My Year in the Middle

author: Lila Quintero Weaver  

Candlewick Press, 2018 

grades 4-7 

Argentinian American

It’s the school year of 1969-1970. “The Vietnam War,” known in Vietnam as “The American War,” has been raging for 15 years. The US is continuing to drop millions of tons of bombs on three small countries. US soldiers had massacred some 500 Vietnamese villagers, including children and babies, in a tiny hamlet called My Lai. US campuses are erupting: Ohio National Guardsmen kill four Kent State students and wound nine, and a few days later, police kill two Jackson State students and wound a dozen more.

And, as another war—the war for human and civil rights—continues to be fought in this country, the music of Sly and the Family Stone becomes an anthem that resonates with millions of young people:

Stand.

For the things you know are right.

It’s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight.

Stand.

All the things you want are real.

You have you to complete and there is no deal.

Stand. Stand. Stand.

This school year is Argentinian-born Luisa (“Lu”) Olivera’s year in the middle. She’s entering sixth grade in an Alabama school that’s newly integrated by law but segregated by social reality: Black students are seated on one side of the classroom and white students on the other; and a few, like Lu and her white friend, Sam, sit in the middle. 

Lu also admires Belinda Gresham, the school’s star track-runner, who’s always either reading or hanging out with her friends, Angie and Willa. But around here, Lu says, “black and white kids don’t mix. No siree bob.” 

As Lu dreams of fitting in and running track like her idol, Olympic champion Madeline Manning, she’s confused. The notorious segregationist, George Wallace, is running for re-election and, most of the “mean girls”—popular, white, and racist—will soon be transferring to a nearby whites-only private school. They call Lu, “Loser Olivera,” and taunt her mercilessly.

As the school year progresses, Lu becomes more aware of her surroundings and of the choices she must make: 

What’s really got me worried is crossing over a line I’m not supposed to cross, if [white] people see me getting friendly with Belinda and Angie. I’m already on the outs as it is, being Loser Olivera and all.

Throughout the story, Lu witnesses racist remarks and actions from white students and adults. A bully mocks Lu’s people as “dark-headed spinach speakers.” A sales clerk loudly objects to Belinda’s trying on a headband. A classmate’s parent is “counting on Wallace putting everything back the way it used to be.” 

“Oh, Lord,” Lu says to herself, “I’m finally catching on, and it’s a scary, sinking feeling, like quicksand under my feet.” Meanwhile, Lu’s own immigrant parents are “worrywarts,” her older sister encourages her activism; and Belinda invites her to visit her neighborhood, where “nobody seems to think it’s strange that two girls, one black and one not, would ride bikes together.”

When Lu’s classmate, Spider, tells her why he plays “Stand” on a local Black radio show every afternoon—“That’s just me trying to get the message out…to whoever needs to hear it…. To open their minds to what’s real, dig?”—she takes a stab at the concept: 

If you listen to the words of “Stand!” it’s all about…well, standing up against things that are wrong, speaking up for the truth, and not just sitting around on your duff when you know better. 

Shortly after a classroom confrontation in which Charles loudly calls out Miss Garret about an extra-credit assignment—“Those of you who attended the Wallace rally have an excellent topic”—that in fact discriminates against the Black students, Lu’s friend Sam picks up his books and moves over to the Black section.

“I’m sitting over here from now on, if that’s okay with y’all,” he says to Spider, (who) gives him a high five, then a low five and another high five. “Out of sight! Welcome to the sunny side of the street, brother!”

After the teacher tries to stall the inevitable, and some white students continue their harassment, Lu is no longer in the “middle.” She knows where she belongs.

Sam’s at his new desk on the black side of the classroom, looking perfectly hunky dory. And now Belinda’s on the edge of her seat. She jerks her head at me in a come-here motion. She’s telling me: leave the middle row and join us. But I’m scared. 

