in Blacksburg.

Wendy: And we both remember watching "The Day After," a major television event meant to scare us away from nuclear war, which turned into a life-changing moment for anyone who watched it! What we hope that kids take away from our book is that we've lived in scary times before and gotten through them. Also-and this is timely in the wake of the #enough student-led movement-we want readers to realize that their voices matter. They cannot stay silent and hope for peace. They can speak up and be heard.
DCHM: Friendship is an important theme in This is Just a Test-and in the About the Authors section at the end of the book, it's revealed that you two are longtime friends. What was it like to write this story together as a team?
Madelyn: Best. Time. Ever. We traded back and forth and went on long walks to discuss plot. There are so many things that happen in life that keep us from spending time with the people we love, the people who make us better-carpools and family sagas and mowing the lawn. So to have something that made us make more time for each other was great. I really wanted to do my best for her.

Wendy: I think that some of our best stories come out of writing for specific audiences, and in some ways, we were that audience for each other. I love making Madelyn laugh, and Madelyn wrote moments in the book that literally took my breath away. We met in a writers group, so we already had a lot of trust, in terms of trusting each other's sensibilities and decisions.
DCHM: What kind of research did you do for this book? Were there any primary sources that inspired you?
Madelyn: I'm a former newspaper reporter, so I always go straight to old newspapers. They have the news of the time period, and you can also see what people were thinking (opinion pages), what they were laughing at (comics, TV listings), what they were wearing (photos, fashion), what the weather was like (weather), and even what they were eating (food section, advertising circulars). We also looked at '80s newscasts and commercials, listened to music, and re-watched "The Day After."

Wendy: I remember that at one point, we wanted our characters to plan to go to the movies, so we went off to look at the movie listings, which sparked a lot of memories. Movies from the '80s focused on three things: the Russians and the Cold War ( Red Dawn, WarGames, Top Gun), kids with spunk ( Goonies, Stand By Me, The Karate Kid), and Rocky. It was amazing how much the Cold War permeated our pop culture-Rocky even fought a Russian at one point!
DCHM: Why should young people read historical fiction?
Madelyn: When we were writing this story, we didn't think it would have so many ties to news events that are happening today. But history does repeat itself, and readers can see that for themselves in our book.

Wendy: I love seeing the human thread in historical fiction-people are always people with the same jealousies, fears, and hopes, whether they are getting to school by horseback or jetpack. I think historical fiction helps readers understand the larger story, the timeline that includes all of us, and our collective progress and failures.
DCHM: What three words best describe This is Just a Test? -Shana Fung, DiMenna Children's History Museum

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Children's History Book Prize Finalists: Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang on "This is Just a Test"

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This post is part III of our four-part series on this year's finalists for our annual Children's History Book Prize. Join us here on our History Detectives blog over the next few weeks as we meet the authors and learn more about their amazing books.