Lists of books and crafts for Black History Month

Things have been hectic lately but I still wanted to drop a short post today highlighting some great  lists I found. I like lists as they usually enable me to pick and choose items. Even the worst list has at least one valuable tidbit. So here goes...

This PBS list provides a short summary as well as some themes the book explores. The books are written from a variety of perspectives and thus are a wonderful tool to help young ones of all ethnic origins.

It's not always easy to find books about Black heroes so this buzzfeed list is timely and very useful. I will be the first to admit that I don't frequent buzzfeed's website (the few times I have, I found it to be frivolous) but this list has made me view the editors in a different light. Activists, ball players and chefs are just some of the folks featured.





                    




Do you have a middle grade reader?  How about this list featuring middle grade books that feature the black experience- from slavery to civil rights to life in the so-called post racial era. I've read the excellent One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia but I need to add more of the books here to my to-read list. I would like to see some more boy friendly titles added to it as well.


If you are teaching at a preschool, after school center or simply want some crafts to celebrate Black History month, this site has 29 crafts (one for every day and one extra). I would add that several of the crafts reference Pinterest so that may be another resource to find similar things.


Last but not least, one of my go-to sites, education.com has compiled a comprehensive list of activities for Black History Month (everything from making a Jackie Robinson baseball card to making a shekere). Check it out here.

The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore

We need diverse books hashtag has certainly had some impact almost five years later...For more on diverse books check out the website or simply search the hashtag #weneeddiversebooks.

Lolly Rachpaul is like any other kid in New York City. He hangs out with his pal Vega, is waiting to see what he gets for Christmas (a new phone would be nice) and he loves building Lego. There is something else bothering him also-he is still in mourning over a recent tragedy What's worse is that the siren call of the streets has now turned its attention to Lolly and his friend, if they heed it, things could change drastically.

Lolly is at that awkward stage when he is aware of girls but still not sure if and how to approach them. One of the girls at his after school program is called Rose (the kids call her Big Rose) and they strike up an unlikely friendship over a shared love of legos and as coping mechanisms. The kids think Rose is strange and either mock or play pranks on her.

I liked that I could read a book with a young man with a heritage similar to mine (West Indian/Caribbean). The old adage is that it take a village to raise a child and Lolly benefits from various caring adults who influence him in different ways. I think of all the many children growing up in the United States, and in New York City in particular with similar heritage who will see themselves in this book, will be faced with similar social and societal obstacles and may even know someone with similar circumstances. Moore also does a great job presenting different family dynamics.

I would recommend this book for readers aged 10+. Some similar reads would be Walter Dean Myers' A Star is Born,  Jason Reynolds' Patina and Ghost.

Best multicultural books 2016

What a year it has been!  There have been highs and lows but overall I have grown and  learned so much. The past few weeks have shown me that there is so much to do in terms of people getting to know about other cultures. I think that one way we can do that is through finding books that speak about cultures and experiences that are different to our own.

Early on Saturday morning someone sent me a link to the best off books compiled by the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children's Literature (CSMCL). I am ashamed to say that I have not read as many on this list as I should have.  Kwame Alexander's Booked made the list and if you liked his 2015 Newbery-award-winning Crossover, this is a good follow up and deals with similar issues that middle graders will enjoy.

Jason Alexander's All-American Boys was stirring and timely and I am glad to say that my library system will be one of the stops next year on his book tour/talk. He has two middle grade books on the  CSMCL list as well; As Brave as You which deals with two boys who spend summer in Virginia and discover that their grandfather is blind and another called Ghost which sees four kids from various backgrounds brought together on an elite track team that could see them qualify for a major competition if they can get their acts together.

Tis the season for best of lists and another that I found worth sharing is from Kirkus Reviews. They have best picture books to make you, but I want to share the Best Picture Books about Friends and Community.  Yes, some of the books in this list. Check out their best of middle grade list here.

In terms of music I have recently come across a few cds that contain tracks that can be used in dance parties, story times and the like.  When my kids were younger Putumayo's "Sesame Street Playground" cd was on heavy rotation as we traversed our city.  With songs in languages as diverse as Hindi, Russian and Hebrew I found that even though for some songs I did not understand a word, the beat was so catchy that it didn't matter.  As a matter of fact Putumayo has a treasure trove of cds with great music from across the globe!

Feel free to add your own best of books and/or music in the comments and have a great holiday season!!