For a few seconds, I lock eyes with Belinda, still scared. Hardly able to breathe, I scoop up my book bag, still scared. I hurry over to the only empty desk on that side of the classroom and claim it for my own. When Belinda reaches over to squeeze my hand, I feel much better. 

A series of white-initiated lunchroom fights breaks out, Spider is arrested and suspended when he stops a fight, and pressure from the newly-activated students gets him released. 

And Lu takes her own stand: With her heart pounding and the music of Sly and the Family Stone in her head—and despite Miss Garrett’s warning that her grade will be dropped and she might lose her place on the honor roll—Lu, realizing that she shouldn’t have personally benefited from attending a hate rally, takes back her extra-credit report.

Lu’s 1960s-‘70s southern voice is authentically rich (“might as well poke an ant pile with a stick,” “jittery as a cat near water”), and her slang is contextualized (“you can bet your sweet bippy,” “higgledy-piggledy”). Although she’s not totally fluent in Spanish, Lu translates for a neighbor, and in a conversation where “Spanish and English get all chopped up and mixed together,” she translates for Belinda. Middle-grade readers will see these conversations in English and know that Lu is translating. And that Lu’s parents’ Spanish, generally honorifics, is not italicized is important and refreshing.

In a helpful Author’s Note, Weaver fills in the historical events that shaped Alabama at this time, describes the racist origins of the Southern tradition known as the “cakewalk,” and tells readers which parts of this semi-autobiographical story are true and which are fictional. 

During this momentous school year, as history is being made in the Deep South and all over the world, young Luisa Olivera is growing from a naïve child desperately seeking to “fit in,” into a young woman who knows where she stands. Without polemic or hyperbole, Weaver exposes the ugliness and injustices of Wallace-era racism, the tensions of young people’s finding their road, and the solidarity that comes from conscience, friendship and realizing where you stand. 

In these hard times, when the campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” means “Make America White Again,” when white supremacists parade openly and “our” government demonizes immigrants and Muslims, when police shoot and kill Black children and adults with impunity—and when young people dare to place themselves in the forefront of national change—My Year in the Middle is a brilliant, fast-moving story that will resonate with middle-grade readers and could not have been published at a better time. 

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/2/18)

“Mamá Dearest”: Evaluating Latino Nursery Rhymes in Books for Children

Rhyming songs, proverbs, riddles and games for children present fun ways to play with words and meaning, to develop language learning, and to remember and pass on culture and history from generation to generation. They also provide opportunities to introduce young children to cultures other than their own. 

Following is a comparison of two children’s books that contain rhymes for young children. We highly recommend one of them and do not recommend the other. 

author: Susan Middleton Elya

illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal 

Putnam, 2016 

preschool-grade 3

La Madre Goose is Elya’s reworking of 18 classic Mother Goose “nursery” rhymes, with Spanish words thrown in. The idea seems to have been to introduce Spanish words to English-speaking children who are already familiar with these rhymes; and if there’s any appeal at all, it’s to parents looking to add Spanish words to their young children’s vocabularies. 

But the subtitle of this volume, “Nursery Rhymes for los Niños” notwithstanding, it was not intended for Spanish-speaking youngsters. Tossing a few Spanish words or phrases into European nursery rhymes does not transform them into something that’s “multicultural” or “bilingual” or “code switching” or anything other than opportunistic and appropriative. The result of what might have been envisioned as creative and fun wordplay is a hodgepodge of phrases that make no sense in Spanish or English. La Madre Goose is confusing, not to mention insulting, to young hablantes—the Spanish-speaking children who are never considered in this kind of project.

In addition, classic Mother Goose “nursery” rhymes were never meant for the nursery. Rather, they were hidden political commentary satirized as children’s rhymes. Take, for instance:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater

had a wife but couldn't keep her.

He put her in a pumpkin shell,

and there he kept her very well.

This poem is about infidelity and murder. The gruesome message here is that “Peter” couldn’t “keep” his wife at home because she kept running away to have numerous encounters with other men, so he killed her and hid her body in a ludicrously large pumpkin shell, in which he “kept” her “very well.” 

