BIPOC author

Sugar

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by Jewell Parker Rhodes
First sentence: “Everybody likes sugar.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Bought and signed by the author at KidLitCon 2014
Content: This one would be appropriate (and probably okay, difficulty-wise) for kids third grade and up. It’s in the middle grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore.

It’s 1871, and slavery is supposed to be over. However, for ten-year-old Sugar, on a sugar plantation in Louisiana, it doesn’t feel like it. Sure, the former slaves are free to go if they can, but they’re paid so little that it’s almost impossible for them to leave. And then the plantation owner, Mr. Wills, decides that he needs more workers, so he hires some Chinese to come and supplement the former slaves.

For Sugar, her life revolves around sneaking out to play with Billy, the owner’s son, and trying not to get under Mrs. Beale’s feet. And planting and cutting sugar cane. Once the Chinese arrive, however, Sugar’s world is expanded: one of them speaks English and she befriends them. In fact, she is the bridge that gets the whole working community to work together rather in competition. There’s a passage about halfway through that pretty much sums up what I think Rhodes was getting at in this book:

“How come I ca’t decide who I can see? How come I can’t decide my friends?”
“We don’t trust these men, Sugar.”
“I like Chinamen. Reverend, don’t you preach ‘Treat folks like you want to be treated’?”
“Well, now,” says Reverend, not looking at me, twiddling his thumbs.
“Sugar,” says Mister Beale, “folks get along best with folks like them. Always been that way.”
“Seems cowardly.”

Of course, things aren’t easy for Sugar and her friends: it is 1871 in the South, and white people — especially the former Overseer — are reluctant to change and adapt. There is some tragedy in this book, but it is a middle grade book, after all, and the tragedy is kept simple and appropriate.

It’s the overall message of friendship and inclusion that made this slim historical fiction book worth reading.

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

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by Meg Medina
First sentence: “Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some mild swearing. The real reason it ended up in the Teen (grads 9+) section is for the bullying and the violence. It’s pretty graphic and the fallout is pretty severe.

Piddy Sanchez is starting a new school. It’s one of those inner city schools in a Hispanic neighborhood in Queens, the kind that justifies every bad stereotype there is. Just a few weeks in, and someone informs Piddy that Yaqui Delgado — whom Piddy has neither seen nor spoken with — is going to kick her ass. Why? Because she thinks Piddy is flirting with her boyfriend. (She’s not.)

It’s this threat, among other things, that begins defining Piddy’s life. She doesn’t feel like she can talk to her mother, who is working extra shifts to try and provide for the both of them. She does turn to her aunt Lila, but even then she keeps the awful details to herself.

It’s a harsh journey, one that I wouldn’t wish on any kid. I did like that there was a range of diverse people in this one; not all white characters were “good” and not all Latin@ ones were “bad”. There was a wide range of personalities, and the color of the skin just happens to be incidental. I also enjoyed how Piddy embraced her culture and loved her neighborhood.

I was glad for the solution to this one, as well. No one really “learned their lesson” and the bully wasn’t reformed and they didn’t become friends and live happily ever after. No, it was much more realistic and messy and showed that sometimes the best option isn’t always the most noble one.

It was a tough read, emotionally raw especially for me (because of the whole daughter thing), but I’m glad I did.

Brown Girl Dreaming

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by Jacqueline Woodson
First sentence: “I am born on a Tuesday at University Hospital Columbus, Ohio, USA — a country caught between Black and White.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s nothing objectionable. And it’s even an easy-ish read. Sure, it’s poetry, but it’s not difficult. Hand it to anyone with an interest in writing, kids, and history. It’s in our middle grade biography section at the bookstore.

I’m not quite sure where to start on this one. It seems We’ve (the collective we, here) been inundated by memoirs and biographies of celebrities, People of Note, and at first glance Jacqueline Woodson’s new book just falls into that pit of “celebrity” (of a sort) biographies.

Except, it’s not so much a biography or memoir as it is a reflection upon a childhood. Woodson makes her childhood an Everyperson experience, something that the reader can readily identify with, even if they didn’t have her exact same experiences.

Her childhood begins in Ohio, but mostly it’s spent in South Carolina, with her grandparents, and in Brooklyn, where her mother finally settled with Jacqueline and her brothers and sister. I kept trying to figure out the timeline (if she was born in 1963, then it must be…) but eventually, I just gave up and let myself get absorbed in the story.

