A brand-new, shiny box of crayons. That’s just one of the things you’re looking forward to when you finally start school. Mom says you can’t have them yet, though, you have to be patient. So why not read “I Got the School Spirit” by Connie Schofield-Morrison, illustrated by Frank Morrison in the meantime? Fall arrived, summer was done, and that meant that it was finally here. It was time for her and all the kids in her city to “start the new school year!” As soon as she got out of bed, she brushed her teeth and fixed her hair. …
Author: Terri Schlichenmeyer
Sometimes, things change in a minute. You look, and it’s one way. You look again, it’s different, and you didn’t even see the change happening. You might not like it but that never matters. As in the new picture book “The Shared Room” by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrations by Xee Reiter, that’s when it’s best just to take a deep breath, roll your shoulders, and move on. If it were any other winter day in Minnesota, it might’ve been nice. It was warm enough for the snow to melt and you could almost see that spring was coming. But inside…
Sundays just don’t seem to last. You get up, attend church, attend fellowship, rush home for dinner, maybe more church in the evening. And before you know it, Sunday’s over and you’re left trying to remember what you learned, to get you through the week. But maybe, says Robert P. Jones in “White Too Long,” it’s time to examine what you learned that you don’t remember. Nearly 180 years ago, at a convention of members of the Baptist church, the issue was raised about whether there was room in Christianity for slaveholding. In the days following the gathering, Reverend Basil…
The checkmarks marched down the columns like hand-holding toddlers on a daycare outing. You cast your vote for this candidate. You liked what that guy had to say, and this woman thinks like you. You hope this person wins, and that one, and your civic duty is done. In the new book “Thank You for Voting” by Erin Geiger Smith, you’ll see how you got here, and how you maybe almost didn’t. In the earliest days of this nation, the rules for voting were easy: if you were a white male landowner over age 21, you could vote. That rule,…
It’s all there in front of you. Plain as day. Plain as the nose on your face with nothing left to tell, it’s all in black and white – or is it? When it comes to racism, says author Ijeoma Oluo, it’s complicated and in her new book “So You Want to Talk about Race,” there may be shades of gray. In a world of white supremacy, Ijeoma Oluo’s “blackness is woven” into her life, her preferences, her comfort level. When she was a child growing up in Seattle , her blackness led to questions, because her mother is white. As a student, it affected…
It was a youthful indiscretion. A mistake made due to immaturity or naïveté. Something you did to look bigger, older, or bolder. You knew better but it shouldn’t cost you everything, should it? As in the new book “Cuz” by Danielle Allen, it shouldn’t cost you your life. He was her baby cousin. Although Danielle Allen was only eight years older than Michael, that’s how she always thought of him. He was a mega-watt-smiling, introspective child with an easy-going way, a beloved mischief-maker in a huge family. She remembers when he was born. She remembers when he died.…
Your life is entirely wrapped up in your job. You never aimed for that to happen, but it’s okay: what you do for a living has become your passion and therefore, you do it well. Life and work balance for you, but in the new book “Called to Rise” by David O. Brown (with Michelle Burford), you’ll see the balance tip. Little David Brown never wanted to be a police officer. Not at first. He really wanted to become a lawyer like on Perry Mason. Working in a courtroom, putting criminals away seemed like the best job ever and so,…
Nothing’s set in stone. Few things are. Lucky for you, there’s usually a chance to change your mind or have a do-over. You can often get another go at something because few things are that firmly decided. As in the new book “Sin of a Woman” by Kimberla Lawson Roby, you can sometimes have a second chance. More and more every day, Porsha Harrington got on Pastor Raven Jones Black’s last nerve. But Raven absolutely had to put up with Porsha, which was part of the problem: Porsha, inheritor of her father’s estate and mistress of Raven’s then-husband-now-ex, had given…
You can do it. Yes, you can. You just need to take a deep breath and then blow it out. Find the courage inside yourself. Think of something else and do it. Don’t be scared. As you’ll see in “Jabari Jumps” by Gaia Cornwall, good things come to those who get brave and take the leap. Jabari loved to swim. He was really good at it, too. He’d gone to all his swimming lessons and he passed every test. He was so good at swimming that he was ready to jump off the diving board. He even told his dad…
It was a Sure Thing. A can’t-miss, a safe bet that you couldn’t possibly fail – or could you? Isn’t there always a danger of losing in a gamble, or at least not winning? What kind of odds would make you take a risky bet? As in the new book “Be Free or Die” by Cate Lineberry, would you put your family’s lives on the line? Because the law in 1839 said that a slave woman’s children were automatically enslaved, Robert Smalls was owned by Henry McKee the minute Smalls was born. Because his mother was a house slave, the…