STEMmy books for younger readers

 I have been reading books to my sons at night before bedtime. I like chapter books that way we can continue a story for a few nights but since I have a nine and a six year old I usually choose books that are just long enough to get through with a week's time, so that usually rules out really in depth ones with lots of characters and plot points. There are lots of books with hijinks galore but I searched high and low to find books with some action but a little bit of science or scientific thinking in there as well..

The DATA set are a group of kids who like Danger, Action Trouble and Adventure. In March of the Mini Beasts we see the club encounter an eccentric scientist called Dr. Bunsen. He is working on an invention called a growth ray and when the ray accidentally hits some figurines, these come to life. This book has short chapters but they are packed with a ton of action, chuckles and a bit of suspense as well. Author Ada Hopper has created a great new series here.

Cari Meister's Buzz Beaker series features a young boy who tries to solve problems by using various inventions. At last count there were nine books in the series. Some of my favorites are  Buzz Beaker  and the Race to School in which perennially late Buzz  must figure out a way to get there on time.

Another good juvenile fiction series featuring an inventor is J.C. Greenburg's Andrew Lost series. In No. 1, On the Dog, ten-year old Andrew invents a shrinking machine and is sucked into it only to end up on his dog's nose.

With a name like Eliza Boom you can't not be an inventor and this is the case with this young girl whose father is an inventor (and perhaps more) and whose dog is called Einstein. In My Explosive Diary, when her father loses some very important document, Eliza, Einstein and her brand-new assistant Amy are called into action.

Patricia Reilly's Zigzag Kids is another good series that talks about the exploits of various kids at a   place called the Zigzag Afternoon Center. Book 3 in said series, Flying Feet  we meet Charlie, a kid who often thinks of  inventions that seldom work. His latest idea just might be able to help Jake the Sweeper get rid of a big pile of trash and save "Come as a Character" day, too.  

These are just a tip of the iceberg and with STEM being a buzzword more and more of these books

are coming on the market. Feel free to share some of your faves in the comments!

Booked by Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander shot to fame with his book in verse The Crossover so when I saw this book on a list I decided to check it out. I confess that I am an über soccer fan so that influenced my decision as well. I was curious as to how Alexander would incorporate the soccer elements into the narrative.

This book is also in verse and features a middle schooler called Nick whose dad is a studious but loving man and whose mom loves horses as much as she loves people.  Nick loves soccer and he and his best pal Coby obsess about the game when they are not stressing about school work and other trials of middle school life.

Alexander loves to write about youths who have some sort of family issues going on and this book is no different. Nick however must learn to deal with his family turmoil as well as his issues at school.  I do wish however that he had explored the characters' diversity somewhat more instead of just briefly touching on it.

Perhaps my favorite character in the book is the cool librarian Mr Mack. As a former teacher myself if I had half of his cool factor I think I would have related better to my students. Mac for his part does his best to get the kids to read by being gentle but persistent, by meeting them where they are and by choosing things they might like to read about. This novel, Booked should be added to reading lists for the very same reason. I highly recommend it.

A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me: A Memoir by Jason Schmidt

Youth non fiction is not something I read a lot so when I picked up this book it as partly to fill that void and expand my horizons and it was partly because the name of the book was so intriguing I actually thought it was a fictional tale and I had to look at the call number a few times to convince myself that it wasn't.

This boy's life was harrowing almost from a very young age. His parents' divorce affected him financially as his father's erratic behavior and anti-establishment nature lead him to constantly uproot them and even when they settled somewhere it was usually next to other people with substance abuse problems and dubious parenting skills.

The events in this story occurred in the late seventies and early eighties and while I am not saying things in this book don't occur now, the advent of technology certainly makes it easier for behavior to be monitored and addressed.

The book is heart wrenching at times and you really feel for Mr. Schmidt. He writes about things in such a matter of fact, dispassionate manner that it makes it even more difficult to read. He mentions few details about school in his formative years and as a former teacher I am quite shocked that he didn't need counselling and/or  lengthy visits with the school social worker. It is a testament to his natural intelligence and drive that he was able to pick up his schooling later on despite having missed a fair amount of instruction due to his father's reticence about the education system and Mr. Schmidt's own behavioral issues.

In addition to being a coming-of-age story, this is a story about a deadly health crisis, its toll on a family and on the psyche of a young boy. I imagine that writing this book must have been very cathartic for Mr. Schmidt as his father dealt with a host of issues which he struggled to deal with adequately. Because of the strong language, drug references and other strong content I recommend this book for ages 13+.

