Books I'm Carrying Around: The Sleepwalkers Guide to Dancing

The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've had this book on my shelf for a year. And I bought a second copy!  Anyway.... I should've read it sooner.  This is another book that I picked up because of the title, though I'm still figuring out it's meaning.

This long tale of a family and all it's secrets, a thirty-something still trying to find her way and figure out who she is, in relation to her parents and her own self, is a great story. Jacob does a great job in weaving in the family culture as part of the story and illustrating who they are. (In so many "diverse" books, the culture becomes the central character, rather than the background.)

Amina deals with not only the loss of her brother and impending loss of her father, but also all of the "rules" and customs that make it not acceptable to talk about it all. Her and her mother have that kind of strained, not close relationship, built on duty rather than any commonality, other than being family.  The family shares unconditional love, although no one will say the words.  But when it comes to all the important things and needful times, they come together to support each other.

I read the first half of the book in a rare day that I found some quiet hours, then was wrestling to find the time to finish the rest over the next week or so.  In my writing group, we've been talking about the proper length for a debut novel. This comes in at 498 pages - way above any recommended length.  Which proves that you can break the rules when you make it worth it.


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Summer To-Read Pile (#1)

This weekend marks the unofficial beginning of summer.  All those hours relaxing by the pool: hat, sunglasses, nice cold sweet drink, while the kids frolic happily on the way far other end.  Those days lazing on the beach, toes in the sand.  Those cool evenings, swinging in the hammock.

(Or more likely...) The mornings, afternoons, and evenings sitting poolside waiting for your swimmer kid to finish his one event in the 3-hour meet, running your own kid camp - summer school - sports practice - Vacation Bible School - friend's house bus route, or trying to keep one eye on your kid who just ran to the far other end of the playground and hoping you don't get arrested on suspicion of being a free-range parent.

Whatever the summer plans, we still have our to-read pile. That stack that - if the sun aligns just right with our sweet tea - we'll be able to get through by the end of August.  Here's the start of mine (more to be added, of course) - and a warning if you've never read my to-read pile selections before - I'm not promising I actually know what the book is about. It's either been recommended to me by someone I trust to make a good book selection or the cover and/or title is intriguing.

Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
"Lydia is dead. But they don't this yet." That's the first line - what else do you need?

The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
Keep seeing it on must-read lists, so well, I guess I have to read it.

The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing, Mira Jacob
This just sounds like a fun title.

Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads, Rosalind Wiseman
What happens to those middle and high school mean girls when they grow up?


Children's Books
I generally don't read too many children's books for myself, but I have picked up these two.  They happen to be free verse novels - stories told in a series of poems. Note too, if you are looking for diverse books - these are both African-American authors.

The Crossover, Kwame Alexander
Alexander was the guest reader for my school's PTA Family Reading Night.  My high schooler (my avid reader and basketball player) read it and loved it, though it's written for a younger age, so it's a good intro to poetry for the little people.

Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
I read so many "must read" reviews on this and then realized it was a children's book. It's a memoir of the author's childhood in the 1960s and '70s.


Still looking for more suggestions - what's on your summer to-read list? 

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*and keep up on my reading pile on Goodreads

Top Just Piddlin' Blogposts of 2014

We’re getting ready to close out another year.  2014 brought more books, travel, cooking, and crafts while raising kids. Shuffling from here to there. Keeping up with homework. Cheering at basketball games, tennis matches, and swim meets. Grocery shopping and cooking meals.  A lot of sorority and PTA meetings.  Trying to squeeze in a little bit of time for my own stuff.  And yes, despite the happy Facebook posts, there were some bad days, but as the old spiritual says, they were outweighed by the good days, so I won’t complain (too much.)

Over the year, these were the readers' favorite posts.  Is your's on the list?

Travel

• Whenin Texas... Finding the Perfect Cowboy Boots - p.s. I love my cowboy boots and ready for a return trip for another pair
• Takingthe Sweet Road - Our Ice Cream Tour - I love ice cream. This was this tasting thru New England
• PackYour Bags: Conferences - the essentials for your next conference

Books & Music

• WhereDoes My African-American Child See Herself in Books?  This one was also very popular on the BlogHer website.
• Books I'm Carrying Around: The Supadupa Kid
• Books I'm Carrying Around: 12 Years a Slave, James McBride, Sue Monk Kidd
• #ColorMyShelf- Diverse Books for All Kids
• MaryJ Blige Heads to London for #TheLondonSessions

For the Kids

• 5 Lessons from Rubber-band Bracelets
• 10 Ways to Avoid an "I'm Bored!" Snow Day
• 10 Things to Do on the Longest Days of the Summer
• Youth Financial Literacy & Entrepreneurship: Watching Seeds Grow

For the Home: Cooking & Crafts

• #WIP- #DIY Decorated Clipboards
• Crockpot Cooking Without a Recipe - Perfect for your next busy day to have dinner ready when you (finally) get home.

