Not As Expected

Yesterday started with a plan, a plan for productivity.  The gardens in my newly purchased home are out of control; left to grow with abandon by the previous owners and frankly, not at the top my list until now.  Working in them is no easy task.  The hot summer temperatures combined with the lack of rain makes the soil (clay) like working in cement.  Just as I was about to head out the door promising myself to get, at the very least, the front area completed, torrential rains fell.

The book held in my hand to read during gardening breaks became my afternoon companion.  As life would have it, a significant place in the story is a garden.  Making Friends with Billy Wong (Scholastic Press, August 30, 2016) written by Augusta Scattergood is a slice of life into our historical past.

All it took to send my summer on the road to ruin was a fancy note and a three-cent stamp.  The minute that envelope showed up, Mama was packing my suitcase.

Eleven-year-old Azalea Ann Morgan loves her mother and father and was looking forward to sharing a trip to the Grand Canyon with them.  Gone are her plans of spending the remaining summer days with her best friend Barbara Jean.  Instead she has left Texas for Paris Junction, Arkansas to help her grandmother.  She is having a difficult time believing her mother's words that everything is going to be fine. Didn't her mother and father leave Paris Junction as fast as they could after high school?  Even now, her mama can hardly wait to get on the road back home to Texas.

As Azalea is struggling with how she will survive weeks of living with a grandmother she hardly knows, working in the large garden, cooking and cleaning for them, she is informed other garden helpers will be arriving on certain days.  Too polite to voice an opinion, this is unwelcome news for a girl who is uncomfortable meeting and speaking with new people.  Life in the small town of Paris Junction in 1952 is about to surround Azalea.

Another recent arrival in the community is Billy Wong, great-nephew to the owners of the only grocery store, Lucky Foods.  He's thrilled to be staying and working with his great-uncle and great-aunt so he can attend a quality school, one offering more opportunities.  The prejudice, the looks, taunts and remarks, and vandalism, against Chinese Americans by some community members is a daily hardship for Billy and his family.

Azalea is pleasantly surprised to discover herself considering Billy a friend.  Two people she would not wish to have for friends are fashionista Melinda Bowman and mean-spirited Willis DeLoach, two young people who come to help in her grandmother's garden.  The one is there voluntarily, the other by court order.

Individually and together, in her grandmother's garden and out in the community, Azalea's and Billy's biggest trouble is with Willis DeLoach.  What has made Willis so nasty?  Soon Azalea has more questions than answers.  She is becoming a seeker and keeper of secrets.  One thing is certain, Billy Wong, Grandmother Clark and Paris Junction did not cause Azalea's summer to travel down the road to ruin.  On the contrary, they set her on a path paved with the best things in life.


Books written by Augusta Scattergood make us feel like we've come home, regardless of our age.  Her characters could be our neighbors, best friends or family members. Their joys and concerns become our joys and concerns not only during the story but resonating long after the final word is read.

In this title she alternates between the first person, prose narrative of Azalea filled with realistic dialogue and the poetic thoughts of Billy.  These writing styles take us into the essence of both of these characters and the other people in their lives.  Through their eyes we see the forest and the trees of this very particular time and place. Here are some sample passages.

Inside Lucky Foods Grocery
...Maybe I shouldn't climb trees to daydream in the
clouds.
But high on a tree branch, stories pop wide open.

I tie the white apron around my waist and
straighten pickle jars.
Stories jumping.
Popping.
Waiting to explode.
Onto the pages of the Tiger Times. ...

My grandmother had other ideas. "Help me to my room and turn on the radio, Azalea.  Go read a magazine on the porch where it's cool."
Cool, my foot.  I could die of heatstroke sitting on the front steps.  But just in time to save me from boredom, here came a man walking the world's littlest dog, barking her head off.  Now, I love dogs more than anything.  Cats, too.  I'm a whole lot better at talking to animals I don't know than people I don't know.  But this one looked plenty mad.
In case I was attacked by a dog not much bigger than a rat, I backed up.  The man pulled on a skinny leash and waved real big, same as most everybody in Paris Junction.

Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I sank into a soft chair that smelled like a rainy day.  I tugged the desk lamp's chain to shine light on a book of old pictures.  After a while, even though I heard the outside noises---cars slowing down, people talking---if I shut my eyes, the bad memories vanished into the room's quietness.  I understood why Billy wanted me to see this special place.


Making Friends with Billy Wong written by Augusta Scattergood addresses the dynamics between generations, family and friendship within the setting of 1952 Arkansas.  Her research is evident but the real gift Augusta Scattergood brings to us in all her books is her ability to make the past relevant in the present.  In her author's note she discusses the importance of Chinese grocery stores in the South, the Chinese immigration to the region and segregation prior to civil rights legislation.  This book comes with my highest recommendation.

