For The Children

In the first meeting with my first principal in my first school, something he said has stayed with me for more than four decades.  This was the first year for this principal in this building. He looked at an over-abundance of new staff seated around the conference table.  The first thing he said to us was "without the children, we would not need you."  He wanted us to know the students came first.  

For me, not only did students come first, but I tried to look at them and say, "What if this was my child?"  I wanted them to have every advantage, every opportunity, and every respect I had to offer.  This is why certain books move me deeply.  With every reading of All Because You Matter (Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc., October 6, 2020) written by Tami Charles with illustrations by Bryan Collier, I find tears welling in my eyes.  Every single child deserves to be enveloped with the love and positivity pouring from the pages of this book.

They say that matter

is all things

that make up the universe:

   energy

      stars,

         space . . .

If that's the case,

then you, dear child, matter.

The voice continues to tell the child how in a time before they were a hope, people were shaping a world to welcome this child.  In this world they used their strength, physical and mental, to benefit those who were not yet born.  Everything they did was for the future.

On the evening of the birth of this child stars signaled the worth of this birth and every moment that was to follow.  Moments were chronicled, moments like first steps, first words, and the opening of a first book.  The combination of all elements in this book were to lift him up.  But . . .

There will not always be affirmation in this world.  Your name, the way you dress, how you complete your schoolwork, and how you and others like you are viewed will have you questioning your value.  You will ponder.  You will doubt.

Then this precious child is reminded about those from whom he came.  He is reminded about the depth of their accomplishments and character.  He is reminded of the night he was born and how the stars shone.  He is reminded that since the beginning of the beginning he and a multitude of others before and after him have always mattered.

Every carefully chosen word of author Tami Charles works toward a loving whole.  She desires readers of this book to know they are important regardless of anything else they may see, hear, or read.  She, sentence by sentence, fashions a verbal representation of this truth.  By repeating specific words from the beginning of her narrative on the final pages she brings us full circle.  Here is a passage.

The words and pictures

coming together like

sweet jam on toast,

musica blasting through barrios,

sun in blue sky . . .

all because you matter.

How could you not love the child featured on the front of the open dust jacket?  Look at that beautiful face, so full of promise.  A collage of petals frame either side of him.  Illustrator Bryan Collier states in a note he begins with a single petal symbolizing a beginning and layers these to create blossoms.  You can see faces in some of them.  These depict those who have always believed you matter.

The collage of petals continues to the left of the spine, on the back of the dust jacket.  It makes a valley in the center of the page.  Across the starry sky, a single star streaks from left to right. 

On the book case an interior image is expanded.  It conveys a time when the child speculates on whether he will ever have value.  He thinks this as his Pop Pop prays for those children gone:

Trayvon,

Tamir,

Philando.

On the opening and closing endpapers the collage of petals in various hues of blue form a canvas.  They are replete with stars.  On the first a single star speeds from left to right on the right side.  On the second a moon hangs on the left side, a sliver beginning to show. Petals in a wallpaper pattern with blues and purple form a background for the verso and title pages.  

Each illustration

created with collage and Winsor & Newton watercolor paint on 300lb. Arches watercolor paper 

usually spanning two pages, with a portion left for a column for text, is a glorious representation and enhancement of the text.  The color palette is luminous.  The faces on the people are exquisite.  You expect them to walk off the pages.  Each element in these pictures is a meticulously placed piece.

One of my many, many favorite illustrations is toward the beginning of the book.  The picture covers the entire left side, crosses the gutter and fills the left side of the right half.  The text appears on the wallpaper-textured right side.  The illustration features an African tribal chieftain with his left arm raised, fist clenched.  His face reflects calm, purpose, and strength.  Fanning to the left, above, and right of him are layers of petals, many of them have their tips folded down.  There are many patterns, colors, and people on them.  On the far left is a golden sky, hills, and pyramids.  On the right is the starry sky with the silver of moon.  