Here is Elya’s version, which she entitles “Peter, Peter Calabasa,” and which is not only sanitized, but doesn’t make sense at any level:

Peter, Peter Calabasa,

got a wife for his new casa.

When she saw the round casita,

she repainted it—bonita!

Peter Pumpkin got a wife for his new house, which she repainted. Wouldn’t he have gotten a house for his wife? Does Peter consider his wife like a piece of furniture? If Elya had something in mind beyond rhyming when she created this, it’s hard to tell.

Then there’s the famous “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” One of the first versions reads:

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.

One for the master 

One for the dame

And one for the little boy 

Who cries down the lane.

In this poem that originated in medieval times, the three bags of wool are said to represent one-third for King Edward I (the “master”), one-third for the Church of England (the “dame”), and the rest (after he’d paid the 66% wool tax) for the poor shepherd, whose children were probably starving (“the little boy who cries down the lane”).

And here is Elya’s version: “Baa, Baa, Black Oveja”:

Baa, baa, black oveja, have you any lana?

Sí, sir, sí, sir, three bags llenas.

One for my sister, una for mi madre,

and one to be shared by my brother and mi padre!

What is this? Is Elya’s poem about the necessity of sharing with your family? If so, then why isn’t the wool divided into four equal parts, instead of three? Why do sister and mom each have one bag full, while brother and dad have to divide one between them? Is this a lesson about fractions? Or about making amends for centuries of inequality? Or is it possible that Elya’s sheep is distributing her own wool—in bags—to her own family?

While Elya’s gratingly awkward combinations of English and Spanish don’t make any linguistic or cultural sense, Martinez-Neal’s luminous artwork makes this book lovely to look at. The softness of her warm, gentle paintings, on an earthy palette of blues and teals, beiges and yellows, highlighted by purples and oranges, appears to be a true labor of love. 

In describing the collage-mixing process for her debut picture book, Martinez-Neal told me that she selected different papers with a variety of textures and additionally hand-textured them, using matte medium as a glue that dries clear and soaks in the color, adding and drying one layer at a time. She then painted in her images in acrylic, colored pencil and graphite—or sometimes all acrylics—that, together, adds a gouache feeling to them; and then brushed on a white layer to soften the images. Martinez-Neal slowly developed this technique “organically experimenting,” she said, and makes changes in every book because she often “gets bored.”

The results here are depictions, many in groups, of chubby-cheeked multiethnic children and cuddly animals with childlike expressions to whom the youngest kids can relate. Martinez-Neal’s own babies, she told me, were models for some of the children here.

It’s unfortunate that Martinez-Neal’s beautiful artwork cannot save this contrived, formulaic and unimaginative book. La Madre Goose: Nursery Rhymes for los Niños is not recommended.

author: Alma Flor Ada

author: F. Isabel Campoy

illustrator: Maribel Suárez

editor (English): Tracy Heffernan

Hyperion Books for Children, 2004

preschool-grade 3

Mamá Goose: A Latino Nursery Treasury / Un Tesorio de Rimas Infantiles is everything that La Madre Goose: Nursery Rhymes for los Niños is not. 

Ada and Campoy planned the sections together and then chose the selections in this extensive compendium that contains lullabies, finger games, lap games, sayings, nursery rhymes, jump-rope songs, song games, proverbs, riddles, tall tales, and much more (including an outrageous ballad about a dead cat—“El señor don Gato”—who is brought back to life by the smell of sardines). The entire volume is lovingly compiled and beautifully illustrated with exuberant children and animals; and the poetic Spanish is “creatively edited” into English. Each section has a thoughtful and educational introduction and, although I would like to have seen a note about each piece’s cultural origin, it’s clear that great inspiration, planning, talent and execution went into every aspect of this project. 