Ellray Jakes Rocks the Holidays by Sally Warner

I have not seen many books for the 2nd-4th grade set that had an African American main character and is not set in an urban setting. So when I stumbled upon this series I was pleasantly surprised. Lancelot Raymond "EllRay" Jakes lives with his genius dad, mom and younger sister in California. His dad is a professor and his mom is a writer and they live a comfortable middle class life.

In this particular book Ellray is having a normal day until he accidentally offends the other 'brown" kid in class, Kevin. He then must do a set of challenges prescribed by Kevin in order for them to be even.

Although the book is aimed at young readers it still explores themes such as race and class. EllRay's dad for example explicitly tells him that he should make nice with Kevin since in his mind people of color need to stick together especially when they live in communities that are predominantly white. A non POC reader might find this hard to believe but this is completely true. Even EllRay's teacher Ms. Sanchez shares some of her story growing up in a different time.


EllRay is a shy kid and it just so happens that one of Kevin's challenges is to go up in front the school and emcee the winter holiday program. The debate over the name of the program is pretty funny and illustrates how pc life has become. As you would expect things do work out in the end without too much fuss-this is a Christmas adventure after all.

Aurora and Zita!

It is not often that we see graphic novels where the hero is actually a heroine. And it's even rarer for the heroine to be a well-developed character who does not spend half the panels in various stages of undress. This week I came across two graphics aimed at the younger set. The Return of Zita the Spacegirl is actually the third installment in a series by author Ben Hatke and The Rise of Aurora West by Paul Pope is also the third installment in the Battling Boy series.

Set on an unnamed planet powered by a leviathan The Return of Zita the Spacegirl shows Zita captured by evil forces and thrown into a dungeon where she meets Femur and Ragpile. A mysterious ally then sets her free but then the real adventure begins with planet-moving consequences.  Along the way there are some characters who cooperate to help Zita's quest. Some of them are from the two previous installments in the series but like most good trilogies the book keeps moving even though you are not sure what transpired before. This book is epic like Saga (but without the raucnhiness) and action-packed like Amulet. I like the fact that Zita's flaw is that she cares about other people and about all living creatures. As is often the case with any good series even though she saves the day and returns home the door is left open to future adventures. I highly recommend it for young readers.


I had read Paul Pope's other two books in his Battling Boy series a while back and found them to be excellent. When I heard that there was a prequel in the works I simply had to read it. The Rise of Aurora West sees her still under the tutelage of the inimitable Haggard West. She is still coming to terms with the death of her mother under mysterious circumstances a fact which almost destroyed Haggard from the grief and the feeling of powerlessness it left him with. In Battling Boy Haggard is killed and in this book we see the back story behind the villain whose rogue gang terrorizes the city stealing children. Aurora also discovers that her imaginary friend when she was a kid, a being called "Mr. Wurple" was a very real being who has returned now in a more sinister form.


The book is in black and white, very rare for a graphic novel these days but the writing is so compelling that you can't help but turn the pages. Although I thought Aurora would be much more kick ass, this shows however that the journey from teen-aged girl to full-fledged heroine is not without speed bumps.  The series' style is a throwback to the golden age of comics and I remember when I read the first book I kept checking to make sure that it wasn't an old series I had somehow overlooked or never heard of.

This book is in the teens section of our library and rightly so. There is some comic violence and weapons used and some of the subject matter could be a little heavy for younger readers.  It is so well written though that I for one am on pins and needles waiting for the next installment in the series. In our library it is classified as YAurora1 so I am wondering if this means that there will a series based around her and how she developed into the crime fighter that Battling Boy meets when he arrives on earth. I certainly hope so.

Sherlock and vampires and Wrenchies oh my!

 Any casual Sherlock Holmes fan knows that the master detective can solve even the most difficult case put to him. What if he has to fight immortal, super strong creatures though? That is the premise of the graphic novel Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of London by Sylvan Corduré and Laci. It starts after Sherlock's defeat of Moriarty at Reichenbach falls. He has returned to London unknown to his faithful companion Watson. Watson is newly married and Sherlock doesn't want to endanger the couple. A strange being is attacking Londoners of all social strata and soon Holmes and his brother Mycroft find themselves under attack which they barely escape.