Thinking about this book, you cannot imagine a better pairing than this author and illustrator.  For All Because You Matter written by Tami Charles with artwork by Bryan Collier, each one of them painstakingly added words and brush strokes and collage to make this stunning book for children, their parents and other adults who hold them in great affection.  At the close of the book both Tami Charles and Bryan Collier include notes for readers.  This book comes with my highest recommendation for your personal and professional collections.  (I am adding my accolades to many others, professional and personal.)

To learn more about Tami Charles and Bryan Collier and their other work, please follow the link attached to their names to access their respective web sites.  Tami Charles has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.  Bryan Collier has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  At the publisher's website you can view interior images and read the notes found at the end of the book.  On the Scholastic blog there is more from Tami Charles you might enjoy.  At Scholastic's Ambassador of School Libraries, John Schumacher's site, Watch. Connect. Read., Tami Charles and Bryan Collier talk about this book.  This book and Tami Charles are featured on The Children's Book Podcast with teacher librarian Matthew Winner.  At We Need Diverse Books the book trailer is premiered.  Tami Charles and Bryan Collier are also guests at Politics and Prose Bookstore.

#CountMeIn

Resting easy can disappear.  There are times, sometimes more often than others, when sleep is elusive.  There's lots of tossing and turning and dozing in and out of dreams.  No one is alone in this.  It happens to everyone at any age. 

Readers do have an advantage in these instances.  For whatever reason, when sleep takes a vacation, we turn to books any time of the day or night.  In light of the events in America during the first weekend of August 2019, early on Sunday morning I began a book and finished it before noon.  I read it again, cover to cover on Monday.  This book, Count Me In (Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, August 27, 2019) written by Varsha Bajaj, is an important and relevant book, especially now but also because its message is timeless.

CHAPTER 1
KARINA 
CHRIS DANIELS AND I are like separate planets orbiting in the same place.
Like the planets, we have our own paths, and I like it that way.  Mine is full of photos and stories, and his is full of basketball and hyenas.
Like Venus and Earth, we are next-door neighbors.  We've been in the same school since I moved to the neighborhood in third grade, but we've been in the same class only once-fifth grade.
Then, of all the crappy karma, there he is, on the first day of seventh grade, in five out of my seven classes at Spring Hill Middle School.

In this first of alternating chapters, we are introduced to Karina Chopra, a granddaughter of immigrants from India.  Both she and her parents were born in the United States of America.  She has been the target of bullying and racism.  She does have the support of loving parents who own and run a sandwich shop, a best friend named Ashley, her passion for photographs, her interest in reading and her Papa, her father's father, who is coming from California to live with them in Texas.

The voice of Chris Daniels speaks loud and clear in the next chapter.  He does not want Karina to think he is

one of the mean dudes.

He recounts, as did Karina, the incident in sixth grade when she is targeted on the bus ride home from school.  He is upset about it and speaks by phone that evening with his older brother, Matt, away at college.  He also confronts the boy, a member of his basketball team, who lead the bullying on the bus and wrote a racist note to Karina in class.  Karina has no knowledge of Chris's thoughts on this.  They haven't said a word to each other in years.

This silence between them changes because of two seemingly unrelated events, the arrival of Papa on Labor Day weekend and a note sent to Chris's parents about his less than stellar performance in math class.  After a week at Karina's house, Papa is a relentless, restless efficient bundle of energy.  Karina's mother discovers her school needs volunteers to tutor math students.  When Papa tutors, Karina will stay late at school with him.  Papa is assigned by the teacher to Chris.  The connection between Papa and Karina is already strong but through the tutoring it grows between Papa and Chris.  The three build a bond on common interests and a growing respect for their individuality.

One afternoon after tutoring, walking to Papa's car parked on the street by the soccer field, a car slows down and stops next to Karina, Chris and Papa.  The man steps out and begins to throw racial remarks at Papa.  They are asked for their phones which are thrown into the bushes and the man pulls a knife. In an effort to protect the children, Papa is severely injured.  A woman across the street, taking her trash cart to the curb, scares away the man by yelling at her husband to call 911.