Suárez’s deceptively simple watercolor illustrations, on a bright, earthy palette of mostly browns, greens, blues and golds, portray multicultural and multiethnic children and their relatives, and the design elements reflect the diversity of Latin-American and Spanish traditions as well. For instance, young readers will see children and adults in Peruvian, Mexican—and even medieval Spanish—dress, and there are Mexican adobe houses and Cuban and Puerto Rican tropical beaches and huge Spanish edifices along with borders that feature Spanish tiles and Mexican piñatas and papel picado, just to name a few. And children will love the illustrations of smiling animals behaving in species-anomalous ways—such as carefree rabbits, playing and chasing carrots in the sea, while smiling fishes happily cavort on dry ground.

Colorful chapter headings and borders, along with white space that leaves lots of room for both the Spanish and English texts as well as the illustrations, make for an attractive, uncrowded, child-friendly design. 

One thing rarely portrayed in this kind of anthology for children—and something that deserves special mention—is the depiction of a variety of social classes, some in poems that abut each other. Here, for instance, are two upper-class girls and a boy in Spain. The girls, in red dresses and mary jane flats, carry white parasols and the boy, in an expensive-looking suit and hat, carries his schoolbooks. They are on “el paseíto de oro”—the golden path—without a care in the world. Here is a poor vendor (“la carbonerita”), also in Spain, wheeling a heavy coal-filled cart. Her face and apron covered with soot, she asks the reader, “How can you expect me to keep my face clean, if I am a coal-seller?” And here is a hard-working young servant girl, who washes, irons, cooks, cleans, sews, and sweeps—until Sunday, when she can go out to play. 

Since Ada and Campoy selected pieces recognized all over the Spanish-speaking world, it seemed natural for them to offer the Spanish versions first—which encourages Spanish-speaking parents and grandparents (as well as teachers) to share their own remembered rhymes and stories with their young hablante relatives and students. As well, following the Spanish pieces with those that have been “creatively edited” in English—and set off in italics—will have English-speaking children enjoying them as well and, by looking over to the Spanish, learning some Spanish and connecting with cultures other than their own.

A particular rima or canción brings back memories of when my child was a toddler. Next to a brightly colored full-page painting of a green mama frog in a blue dress comforting her youngster who has fallen off a tricycle, the rima or canción reads:

Cura, sana,

madre rana,

dame un besito

y vete la cama.

Kiss, kiss,

Mother Toad,

Send the pain

Down the road.

I remember often laying a hand over my own son’s scraped knee and singing,

Sana sana,

colita de rana,

si no sanas hoy,

sanarás mañana.

Heal, heal,

Little frog’s tail.

If you don’t heal today,

You’ll heal tomorrow.

Until one day (mid-“sana, sana”), he interrupted me and said, “It’s OK, mom, I’ll just go get a bandaid.”

Unfortunately, the introductions for each section appear in English only. This is frequently an issue that publishers justify by design space limitations and assumptions about “secondary” languages’ (although, in this case, Spanish is the primary language) being unnecessary in prefatory material. In education, while language equality is improving, la lucha continúa.

Mamá Goose: A Latino Nursery Treasury / Un Tesorio de Rimas Infantiles is indeed a treasure. It’s highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 3/11/18)

Míl gracias a mi amiga y colega, María Cárdenas. 

Agua, Agüita / Water, Little Water / At Achichipiga At

author: Jorge Tetl Argueta

illustrator: Felipe Ugalde Alcántara 

English translator: Gabriela Baeza Ventura 

Nahuat translators: Jorge Tetl Argueta, with Genaro Ramirez, María de la Paz Pérez and Paula López 

Piñata Books / Arte Público Press, 2017 

preschool-up 

Pipil Nahua, Salvadoran

In just about every Indigenous culture and language, there is a millennia-old teaching: Water Is Life. Wherever and whenever this teaching is spoken or sung, youngest children learn that, without water, no living thing can exist.