To learn more about Augusta Scattergood please follow the link to her website attached to her name.  You can read more on her blog.   Augusta Scattergood chats with Scholastic Ambassador of School Libraries John Schumacher on his blog, Watch. Connect. Read. when the book cover is revealed. You can read wonderful interviews about this title with Augusta Scattergood at Reflections On The Teche, Twenty by Jenny, and Friend Friday hosted by author Kirby Larson.  A little more than a year ago August Scattergood wrote a blog post at Nerdy Book Club, Top Ten Things I've Learned From Kids About Writing A Book, you will enjoy reading.

UPDATE:  Augusta Scattergood has designed a discussion guide for educators.

You Can Feel It---It's In The Air

I remember the summer of 1964 having just turned 13, of understanding our country was in the midst of change.  The summer before, the I Have a Dream speech was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr. only to be followed less than three months later by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  When you live through history its mark is forever on your mind.

For those not having lived in those moments various forms of media, movies, television, history textbooks, nonfiction books and fiction novels, are their informants, teachers, coloring them with their perception of the past.  Children and young adults today (all of us really) are fortunate to have outstanding author's dedicated to bringing an honesty to their writing whether nonfiction or fiction.  Debut novelist, Augusta Scattergood, has penned a piece of historical fiction, Glory Be (Scholastic Press), stepping back to the summer of 1964, taking readers south to Hanging Moss, Mississippi where most everything in Gloriana June Hemphill's life is in flux.

Glory Be is more than ready to turn twelve years old.  She is excited for its annual celebration held at the segregated community pool on July 4th, her birthday.  What she's not expecting is the pool's closing predicted by J. T., the older, bullying, small town, football hero brother of her best friend, Frankie. 

The newly arrived Freedom Workers have some folks in town, those set in their ways, fearful of things not being the way they've always been, in an uproar.  Glory finds solace in the town library, having helped Miss Bloom, the librarian, after hearing this unsettling news.  While there she meets Laura Lampert, the daughter of the woman who has set up the Freedom Clinic, having come down south to help.

Emma, the cook at the Hemphill household, has been there since Glory Be's mother died, providing support, love and counsel for both Glory Be and her older sister, Jesslyn.  Their father, a preacher at First Fellowship United Church, when not involved in church business, is a strong central figure in the girls' lives.  Another newcomer in town is added to the cast of characters, a teen, also a Yankee, competition for J. T. on the football team, Robbie Fox.

What readers have in this story is a big ole' storm brewing like a pot of water getting ready to boil, each character giving their voice, their stand, to the pool's closing.  It's also a summer of shifts in relationships, some old and some new; between sisters, between friends, between the white people and the African Americans in Hanging Moss, Mississippi and between a boy and a girl.  Nothing is going to be the same except for the things that should be, freedom, courage, truth and love.

Every single character is exactly as they need to be for this story to work so well. Certainly some are flawed more than others but all exemplify the attitude, the beliefs, and the actions taken realistically during the summer of 1964 in Mississippi.  Readers are immediately drawn into the story through the interplay of Glory Be with each of these people; loving her openness and pure gumption.

Augusta Scattergood is a storyteller in the tradition of all good weavers of words.  Her descriptions of events are so vivid, like snapshots of time, you are sure you could remove and place them in a scrapbook. The essence of life in the south, the dialogue, is so real, after turning the final page, the first words out of your mouth will likely be spoken with a southern drawl.

Here are a couple of passages from Glory Be.

When she handed me my tea, I pressed our palms together. "Look here, Emma," I said.  "My hand's the same as yours."
She shook her head and laughed.  "Glory, sweetie, our hands aren't a thing alike.  But they match up pretty good."
I looked hard at our hands together.  Emma was right--they were different.  Mine were getting nearly as big as Emma's, but her hands were the color of her coffee.  Mine were white as Wonder bread.  Still, Emma and me, we fit together like that Praying Hands statue over at Daddy's church.

From over on the library lawn, drums and trumpets tuned up for the parade.  Dottie Ann Morgan, the Hanging Moss High School homecoming queen, waved from the back of a red convertible, wearing a tiara over her beehive hairdo.  I didn't wave back.  She kept smiling, but she was scratching at the place where her ruffly dress's poof skirt must've been itching the daylights out of her.  Some little kid dropped his cotton candy in the dirt and started bawling for his mamma.  A bee buzzed around my head, and finally landed in my juice pitcher. 

George Santayana is known for saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  It's not history textbooks that intrigue readers, that entice them into the past, but historical fiction excelling in its sense of place, time and people.  A book such as Glory Be, conceived and written by Augusta Scattergood, is what gives life to history, ringing with a crystal-clear truth, so readers can learn, grow and rise above what has happened before.

I will be placing a copy of this title on my personal shelves, recommending it to colleagues and students.  For more insight into the writing of this novel visit Augusta Scattergood's website linked to her name above.  The interview on NPR is especially interesting.