This post is written by a special guest writer, Patricia Bloem, an author and professor at Grand Valley State University.
Summer is a good time for reading, especially for trying out new genres and authors or exploring new award lists. So, the focus of this post is to introduce you to international books that address social justice, titles that may be new to you but are available in the US and would make great additions to your teaching.
For the last year, I have been a member of the Outstanding International Books (OIB) Committee, which functions through an organization called the United States Board of Books for Young People (USBBY). The committee is composed of writers, illustrators, librarians, educators, and publishers from around the globe who want to share kids’ books from their countries. I love this group; they are my professional people, and our committee of nine had the fabulous task of reading about 500 children’s and young adults’ books last year, narrowing our list to the top 41 books. These are books that come to us from far-flung places, or perhaps from our Canadian and Mexican neighbors, some translated, many originally written in English, and all of them made available to us here in the States.
But what does this set of books have to do with literature of social justice, which is, after all, the point of this blog? These OIB books are all culturally conscious—that is one of the criteria for the award. The discerning authors of this blog want us to consider books which “dismantle prejudices centered on race, class, gender, religion, or other factors of identity.” That is true of the two books considered below. Even when OIB award winners do not set out to address issues of justice but simply tell good stories, they push us as American readers to see beyond our stereotypes.
The first example is Atinuke’s Catch that Chicken!, a picture book meant for very young children to grade 2, and illustrated by a London based artist, Angela Brooksbank.
Quality rating 4.5 of 5
Lami is a little girl, but she is the best chicken catcher in her busy compound. After an accident—she seems to have sprained her ankle— she cries and cries. After some quiet encouragement from her gramma, Lami sees that she needs to use her brains instead of her quick arms and feet. With the help of some corn, she gets the chickens to come to her. And voila! She is still the best chicken catcher around.
Now, at first glance, this engaging and colorful picture book has nothing to do with social justice. But stereotypes have more to do with the reader than with the text. Too often Western children are socialized to think that Africa is a huge continent full of poverty and misery and war. Here is a fun story that has nothing to do with those issues, and, in fact, helps our children to see that there is more to the huge continent of Africa than they may have considered before. The addition of some unfamiliar names and non-English words are a bonus and help stretch the thinking of American child readers.
Atinuke, who only uses one name, is a storyteller born in Nigeria who has lived in France and England, and now lives in Wales. Along the way she realized how little children from the UK—and I would add, the US—know about her native continent. So she began telling stories and then writing them down.
In her series Anna Hibiscus, Atinuke made the very interesting decision not to place her stories in a specifically named place, i.e. Nigeria. Instead, she names the continent of Africa as the setting, “Africa. Amazing Africa!” and celebrates it as a place where there is joy and beauty and fun. Similarly, in Catch that Chicken!, the exact location is never given. Some teachers are frustrated with her decision, preferring that a locality be named, claiming that Atinuke is doing nothing to combat Westerners’ ignorance that many countries and cultures and peoples make up the continent.
Does the author make the setting generic? You will have to decide. One of her reviewers suggested that she chose to make the setting simply “Africa” because of the limited number of books that African children can identify with. The implication is that her decision had to do with African, rather than Western, readers. It is interesting to note that in many of her later books she names Nigeria and even the city of Lagos as settings.
Although Atinuke is not the only one to blast our preconceived ideas of what life in the continent of Africa may be like— Niki Daly’s early reader series about Lolo comes to mind—how healthy it is for American children to see a fun-loving child figure out a solution to her problems in a culturally distinct way. Her books make a great addition to an elementary classroom or school library.
For more information about Atinuke and other series for young readers, set in Africa:
2. The Anna Hibiscus series includes an 8- book series with titles like Hooray for Anna Hibiscus; Go Well, Anna Hibiscus, etc., for pre k-grade 2.
3. Niki Daly from South Africa has an Early Readers’ series also about middle class kids and a high spirited little girl. His protagonist is Lolo, and titles include Here Comes Lolo; You’ re a Star, Lolo; etc., for readers ages 4-8. Each book has four very short stories. Listen to the author read: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Kfs14A1PY
Here he is with his illustrator wife, showing how he creates his art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K77YR02-S-U
4. Atinuke’s Africa, Amazing Africa: Country by Country is a nonfiction book that would be a terrific companion for the Anna Hibiscus or the Lolo series for a classroom library. With the specificity of information, it makes clear that Africa is not a country, but rather a continent made up of distinct, diverse countries.