Narrated by a bead of water, a tiny drop who likes to be called “Agüita” or “Achichipiga,” or “Little Water,” this exquisite story of life begins deep in Mother Earth, where una gotita emerges singing. Drop by drop, as she grows, la gotita, passing through roots and rocks, traveling through light and darkness, climbs to the surface. Here, she rests “by hanging / on the tips of leaves, / on spider webs / or on flower petals.” During her journey, the little drop transforms into Agüita, “a sigh of morning dew,” “a sweet, tender and strong song.” She transforms into a river, a lake, an ocean, and climbs to the sky, becoming a cloud and, ultimately, as rain, returns to Mother Earth. And throughout her journey, throughout her many changes, she remains indescribable: “Soy de todos los colores / y no tengo color. / Soy de todos los sabores / y no tengo sabor. / Soy de todas las formas / y no tengo forma. / Soy Agua, / soy Agüita.”

Listen: Can you hear Agüita singing? Water is Life. All life is sentient. All life is a circle. We are all related.

Ugalde Alcántara’s gorgeous, stylized full-page illustrations, using watercolor and acrylic on paper and then finished digitally, complement Agüita’s song. On a luminous jewel-toned palette of mostly cool blues and greens, and sometimes warm reds, oranges and golds, the artist vibrantly depicts the many colors and shapes of little water. As one becomes many, Gotita / Agüita shows herself as part of everything that is: a blue rivulet cascading out of clouds and purple mountains through a green expanse, a blue-green river washing over brown rocks, white drops falling from clouds onto bluish land, and, as part of a waterfall, she provides a life-giving drink in a blue-white pond. 

Argueta’s poem in Spanish and Nahuat, together with Baeza Ventura’s translation into English, flow with grace and beauty. 

It’s unfortunate that the Nahuat version—Argueta’s first language and the language of the Pipil Nahua, Indigenous people of El Salvador and Mexico—is relegated to one double-page spread at the end with no accompanying illustration. As well, the Nahuat title, At Achichipiga At, is absent from both the CIP data and the cover (which has, instead, a small line at the bottom that reads, “Includes a Nahuat version”); and it’s shown, only in very small type, on the title page. The book design could easily have accommodated the Nahuat version, and, inasmuch as this poem / song is a First Nations’ teaching, placing it in the primary spot would have empowered Indigenous young children to see an Indigenous language on par with two colonial languages. 

It’s also unfortunate that the cover illustration, which focuses on a deer drinking from a pond, diverts the attention of young readers from Agüita herself. 

Nevertheless, for the great beauty and teaching that it encompasses, Agua, Agüita / Water, Little Water / At Achichipiga At is *highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 2/24/18)

You are brave. We believe you. We support you. We care about you.

To those survivors who have recently spoken or written of experiences of sexual harassment and abuse and predatory sexual behavior in the children’s literature community, and to those survivors of sexual harassment and abuse who remain silent: You are brave and we believe you. We support you and we care about you. And we will do all we can to lessen your pain.

We have become aware that we have previously reviewed the work of a well-known illustrator who has been called out for his history of sexual harassment and predation. We have redacted all references to his art in our posted reviews of the books he has illustrated. At the same time, we are maintaining these reviews because we don’t want to negatively impact the authors whose publishers had contracted with this illustrator. 

Here are our reviews of the books in question: 

http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2015/09/mayas-blanket-la-manta-de-maya.html

http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2013/11/picasso-i-king-yo-el-rey.html

http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2013/11/diego-rivera-bigger-than-life.html

http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2013/05/going-home.html

http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/cesar-si-se-puede-yes-we-can.html

Along with Latinxs in Kid Lit, we will be attentive to updates on the accusations and fallout as this issue is tackled within the Kid Lit community.

We also encourage everyone to read articles (see links below) that shed light on the issue and to change the ugly and dangerous climate that exists in the world of children’s literature. We need to reclaim and safeguard the networks and encounters through which we navigate and intervene to disrupt the dynamics that feed predatory actions. 