Things get stranger when the vampires summon Holmes to find one of their own who has gone rogue killing indiscriminately and damaging the fragile alliances that the vampires have with London high society. Holmes reluctantly agrees to help them even though he doesn't trust the vampire king Selymes. Holmes devises a cunning plan to rid London of the vampire menace forever.

Though this work is a speculative Holmes adventure I was fascinated to learn that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a contemporary of Bram Stoker and wrote a few vampire-inspired tales. You can check them out here.

This was a good read and it was told in an epistolary style with Sherlock relating the events in his will to be delivered to Watson should he not survive his encounter with the vampires. I couldn't help but notice that Sherlock bore more than a passing resemblance to Jeremy Brett, star of the Sherlock series that aired in the 80s and my all time favorite tv Sherlock. I recommend this book for teens and adults.



I often read Kirkus reviews to see what is new in graphic novel land and I came across a new book called The Wrenchies. To be honest the review did say that due to the graphic nature of this book (the creatures enter through the kids' eyeballs) that it was not for everyone. My gripe with this book is that the story seems to fragmented. I wasn't sure how if parts were a dream or if the characters were travelling through dimensions.




Even though the first part was set in some dystopian future where kids battle daily with weird creatures and live in fear of Shadowsmen I enjoyed this part more than the latter parts with a kid named Hollis who walks around dressed in superhero garb. Later parts of the book just involved too many characters and it became hard to track who was who and to make sense of what was happening. I did like the whole meta-textual nature of the book though because the cahracters stumble upon a copy of a book called The Wrenchies and use that to figure out what relevance the book has to their present situation.I am guessing that there would be teens who might like this book because that is who I would recommend it for. It is too graphic and obtuse for younger readers to comprehend.

Al Capone Does My Homework

The title of this book totally sucked me in when I saw it on the new books shelf at work. I later found out that the author Gennifer Choldenko has a series with similar titles. I like these historical fiction books that older kids and tweens can get into. If however you are expecting Scarface Al Capone to be shootin' up the place you will be in for a let down.


Al Capone is Alcatraz island's most famous resident, so says the main character Moose whose father   has just been named associate warden. This however makes him a target for the prisoners who have a points system for things like spitting at a warden and even maiming or killing one. Moose finds out  and is determined to protect his dad.  One great takeaway that I got from this book was that the island had residents who lived there and were in essence trapped there along with the cons. Moose describes having to take certain boats to the mainland to do this and that.

That is not Moose's only job however, his sixteen year old sister Natalie is autistic (the book doesn't say this but from her behavior it seems that she is) and whenever she is home from boarding school Moose has to take  of her and help her navigate all the social situations that she can't or won't.

When a night fire destroys their apartment Natalie is blamed by another warden and soon the small community starts treating Moose' family differently. Moose and his friends endeavor to find the real cause of the blaze. Al Capone only appears in this novel for a short bit but his cameo is important.

Choldenko did a lot of painstaking research and in the end notes describes how she gleaned inspiration from various sources to form the characters. Some of the prisoners are based on real people and she explored facets of how she thinks they might have behaved.

This book is a good yarn that kids will enjoy and hopefully it will inspire them to read a bit ore about some of America's greatest villains and rogues and the time period in which they lived.

More great stuff for banned books week

I have been scouring the web all this week for good blurbs about BBW and I have found a few good ones that I will proceed to share. If you were a banned book, which one would you be? Hm, take this quiz and find out. (I got Slaughterhouse Five by the way). This post from Book Riot is a talk back that uses quotes from the book themselves to deliver some rebuttals against those who would seek to censor them.

The always funny buzzfeed has this collection of books with a slider that allows you to make them "normal". Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for example could be known as Harry Potter and the Completely Normal Childhood That Was in no Way Magical. Hilarious!

Graphic novels are often among the list of challenged and banned books and NPR explores this topic further.
Dav Pilkey eloquently explains how you can express your concern about a book or graphic novel without undermining the freedom to read of your fellow citizens.

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Some banned books have had a profound and lasting effect on generations of American youth and are staples of summer reading lists. (In my library for example we can never have too many copies of A Catcher in the Rye). Even though I moved to the US at age twenty reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X was a a profound experience for me because I could feel his frustration. Even though I did not agree with his way of acting towards the world I could understand why and many others like him felt the way they did. This list contains those books that have helped shape the America we know.

Finally I came across a fascinating collection of beautiful quotes from the Huffington Post that almost made me tear up (I stopped reading them before I did). This one from Sherman Alexie's wonderful The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is my personal fave. "The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know"   Wow.