And absorbed I was. Woodson wove historical elements into her story — sit-ins in the South; the way her grandmother felt about the way she was treated in stores by white people; music that was playing on the radio — all of which helped put her personal story in a larger framework. I could easily forget I was reading a memoir; it felt so much like a novel.

Part of that, too, was the form. Written in free verse, the memoir took on a lyrical quality. There were moments, especially toward the end, where I was moved by her insights not only in her life, but for Life in general.

One more thing: I appreciated her portrayal of religion. I get the sense she’s not a practicing Jehovah’s Witness anymore, but she portrayed the religion of her grandmother and her own childhood with respect. It was neither good nor bad; it was just a part of her life. And I found that refreshing.

Highly recommended.

The Summer Prince

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by Alaya Dawn Johnson
First sentence: “When I was eight, my papai took me to the park to watch a king die.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: I was initially thinking that this would be good for those who like Uglies; there’s about the same amount of swearing. But the reason it’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) is because there’s a lot of allusions to sex, including a couple (tasteful) sex scenes.

June Costa is the best artist in Palmeres Três. Or so she thinks; she just hasn’t had a chance to prove it yet. And in this, a moon year in which her futuristic, matriarchal society chooses a one-year Summer King to “rule”, she will have that chance. It starts innocently: her best friend, Gil, falls in love with the summer king, Enki. And she does, too, though she tells herself that it’s mostly about the art. And what art June and Enki create. Ever more elaborate, they end up sparking a revolution of sorts between the technophiles and the isolationists; the government, made up of women they call “Aunties”, has placed strict regulations on what kind of tech can be in the city.

It was this tech element that reminded me so much of Uglies. But, I think Johnson was pointing out the value of art and the power of love, even in a futuristic (and while not dystopian, certainly not perfect) society. It’s a very thought-provoking novel, one that winds and unfurls instead of proceeding in a linear fashion. And it was this winding that kept me most interested. Johnson chose to build her futuristic Brazilian society in bits and chunks throughout the entire book, dropping hints and clues about what happened to get the world to this point along the way. And the society she built was equally as fascinating, with all its machinations and political scheming.

But, ultimately, it was June and Enki and Gil (and June’s competition/friend, Bebel) that kept me reading in the end. I cared about what happened to them, how this year played out for the summer king and his newfound friends. I found myself moved by the ending, and thinking about the book long after I turned the last page.

Audiobook: Randi Rhodes Ninja Detective: The Case of the Time Capsule Bandit

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by Octavia Spencer
Read by the author.
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There wasn’t anything objectionable. I don’t know how it’d be reading it, but my 8-year-old followed the story pretty well while listening to it. We did have to stop the audio a few times to explain some things, however. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

I threw this in the audiobook pile mostly because I’ve seen it at the store and wondered if it was any good. (I know: celebrity authors. Ugh. But, sometimes they surprise me. Not often, though.)

Randi Rhodes is a die-hard city girl. She’s grown up in Brooklyn and loved every minute of it. Her family summers in Deer Creek, Tennessee, which is just about the right length of time for a city girl to spend in a boring, dull, small town. But the year after her mother dies (I called that pretty early on; I do get so tired of dead parents), her father, a mystery writer, packs the two of them up to live full-time in Deer Creek. Randi is not happy about this.

But, once there, she falls head-first into a mystery: the 200-year-old time capsule for the town’s Founder’s Day has been stolen. And they have 72 hours to get it back. Much against her over-protective father’s wishes, Randi (and her two new friends, D. C. and Pudge) decide that they are the only ones to solve the mystery.

It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill middle grade mystery book. Nothing too fantastic or brilliant; in fact, as an adult, I’ve seen all the tropes before. The banker is a Bad Guy, as is the power-grabbing Mayor. There’s a grumpy old man with a heart of gold, and a woman sheriff who’s a bit bumbling. (Though — spoiler — this isn’t a true middle grade novel, because by the end, you discover that the sheriff isn’t bumbling at all, but has instead figured out the mystery WAY before the kids ever did.) The best parts of the book are when Randi and her friends are out being detectives; the worst are the angsty tensions between her and her overprotective dad. I got extremely tired of the rants Randi went on about not being “understood.” (But that’s a parent speaking. I did appreciate that Randi was a non-girly girl; she was often ranting about how she wasn’t a princess and didn’t need protection. She’s a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, after all.)