Those who want to take a step in this direction may decide to repost the pledge on Gwenda Bond’s site, which articulates a determination to make conferences safer for everyone. In addition, please read:

Sexual Harassment in the Children’s Book Industry

Children’s Publishing Reckons with Sexual Harassment in its Ranks

#metoo #ustoo Change Starts Now: Stand Against Harassment in the YA/Kidlit Community

{“…after the watermelon thing.”}

Malinda Lo on how sexual harassment intersects with race/ethnicity and sexual orientation.

We thank Latinxs in Kid Lit (latinosinkidlit.com) for calling public attention to this important matter and for their support and camaraderie. 

—De Colores

(published 2/17/18)

Family Poems for Every Day of the Week / Poemas Familiares para cada día de la semana

author: Francisco X. Alarcón

illustrator: Maya Christina González 

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2017 

preschool-up 

Mexican American

We all know that a circle has no beginning and no end. In Family Poems for Every Day of the Week / Poemas Familiares para cada día de la semana, everything is circular, everything is happening at the same time, and everyone is present at every moment. 

Each double-page spread contains an etymology of a particular day of the week. With Spanish predominating and English following, an individual poem stands alone and, at the same time, joins with the others to create a circle with the subliminal message that we are all related.

The life and work of the beloved, openly gay Chicano poet and educator, Francisco X. Alarcón, straddled three cultures. Creating work for children and adults in Nahuatl, Spanish and English, Alarcón passed on too soon—almost at the completion of this, his last book. Here, he returns to visit as a queer child, embodied in the book’s young narrator. Alone or in the company of family and friends, this child traverses the days of the week, displaying varying emotions: boredom, loneliness, thoughtfulness, joy—and, as did Alarcón, awareness of everyone and everything in the many circles of life. 

Although Spanish is a gendered language and Alarcón’s poetry maintains it as such, Maya Christina González's art is gender-expansive and loaded with visual subtext. While each of Alarcón’s poems is rich, brilliant and almost always playful, so is González s art. As she writes in her Illustrator’s Note, the art “tells the story inside the story.”

Rendering her full-bleed double-page spreads in watercolor, gouache and acrylic markers, González uses color as a form of spiritual expression. Her bright palette encompasses both warm and cool colors that dance together on every page, complementing rather than competing with each other. As well, lines are rounded and curved, and everywhere there are circles. In backgrounds, on clothing, in the patterns on the animales, and even on the faces of the elders, they display a connectedness of everything and everyone.

Alarcón’s craft, as always, shines. On each spread he presents two or more poems in Spanish and English. Although he connects them to a particular day of the week, neither is a translation; rather, each has its own internal rhythm that reflects both the dreams and realities of the young narrator. 

For instance, on Monday, there is daydreaming:

este día se llama igual que la Luna— por eso quizás	this day is named after the Moon— maybe that’s why
al mediodía aún estoy soñando con la Luna el lunes	at noon I’m still daydreaming on the Moon on Monday

But Monday also brings an impossible wish:

cómo me gustaría que el lunes se volviera en domingo otra vez	how I wish Monday would just turn back into Sunday
para que mis papacitos no tuvieron que salir a trabajar al amanecer	so my dear parents wouldn’t have to go out to work at dawn

Family Poems for Every Day of the Week / Poems Familiares para cada día de la semana is both playful and serious, an LGBTQ-friendly children’s book that works with words and images in ways that encourage young readers and listeners—hablantes and English-speakers alike—to embrace who they are and how they see themselves. It’s full of verbal and visual communication that sends messages of love, comfort and belonging to everyone who is part of the great circle. 

There are far too few books for young people like this. One of my all-time favorites is González’s Call Me Tree / Llámame arbol (Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2015). (See De Colores review here: http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2015/02/call-me-tree-llamame-arbol.html). And Family Poems for Every Day of the Week / Poemas Familiares para cada día de la semana is another. 

*Highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.


—Beverly Slapin
(published 2/11/18)

Francisco X. Alarcón: ¡Presente!