If you'd like to find out more about BBW events, check here.

Follow them on Twitter @BannedBooksWeek and on Facebook.

Tape yourself during the Virtual Read Out

Banned Books Week

It is timely that Banned Books Week is here because in a school district near where I live there have been protests and walkouts today and over the past week due to a school board proposal to change the way History is taught in schools. Supposedly they want to make it friendlier and less about rabble rousing, in their words  focus on " positive aspects of the United States and its heritage and avoiding material that would encourage or condone "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law."" Thankfully the parents and students are not having that and are letting the whole world know it too.

Many books have been challenged over the years and this list provided by the American Library Association has the most challenged classic books. I read this list and could not believe some of the books that were on there. I mean To Kill a Mockingbird...come on.  As for recent publications that have made many school board member foam at the mouth this list shows the top ten frequently challenged books by year. I must say though that I am not surprised that Captain Underpants is there, I looked at one of them years ago and could not believe how plain silly it was. Even the words were silly, I think the boys took pride in spelling words incorrectly. However, as much as I don't like the book personally a book like that is gold for a school teacher or a librarian or literacy coach who is searching for any way to get students to pick up a book. Sure Captain Underpants probably wouldn't give other civilizations the best idea of us if somehow the book were to wind up in another galaxy but you know what, it gets kids reading. They learn about plot, suspense, irony, sarcasm etc.  I don't like the book but far be it from me to prevent the neighbor's child from reading it at school.

As I look at the main reason why books are band the words "sexually explicit" come to mind. These parents must want to cocoon their children- I can understand if you want to keep your 6 year old from looking at the latest Nikki Minaj video but an older child probably has friends who have phones and has probably seen that (and worse) online.  As for "offensive language" again, unless your kids are home schooled I think they have probably heard a cuss word or two or three in school. I remember learning about the birds and the bees in school...and that was way back when before technology exploded as it has.  At work I see kids elementary school kids playing computer games after school where people are shot and killed. Even uber popular Minecraft has some not too savory aspects at times.

I have always thought that those who want to ban books want to prevent their kids from thinking. Those parents are so set in their worldview that they don't want anything to spoil it. I am sorry to say but it is a cold, hard world out there and technology being what it is has made so many things accessible to our children. So go ahead, read a banned book (or two or three) and go out there and rouse some rabble :)

I've been Snarked!

 Well, well well. In trying to assemble a display set for Talk Like a Pirate Day I came upon Snarked by Roger Langridge. Yes, I know I am late and this Eisner award winning trilogy has been out for two years now but wow what a cool series. It is based on a Lewis Carroll poem called "The Walrus and the Carpenter" in which a walrus and a carpenter trick some oysters into accompanying them on a walk and then eat them and that oyster reference is a running gag throughout this series-on the very first page of the book we see the shack has a sign with the words 'room to let-oysters welcome" on it. Later on, the walrus is tracked down due to the smell of "oyster moustache"

The main character, a walrus called Wilburforce J. Walrus is an animal of leisure (he rises at four in the afternoon) and on one particular day he reads that the king is away on a trip so he inveigles Clyde McDunk a slow-witted but faithful sidekick to go to the palace with the aim of procuring food. Thus begins a saga where the feisty eight year old princess Scarlett solicits the walrus' help in rescuing the king after we learn that the three mean advisers have spirited him away on Snark island.


We meet some cool characters in the book and though there is a bit of violence in some scenes it is mostly comedic in nature. There are so many literary references in this book that it is hard to name them all. Lewis Carroll seems to be a major influence what with a Cheshire cat, a Mad hatter and a mean man-hunting Gryphon making appearance;  there is a butcher and a baker, a White Knight with a horse called Rocinante, and the voyage that the characters undertake reminded me of the Canterbury Tales and their voyage to find the snark bore echoes of the dwarfs from the Hobbit travelling to find Smaug (the Snark turns out to be very similar).

As I sat down and reflected on the ending of the book my take on it was that true friendship is golden and should be treasured, and that childhood memories are good to hold on to even as adults when we become more wise to the ways of the world and perhaps more cynical. The Walrus certainly grows as a person due to his adventures and by the end of the book he is still a rogue but he is less of a rogue than he was at the book's onset if that makes sense. The White Knight has a great quote near the end of the book: "when you get to be my age you come to realize that our generation's job is to get the next generation into a position where they can make their own decisions" Amen to that.