In the end, it wasn’t anything special, though A and K enjoyed listening to it. But, it wasn’t absolutely horrible, either, and Spencer did an admirable job of narrating her book (which I would expect, with her being an actress and all).

The Great Greene Heist

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by Varian Johnson
First sentence:
Support your local independent bookstore (actually, just support mine!) and buy it there! (Before the end of June, PLEASE.)
Review copy sent to me by the author, upon my request. Also, I’ve met him a couple of times and I think he’s fantastic.
Content: There’s no swearing, and only hints at romance. It’s in the middle grade section (grades 3-5) at the bookstore, though older kids would like the con aspects of it, I think.

Jackson Greene is going clean. He got ratted out (and caught) four months ago, in what he calls the “Kelsey Job” but what the school has come to know as the “Mid-Day PDA”. It cost him a certain amount of freedom (he can no longer have a cell phone, and he has weekly meetings with the principal, Dr. Kelsey) and one of his best friends, Gaby de la Cruz. Fast-forward to the fall of 8th grade, and student elections. Gaby’s running for president, and Jackson’s not going to get involved. That is until her opponent suddenly drops out, and Jackson’s nemesis, Keith Sinclair, enters the race. Jackson knows something fishy is up, and sets out to prove it. Of course, that means a long con. Which means he needs a crew.

Jackson assembles a memorable one: reminiscent of great heist movies (Oceans 11 is referenced more than once) and books (Heist Society!), Johnson weaves in not only every stereotypical element (there’s the right-hand-man, the tech guy, the runner, the money) but also plays against stereotype. My favorite is with the beautiful cheerleader Megan Feldman, who is a tech and programming genius. But there’s also Hashemi who is a budding inventor (my favorite: the MAPE, a beta cellphone the size of a brick); Bradley, a sixth-grade artist who’s mostly in awe of being included; Victor, the money behind the operation; and Charlie, twin brother to Gaby, and Jackson’s right-hand-man. And the cool thing? Only two of the crew is white.

It was refreshing that race rarely comes into play; for the most part characters were just that, and not the “Asian kid” or the “Black kid” or the “White girl”. Yes, one of the older secretaries is subtly racist, mixing up the names of the Asian kids and saying “Boys like you are always up to something or other.” It’s probably over-the-top, but in the context, it works. And the principle is a certified jerk (he was the one I wondered about: how did he ever get to be in charge of a school and not challenged?). But then again, this is all an elaborate fantasy: how many 13-year-old boys are capable of running a long con?

It was a ton of fun, though.

March (Book One)

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by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell
First sentence: “John, can you swim?”
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Content: The only objectionable thing in the book is the use of the “n” word (which doesn’t make the white Southerners look good at all). The library has it filed under adult graphic novels, but I think I’d put it with the teen ones. I’m sure even a curious 10- or 11-year-old would get something out of this one as well.

I picked this up because it made the SLJ’s Battle of the (Kids) Books contenders list and I like to (try to) read as many as I can before the competition starts. Like every year, I found a wonderful book I’d have never picked up otherwise.

This is a slim graphic memoir, telling the first part of Congressman John Lewis’s story. (For the record, Hubby knew who Lewis was; I did not.) This volume starts with his childhood in Alabama, and goes through the Nashville sit-ins that he participated in. My favorite thing about this memoir was the framing: It opens with Lewis waking up the morning of Obama’s first inauguration, and the story unfolds as Lewis is remembering his path to D.C. as he tells it to a couple of constituents who have stopped by his office.

It’s your pretty typical Civil Rights story: sharecropper parents save money for their own farm. After an exposure to a different way of doing things (he visited his uncle and aunt in New York City for a summer), child wants an education, rather than be stuck at home doing what his parents do. (I loved the bits about raising chickens, though.) He feels a call to be a preacher, and ends up at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville. There is an interesting aside here: Lewis wanted to go to college in Alabama, closer to home, and actually met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his lawyers to talk about segregating Troy State. In the end, though, Lewis’s family didn’t want to chance the backlash, so he stayed in Nashville.