In the next twenty chapters we are privy to how this hate-based attack changes everything for Karina and Chris, Papa, their families, friends, their immediate community and the greater community of the United States of America.  It involves the positive power of social media to enhance change, the response of middle school friends in beginning something small which grows to something large, and how good people rise in solidarity against hate.  Hate seems to always be present, but the resilience of people, of these children, to stand up against it, is never to be underestimated.


For educators who have worked with middle school students, the words written by author Varsha Bajaj ring true.  By using the technique of alternating chapters between Karina and Chris, we are able to follow the evolution of their thinking and their relationship as loyal friends.  The short chapters engage readers and help to build tension prior to the attack.  They bind us to the resulting personal and very real issues after the assault.

The inclusion of conversations between all the characters heightens our interest, revealing the personalities of each individual.  We are fully committed to their stories.  We understand all the facets of family life and interactions between parents and children.  The presence of compassionate and concerned adults, teachers, the journalist, the law enforcement officers and rehabilitation personnel, and an older sibling is welcome.  (As a child who was raised to believe that each generation's purpose is to make this world better for the next generation, it is important for the intended audience of this book to realize there are people, despite a wide range of situations in which they find themselves, who will assist them.)  Here are a few of the many passages marked in this book.  (I am working with an Advanced Reading Copy.)

"What'd you do?" he asked.
What could I have done?  I had asked myself that question.  I was sitting on the bus with the guys from the basketball team, and I had only waited forever to be able to sit with them---to be one of the guys.  If I had said something at the time, what price would I have had to pay?
The middle-school bus is a monster that no one has slayed, as far as I know.  Being quiet---biting your tongue, swallowing your thoughts and words---is how you survive.  So far, those tactics have worked for me.
"Doing the right thing is hard," he said when I was silent.  "But Chris, at least you know what is right and wrong."
I did know the difference, but was that enough?  Did I need a new game plan?

Then more quietly but with steel in his eyes, Papa says, "Karina, we are not going to let that hater take us down."
I hold back my tears.  I nod in agreement.
"That man will not win.  He will not defeat us," he says.  "I have traveled too far for that."
Dad adjusts Papa's blanket and puts his hand on his shoulder to reassure him.
Papa's words make me feel less scared and alone.  This morning, the path was as dark as the night before.  It's as if Papa has turned on a flashlight and shown me the way forward.  If he is going to fight, so am I.

Like Mr. C says, you have to be able to imagine a better world to make it a reality.


This book, Count Me In written by Varsha Bajaj, takes us beyond news reports we may read or hear.  It takes us into the hearts of individuals who experience a hate crime.  It does this in the context of home, school and community situations weaving all together, the good and the bad, flawlessly.  I highly recommend this for your personal and professional collections.

To learn more about Varsha Bajaj and her other work, please follow the link attached to her name to access her website.  Varsha Bajaj has accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.  At the publisher's website you can read an excerpt.  Varsha Bajaj is showcased on author Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations and at CBC Diversity.

UPDATE:  Varsha Bajaj speaks at Brightly about racism and hate.  Varsha Bajaj is interviewed at CBC Diversity.

Listen And Learn

It's hard not to think about what-ifs sometimes.  What if I was not on social media?  What if I was not a friend with a particular person?  What if I had not checked posts on a specific day?  The facts are I am on social media, friends with a special author and I did read my feed on August 10, 2014.  Based on three sentences written and shared, I went to my bookshelves remembering a title I had purchased.  As soon as I opened the book, my known world slipped away.

Newbery Honor winning author, Margarita Engle presents readers with a remarkable piece of historical fiction in one of her 2014 titles.  Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) spans the years 1906 to 1914 in the country of Panama.  The past is speaking to us and we need to listen.

MATEO from the island of Cuba

JOB HUNT
Fear is a fierce wind

that sends me reeling

down to the seashore,

where I beg for work,

any work at all,

any escape 

to carry me far

from my father's

furious fists.