A second example of a simple picture book that challenges us to see and listen and think with new eyes is Octavio Junior’s From my Window, a 2020 publication from Brazil, translated by Beatriz C Dias, and illustrated by Argentinian Vanina Starkoff, who currently also lives in Brazil.
Quality rating 5 out of 5
The child narrator describes his Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, a “favela,” with its patched roofs and grey days, as well as the fireflies, rainbows, kites, and the fun games children play from their windows or in their streets. The small inviting details make this a book that children need to hold and peruse slowly. Of course, it can be used as a read-aloud, but close scrutiny of the layered art will add to the reading experience immensely.
As Americans, do we hear the word favela and think, “Oh, how dreadful it would be to live in one of those violent, blighted, horrible slums”? True, these hilltop and hillside settlements often lack garbage collection and sometimes running water and electricity. True, they are densely populated! Favelas hold almost a quarter of the population of Rio de Janeiro, which has thousands of these communities. Favelas are not supported or even sanctioned by the government; thus to an outsider, life in the favela looks precarious at best. But poverty is not the whole story.
As Westerners, some of us tend, unwittingly, to reduce people living in poverty to people living pitiful lives. Or we do the opposite, and we romanticize poverty.
This children’s book, From my Window, depicts beauty and joy within the favela, and, I argue, does so honestly. Junior and the illustrator Starkoff do not completely ignore the deleterious nature of the favelas. The very first sentence says, “From my window I see a lot of bricks and patched roofs.” In a memorable page, the child narrator says, “I hear sounds that make me very sad. Sometimes I can’t go to school or play ball outside.” Sorrow and happiness, side by side. But the energy of the community and optimism of the narrator make this book a celebration.
We teachers are being pressured to sanitize the world for our children. But social justice requires us to look at the world squarely and as clearly as we can. This doesn’t mean we have to fill our students’ heads with images of nuclear disaster and stories of anguish, nor does it mean that we teach them that the world is full of rainbows and teddy bears. After all, filling kids' heads with nuclear disaster photos and stories of anguish---unless handled with love and respect--sets us up for other problems. But to ignore the very real problems that children may face is not fair to them either. We need to address the world's issues thoughtfully and age appropriately. Children’s literature can be a powerful vehicle for raising consciousness.
Although this picture book is designed for young children, perhaps ages 4-8, it can work as a powerful writing model for any age learner. In fact, last semester I used it with college students, future teachers. The last page, “What do you see from your window? ” is the perfect writing invitation which asks students to notice, really notice, the details of their immediate worlds. Student writers can pay attention to all of their senses as they write, just as Octavio Junior did.
Be sure to ask your readers to read the last few pages carefully. The explanation of favelas is helpful and kid-friendly. Apparently Junior discovered an old book in the rubbish when he was eight, which opened up his love of reading and of books and led him to storytelling. The biography at the conclusion of the book tells us that even as a child, the author carried around a suitcase of books for others and later he created the first permanent children’s library in the favela he grew up in.
This is his Junior’s first book. It would be lovely if all of our libraries bought it and helped support his work!
Links to peruse:
1. Since the pandemic began, there have been various From my Window projects, and there are several books with similar titles. To pursue this one, look at the publisher’s link and click on the one- minute video.
2. Interested in learning more about favelas? Here is one source!
3. Good teachers will think of many ways to use this book as a springboard to teach about communities. My favorites often address how they change over time. An excellent international book to ask your library to purchase (Published in 1988, it’s not easily available anymore) is from Australia, My Place by Nadia Wheatley.
4. How does race figure in with this book and with favelas? If you use this book with older children, you may want to ask them to do a little research and to explore the term pardos.
5. What other neighborhood books could you pair with this one? Perhaps the US picture book Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood, by Campoy and Howell, based on the Urban Art Trail in San Diego. Teachers focusing on South America may want to pair From my Window with Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Hood & Comport. The windows theme may be fun to explore in a very unusual and creative picture book from Canada, Windows, by Marian Arbona.
6. Here is an argument for why children’s lit must address loss, heartache, and sorrow:
7. Children may want to learn about the role of soccer in Brazil or about Brazilian funk. Don’t forget to link the book to a map of Brazil.
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