Thanks for Just Piddlin' with me.  Come on back and join me for piddlin' in 2015!

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Diverse Books for the Kids from Scholastic Bookfair

I've survived another week of the school Scholastic BookFair.  Five days of running the little temporary bookstore in the space now known, again, as the Media Center.  Along with spending the day as book-seller, its a unique look into the normal school day.  Every class and every student comes through the book fair.  Talk about getting to know your kid's school.  Add to the fun by dressing in costume with the theme of the fair - I managed to get away with walking around the school all week and attending my parent/teacher conference in a long red cape and crown.  Don't miss the fun - you should volunteer for the school book fair. (And I'm not just saying that as a plug for my 2015 team.)

While stocking, searching for, and selling books, I always end up with a pile of books for my own kids.  Of course, there's the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid (somehow our book fair is always timed to the release of the newest book so there's that madness), some LEGO or airplane building guide, and some princesses or fairies.  This year we also picked up Lucky Dog, a book about rescued dogs; this because the dog on the cover looks like our own lab/shepherd which we adopted from Lucky Dog Rescue.

As I've said in previous posts (like Where Does My African-American Child See Herself in Books), you know I've always got my eye out for books that reflect diversity, especially in a "normal kid" kind of way, going through whatever experiences kids go through.  Here's what we found this year.

What does Kennedy's assassination and integration look like from the eyes of a young Black girl?Kizzy Ann Stamps is a young girl in the early 1960's.  Her neighborhood schools are about to be integrated, which means she has to leave the school she's been attending and her Black teacher to the new integrated school with a new White teacher. And she is not too happy about this change in her life.  To ease into the change, her teacher suggests that she write a letter to her new teacher to introduce herself.  The book is told through her continued letters and then, when her new teacher gives her a journal, entries in there.   

The Mighty Miss Malone: Men and women, dads and moms, do what they can to take care of their families. Sometimes that means moving to a new city for a new job, but not necessarily as a whole family all at once.  This is Deza Malone's family's journey through the Great Depression.  The timing and picture of the little girl with braids on the cover makes me think of my own aunt and makes me want to know her story.  Written by Christopher Paul Curtis, award-winning author of The Watsons go to Birmingham and Bud, Not Buddy.

The Great Wall of Lucy Wu: What if your grandmother's aunt came to live with you as you get ready for sixth grade? Add to that, she is going to be your new room-mate.  And while you're trying to be a regular kid, your family continues to follow Chinese cultural traditions and make you go to Chinese school.  The premise of the story just made me laugh, and not just in a typed "LOL" way, but for real laughing out loud.

Jump Into the Sky: In post-WWII 1945, Levi sets out towards a southern Army base in search of his paratrooper dad. I anticipate that it will be an interesting historical fiction: 1945, traveling through the south, Black soldiers, and a teen Black boy.  And I would expect there are some interesting coming of age issues, as well.  I picked this one up for my son. 

Happy reading!  And when you're done, let the kids read, too.

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Books I'm Carrying Around: The Legacy by Necole Ryse

I’ve got a guest book reviewer typing for me today.  Necole Ryse sent us a copy of her debut novel, The Legacy, in response to a previous post about the need for more diverse books, especially for the teen readers.  My daughter read it in about two days.  Now, maybe I'll finally get to read it.

The Legacy, by Necole Ryse

The Legacy follows nineteen-year-old Raevyn Jones as she transitions from her home in Maryland to the Black Ivy League School, Benjamin Wallace Fitzgerald University. A school filled with rich, privileged, dedicated, legacy students, none of which Raevyn is. Raevyn must learn how to blend in with these students in order to escape her past.

At BW Fitz, Raevyn must learn how to act like a legacy (the child of an alum), which at the school is a big deal. She also begins to uncover her family’s past and how, after going to such a prestigious school, her father ends up working a construction job in Maryland. After making some friends (and frenemies), Raevyn finally begins to feel as if she fits in when she begins to receive threatening phone calls and messages and realizes that someone wants her to leave BW Fitz.

One thing that I really loved about this book is that there were characters that I can really relate to and that was pretty exciting. It was fun to have characters whom I could relate to, I could understand some of their problems - especially ones pertaining specifically to being an intelligent Black girl, and hair (oh, the struggle!) Besides the girls, the boys in the book made me fall in love two dozen times. Ryse describes all of the characters amazingly and gives them each very individual and real personalities.

