I've fallen in love with a new author: Jacqueline Woodson. I met her through her book Feathers which I picked up off of the Black History display of books for children in my town's library.
It's the skinny book on the right with 'J' for juvenile on it. My review of the book on the left, Children of Blood and Bone, can be found here. As for the book in the middle The Sellout, I'm still reading it. Beatty writes satire which is not my normal go-to genre to read.
However, Feathers is the type of book I enjoy immensely: thought-provoking and discussable with characters I care about even though the book is written for a juvenile audience and short in length, all of which makes it a good choice for middle school or high school interdisciplinary units...or for a adult discussion group in need of something with fewer pages (say during a holiday season).
I picked up this book from the local library's display of books for Black History month in February. This book, along with the other two books mentioned already and three other books (I'm Still Here, Under Our Skin, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy -- another children's book) are providing me with a diverse group of voices.
The voice in Feathers is gentle. As mentioned by other reviewers, Woodson includes a lot of issues--mom who keeps miscarrying, deaf brother, new boy in town who doesn't look like the rest of the classroom, classmate who struggles with living the Christ-following life versus saving souls, bullying, and outsiders.
I like that the deaf brother isn't just in the story to help the main character grow or move the story along. Granted, he is one of the "outsiders", but there is a little something "outsider" about each of the characters except the mean girls who are no longer interested in a good looking young man once they find out he is deaf.
I have to admit that my reading of the other books mentioned in this review raised a question for me as to whether the outsider coming into the community had to be this particular boy. I won't write more than that. There are some interesting twists at the end, and in the case of this book, you could read some of the reviews and find out all about the story, but I felt it meant something more to me to come at the story cold, knowing nothing about it.
💕💕💕 While I was able to pull from a small section (2 shelves) of our home library a number of books with diverse characters, I was disappointed to realize that only 3 of the 10 books had black or Hispanic authors. (We do have a large collection of books written by Alan Say, but he may be our only Asian author. ) Those three are Marie Bradby, Patricia C. McKissack, and John Steptoe. It's possible that when my children were young, we did not have access to more diversity anymore than we had access to characters with medical challenges being anything more than characters to help the main character grow. However, that is not the case anymore, and just reading about diverse characters is not enough. We all need to read works from a diverse group of writers.
--- At the moment, I can't think of a better way to grow in Christ-likeness in the area of seeing all humans as created in God's image than to get to know a diverse group of people as friends. And, if that is not forthcoming, then at least to start reading literature written by a diverse group of writers.
It's the skinny book on the right with 'J' for juvenile on it. My review of the book on the left, Children of Blood and Bone, can be found here. As for the book in the middle The Sellout, I'm still reading it. Beatty writes satire which is not my normal go-to genre to read.
However, Feathers is the type of book I enjoy immensely: thought-provoking and discussable with characters I care about even though the book is written for a juvenile audience and short in length, all of which makes it a good choice for middle school or high school interdisciplinary units...or for a adult discussion group in need of something with fewer pages (say during a holiday season).
I picked up this book from the local library's display of books for Black History month in February. This book, along with the other two books mentioned already and three other books (I'm Still Here, Under Our Skin, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy -- another children's book) are providing me with a diverse group of voices.
The voice in Feathers is gentle. As mentioned by other reviewers, Woodson includes a lot of issues--mom who keeps miscarrying, deaf brother, new boy in town who doesn't look like the rest of the classroom, classmate who struggles with living the Christ-following life versus saving souls, bullying, and outsiders.
I like that the deaf brother isn't just in the story to help the main character grow or move the story along. Granted, he is one of the "outsiders", but there is a little something "outsider" about each of the characters except the mean girls who are no longer interested in a good looking young man once they find out he is deaf.
I have to admit that my reading of the other books mentioned in this review raised a question for me as to whether the outsider coming into the community had to be this particular boy. I won't write more than that. There are some interesting twists at the end, and in the case of this book, you could read some of the reviews and find out all about the story, but I felt it meant something more to me to come at the story cold, knowing nothing about it.
💕💕💕 While I was able to pull from a small section (2 shelves) of our home library a number of books with diverse characters, I was disappointed to realize that only 3 of the 10 books had black or Hispanic authors. (We do have a large collection of books written by Alan Say, but he may be our only Asian author. ) Those three are Marie Bradby, Patricia C. McKissack, and John Steptoe. It's possible that when my children were young, we did not have access to more diversity anymore than we had access to characters with medical challenges being anything more than characters to help the main character grow. However, that is not the case anymore, and just reading about diverse characters is not enough. We all need to read works from a diverse group of writers.
--- At the moment, I can't think of a better way to grow in Christ-likeness in the area of seeing all humans as created in God's image than to get to know a diverse group of people as friends. And, if that is not forthcoming, then at least to start reading literature written by a diverse group of writers.
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