He was very influenced by the school of non-violent protests, and he got involved with a group that organized the sit-ins in Nashville in 1959. I think this was the most moving part of the book; the abuse and hurt that Lewis and his friends endured just so they could have the same services as the white people in Nashville was pretty brutal. This volume ends just after the Nashville mayor decrees that all businesses should be integrated. I’m quite interested to see where Lewis’s story goes from here.

I loved the format as well: there aren’t enough non-fiction graphic novels (at least that I’ve read), and the art — done in stark black and white — adds to the intensity of the story. I’m glad I picked this one up.

Audiobook: The Lowland

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by Jjumpa Lahirir
read by: Sunil Malhotra
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I admit that I picked this up solely because M is currently in the part of India where this is set. I thought: Kolkata, Bengali… I should see if I could learn a little more of where M is staying for the next school year. Other than that, I really had no expectations.

It’s a much more political work than I was expecting. While, nominally it’s the story of the relationship between two brothers, Shubash and Udayan Mitra, Lahriri uses the background of the political unrest and Communist movement in India as a backdrop. The two brothers, who were close as children, grow apart as Udayan (the younger) gets involved with the Naxalite movement and Shubash heads to Rhode Island to pursue a PhD. Udayan gets married to Gauri (which Malhotra alternately pronounced Godi and Gori, so I had to check on the spelling) and then ends up killed by the police. When Shubash comes back for the funeral, he takes pity on Gauri, mostly because she’s pregnant, and marries her, bringing her back to the US.

That is the first third of the book. At which point, I was left wondering: What on earth is Lahiri going to do with the rest of the novel? Well, much like Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed, Lahiri explores the ramifications of those decisions. We follow Shubash and Gauri, and later Gauri’s biological daughter, through the years to present day (when Shubash is 70, and Gauri s in her mid-60s), and experience the fallout. Because there is fallout, and it’s not pleasant.

As I mentioned to people that I was reading this, their first question was “Do you like it?” Well…. no. And yes. It wasn’t bad enough to abandon. Malhotra was a delightful reader, capturing both Indian and American accents well. Perhaps it was him who kept my interest in the book going, because I was constantly annoyed at the characters. Gauri could never get past her dead love and move on with her life. And right up to the end, she never thought about the consequences for her actions, acting impulsively. But the thing that really infuriated me was Shubash’s insistence that because he wasn’t the sperm donor for Gauri and Udayan’s daughter, that he wasn’t her father. He. Raised. The. Girl. He was there for her when her mother abandons her, and yet he still questions whether or not he’s her father. *grumble* Biology isn’t what being a parent is about.

Maybe that was Lahiri’s point, in the end. Because, after finishing the last disc (a very unsatisfying ending, by the way), that’s what I got out of it. Family is what you make, and loving and caring for other people is the way to happiness.

So maybe it was a good book after all?

Flygirl

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by Sherri L. Smith
ages: 12+
First sentence: “It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the phonograph player is jumping like a clown in a parade the way Jolene and I are dancing.”

Ida Mae Jones has always wanted to fly. Ever since she was put behind the wheel (is it a wheel?) of her daddy’s Jenny and taught how, she knew that this was what she was born to do. Except, she’s an African American (yes, I am being politically correct here), and lives in the outskirts of New Orleans. Not only can she not get a pilot’s license because she’s a woman; she can’t get one because she’s the wrong color.

It’s only when her younger brother spies and article about the Army’s WASP program (that’s Women’s Airforce Service Pilots), and that there was a Chinese-American woman in it, that Ida gets an inkling of an idea. She forges her daddy’s pilot’s license, and since she’s light enough skinned to pass for white, she applies. And gets in.

The part in the program is what interested me the most about Smith’s book. I thought that while the conflict between black and white, and Ida’s internal conflict about lying about who she really is, was interesting (and probably worth some thought), I really liked Ida learning how to fly military planes. I liked the challenges posed by the program, the obstacles she had to surmount in order to succeed in a man’s world. It was not only historically interesting, but had a universal appeal: what woman hasn’t faced the “you can’t do it because you’re a girl” and fought her way to success in whatever that is?

It’s books like these that make one grateful for the pioneers, the women who were courageous enough to break the race, sex, or whatever barrier, and achieve their dreams. And it’s good to have a book like this to remind us of it. As well as being a cracking good story.