Fourteen years old, strong for his size, willing to tell a number of lies to leave, Mateo, believing the propaganda about working conditions and wages paid to diggers of the Panama Canal, finds himself on a steamship bound to that very place.  Plagued by hunger, the humiliation of segregation by skin color, travel by railroad flatcars and living in boxcars, he realizes he is trapped by a mistaken decision.  The only brightness shining in what is and will become a bleak existence is Anita, a local girl, a seller of native herbs and plants. 

As Mateo moves tracks daily, deeper and deeper into the Serpent Cut, another voice is heard.  Henry, from the island of Jamaica is a digger.  Instead of twelve to a boxcar, eighty of his comrades live together in one room.  At lunch break each day he sees how the Americans eat in comfort under a tent, the medium-dark workers sit on the train tracks and he and other diggers must stand with no place to rest.  

Pay days come; restless workers wander around in Silver Town made of mud, loneliness, anger and not much else.  Draw to a boxing ring by the ghosts of his past, Mateo find himself the loser in a fight with Henry.  The two now know one another.  They meet in the ring on a regular basis, strangers battling with fists for no apparent reason.

A landslide, an arrest, and a visit from President Roosevelt, define shifted loyalties.  The agony is lessened by another speaker, the voice of Augusto from the island of Puerto Rico, educated in the United States, working as a geologist on this mammoth endeavor.  Augusto sees Mateo's special gift, giving him at least one day a week to hope. 

Official visitors, official changes, jungle living, the suffering brought by fever and freedom found alter all their lives.  Chapter after chapter we readers are drawn further into this huge undertaking filled with choices and consequences.  Nothing remains the same then or now; especially for us having read these pages.

As a novel in verse, Margarita Engle is able to create intimate portraits of Mateo, Anita, Henry, Augusto and even Old Maria.  Usually one or two pages long, their voices, thoughts, are realistic portrayals based upon her research.  We build in our minds an understanding of their physical and emotional statuses throughout the narrative.  

Interspersed among their chapters are placed real persons, John Stevens, Theodore Roosevelt, George Goethals, Jackson Smith, Gertrude Becks and Harry Franck creating a more intense authenticity.  Margarita Engle sets aside pages, in eight different sections, for flora and fauna from the rain forest, the howler monkeys, glass frogs, a Blue Morpho butterfly, the trees and many others. They each reflect upon (or shout out) the impact of the Canal on their habitat. This technique of adding historical figures and allowing those with no voice to speak gives readers a more complete picture of all the aspects of the building of the Panama Canal during these eight years.

Very early in my reading of this book, I began marking passages until my copy soon had what I call the "porcupine look" from so many added sticky notes.  Here are a few of those many marked words.

Hunger at sea for three days

feels like a knife in the flesh---

twisted blade, rusty metal,

the piercing tip of a long

sharp-edged

dagger

called regret.  ...

...My hands feel like scorpion claws,

clamped on to a hard hard shovel all day,

then curled into fists at night.

At dawn, the steaming labor trains

deliver us by the thousands, down into

that snake pit where we dig

until my muscles feel

as weak as water

and my backbone

is like shattered glass. ...

THE TREES

WILDERNESS

We are fewer

than before,

but each of us

is just as alive

as ever,

our leaves

hungry for sunlight,

our roots thirsty

for rain,

our fruit and seeds carried far

by flying birds and roaming animals

so that young trees can spout and grow,

our shared forest once again spreading

like music.

Highly recommended for upper middle school on up, Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal written by Margarita Engle is beautiful in its sadness, truth and hope.  Your understanding of the impact of this cut through a country on the place and people there, and those brought from afar, will be long remembered.  Margarita Engle gives depth and breadth to these events changing every reader.  

To learn more about Margarita Engle please visit her website by following the link embedded in her name.  This link takes you to a recent interview at Watch. Connect. Read., a blog hosted by the talented teacher librarian, John Schumacher.  UPDATE:  Here is a link to an amazing guide at the Poetry for Children website. 

Silver People Excerpt by Margarita Engle