The plot of the story has so many twists and turns and keeps the reader very interested, and the cliffhanger at the end is sooooo suspenseful. I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT ONE!!!

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Where Does My African-American Child See Herself in Books?

Over the weekend, I went to the National Book Festival with two of my daughters. Elle, a high schooler, is the voracious reader of the family.  Often times, before any of the rest of us can finish reading – or even begin to read – a book that we’ve checked out of the library or bought at the bookstore, she has “borrowed” and finished the book, then handed it back with a quick review.  No book is safe in her arm’s reach (and she has long arms.)  Nat came along, too; still in elementary school, she reads when and if she feels like it.

We came away from the day with two children/teen books.  One was Zero Degree Zombie Zone, a fun, adventure story about an African-American boy and his friends, written by Patrik Henry Bass and illustrated by Jerry Craft.  Since African-American boy adventure books are hard to find, I even willingly paid the hardback price for a copy for my son.  The other book was Sisters by Raina Telgemeier; a graphic novel about the trials and quibbles of sisterly love. The line drawing characters are presumably not African-American, but no matter; Nat connects to the sisters, plus really likes this author’s previous novel, Smile.

What did Elle get? Nothing. My reader child, the one who was anticipating the Book Festival, came away empty handed.  Although, she did read the zombie book on the Metro ride home before handing it over to her brother.  But for her – my African-American, teen girl, who does not like vampires, witches, demons, and spooky stuff, but does like some sci-fi, adventure, and a little teen angst drama – nothing.  And she came away with the conclusion, as she often does when we attend big book events, that there are no books about teenage Black girls.  She can and does read plenty of books about White teens who travel through time, run from crazy parents, fight against scientific experiments, chase and are being chased by other kids, fall apart from their best friends, and fall in love. But kids who look like her? Not so much.

So where are the books for and about Black teens? Ones where they are not the minor character or the jovial sidekick friend.  When does the Black boy get to be the hero of the story for his own strength, not the illiterate downtrodden athlete that will be saved by the loving White family?  When does the Black girl get to be the heroine who shoots the bow and arrow and gets the boy, instead of the runaway slave?  How long before the Black girl meets the great guy and goes on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation before he dies and we all cry uncontrollably over their teen love?

Do a quick search of the top teen books, even Young Adult, as the line seems to blur sometimes.  Go to Barnes and Noble or Amazon, and take a look. Aside from most of the books being about a dystopian society (a popular theme, apparently in teen books) you may notice that all the people on the cover of the books are White.  Even the vampire and ghost children.  I recently read a list of the “20 most anticipated” books for young adults.  A quick tally showed that of the 20 books:

• There were no Black main characters (based on description, cover photo, and/or assumption based on the author’s race)
• There were two Asian characters (the author/co-author of both books were also Asian)
• Thirteen were about someone who has died, is dying, or will die.  More than thirteen people, however, will die in these books as a few were about the dying of multiple and many people.  Happy reading.

I do have some concern that so many of the current books for teens and young adults are about kids trying to kill other kids or scary, demonic beings trying to kill kids, but that’s a whole ‘nother book discussion for another day. For now, let’s get back to the lack of Black characters.

Why does it matter?  As an illustration, let me pose this activity. Think of a classic or contemporary teen book. Let’s say, Charlotte’s Web.  Would it have been a different story if Fern was African-American?  (Feel free to also imagine Fern as any other race, not often found in American teen fiction, such as Asian and Latino.) Wilbur would still have been destined as bacon, Charlotte would still spin words in her web, and they all would still make the journey to the fair. But perhaps it would’ve attracted the attention of a Black child, perhaps it would’ve spurred a love of reading in a little Black girl to see herself as Fern and remember her grandparents’ farm in North Carolina.  Like The Wiz as the African-American version of The Wizard of Oz, there perhaps would’ve been a different spin on the story.  A different child would see people who look like her.

And that’s what diversity in children’s and young people’s books is about. Stories that allow our young people to imagine themselves as the heroes, as the crusaders, as the girl who meets the boy, as the boy who stands up to bullies, as the kid who survives middle school, as the regular ole kid who somehow makes it past all the hurdles of the teen-years and makes it to adulthood.

So I encourage the writers who want to write these stories – write.  That’s how I finally came to write my first novel (an adult novel, not for teens) because, paraphrasing Toni Morrison, we have to write the stories we want to read.  And let’s support those authors who write (good) books about diverse characters.

Final question. Does it matter that there are African-American characters, as well as Asian and Latino?  Answer this first – would it matter if there were no White characters?

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