children's books about civil rights and black history

Starting this week, I hope to post weekly children's booklists on a variety of topics. Although I find Amazon's customer produced lists to useful, I want to gather my own research here. I know there are some excellent civil rights teacher reference books out there, especially Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching.

The difficulty is really the layers to the movement, the reality that while we've moved towards equality, we're not there yet. My own 1980s intergrated public schooling was full of "but now blacks and whites can be friends" social studies lessons and I don't want to see another generation grow up ignoring complex discussions of race, class and equality in the classroom. So, maybe some of these books will be useful in planning meaningful lessons.

Public School Integration
Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges (ages 8-12)
Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone by Joyce Carol Thomas (ages 8-12)
Remember: The Journey to School Integration by Toni Morrison (ages 8+)
Days of Courage: The Little Rock Story by Richard Kelso (ages 9-12)
The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles (ages 4-8)

Civil Rights Movement
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins by Carol Weatherford (ages 4-8)
Speaking Out: The Civil Rights Movement 1950-1964 by Kevin Supples (ages 10-14)
Freedom School, Yes! by Amy Littlesugar (ages 4-8)
Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories
by Ellen Levine (ages 8+)
Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney (ages 9-12)
Rosa Parks by Eloise Greenfield (ages 6-9, chapter book)
Rosa by Nikki Giovanni (age 7+)
Dear Mrs. Parks by Rosa Parks (ages 8-12)
If a Bus Could Talk : The Story of Rosa Parks by Faith Ringgold
...If You Lived at the Time of Dr. Martin Luther King by Ellen Levine (ages 8-12)
White Socks Only by Evelyn Coleman (ages 5-9)
Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles (ages 5-9)
The Other Side by J. Woodson (ages 5-9)
Free at Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died in the Struggle by Sara Bullard (ages 10-15)
Witnesses to freedom :young people who fought for civil rights by Belinda Rochelle (ages 12+)

Celebrating African-American Lives
Langston's Train Ride by Robert Burleigh (ages 5+)
Alvin Ailey by A.D. Pinkney (ages 4-8)
Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa by Andrea D. Pinkney (ages 4-8)
When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Ryan (ages 4-8)
Teammates: Jackie Robinson by Paul Golenbock (ages 6-12)
Thank You, Jackie Robinson by Barbara Coleman (ages 8-12)
Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream by Delores Jordan (ages 4-8)
More Than Anything Else: Booker T. Washington by Marie Bradby (ages 5-9)


Surviving and Escaping Slavery
Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold (ages 4-8)
Harriet and the Promise Land by Jacob Lawrence (ages 4-8)
From Slave Ship to Freedom Road by julius lester (ages 9-12)
To Be A Slave by Julius Lester (ages 9-12)
Allen Jay and the Underground Railroad by Marline Brill (ages 6-9)
The Daring Escape of Ellen Craft by Cathy Moore (ages 6-9)
Freedom River by Doreen Rappaport (ages 8-12)
No More!: Stories and Songs of Slave Resistance by Doreen Rappaport (ages 8-12)
Escape from Slavery: Five Journeys to Freedom by Doreen Rappaport (ages 10-14)
The Underground Railroad by Raymond Bial (ages 10-14)
Barefoot: Escape on the Underground Railroad by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Secrets of the Underground Railroad Quilts
Under the Quilt of Night by Deborah Hopkinson (ages 6-12)
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson (ages 6-12)
The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud (age 6-12)
The Secret to Freedom by Marcia Vaughn (age 8-12)


To be edited with more goodies. Some added 1/21/06

New vaccines for infant diarrhea

file this one under children's health...

The Washington Post reports that pharma companies GlaxoSmithKline and Merck & Co. have published the results of a study that tested the effectiveness of a vaccine meant to protect against a rotavirus that causes diarrhea in very young children. Released in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, the study looked at the effectiveness of the vaccine in 60,000 infants, most who began the study at 10 weeks of age.

The drugs are already approved in 20 counties, mostly poorer nations where diarrhea kills infants in startling numbers. Here's what the study doctors wrote:

"More than 2 million hospitalizations and nearly half a million deaths are attributed to this infection annually. The strategy of preventing rotavirus through vaccination derives from studies demonstrating that wild-type rotavirus infection induces immunity against subsequent rotavirus gastroenteritis."

Downside to the vaccine: Wyeth (Phila pharma co.) released a rotavirus vaccine in 1999 that had the nasty side effect of "intestinal intussusception," which means part of the bowel twists over on itself causing , in 15 children that received the vaccine. So, the company pulled the vaccine off the market.

It seems that 12-15 of this study's participants did suffer from intussusception, but not directly following a vaccine administration. So...it's safe? Safer?

The Post uncovers the greed factor: "Merck, of Whitehouse Station, NJ, initially targeted only wealthy markets, but, after lobbying by public-health doctors, embraced the idea of selling its vaccine at a cut rate in poor countries." Of course, the skeptic in me wonders what good the vaccine will do if these infants grow up still without clean water, enough nutritious food and a global system of oppression that determines the odds from their first wails in underfunded, unsterilized clinic rooms... :(

The good news here is that beyond the invasive marketing of luxury drugs to combat the "diseases" of restless legs and balding, there are actually scientists working for the big drug companies that are interested in making medicines that saves lives.

picture books about adoption

Some work-related research I thought I could share. In sharing these books with an adopted child, it seems important that the gender of the book character matches the adopted child's gender. Is this a sexist notion? It seems like a important idea because so many other factors of a child's adoption may differ from the few books that are out there. I think it might vary family to family, since I've worked with a variety of family politics while searching for books about adoption for young ones.

In my store right now, we only have I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, which is about an Asian girl.

Books about adoption with boy characters:
Happy Adoption Day! by John McCutcheon
We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo by Linda W Girard
Borya and the Burps by Joan McNamara
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies by Ann Warren Turner
Horace by Holly Keller

Books about adoption with girl characters:
My Family Is Forever by Nancy Carlson
I Love You Like Crazy Cakes by Rose Lewis
My New Family: A First Look At Adoption by Pat Thomas
How I Was Adopted by Joanna Cole
Adoption is for Always by Linda Walvoo Girard**
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jaime Lee Curtis
I Don't Have Your Eyes by Carrie Kitze
Over the Moon: An Adoption Tale by Karen Katz
The Red Blanket by Eliza Thomas *single parent
When I Met You: A Story of Russian Adoption by Adrienne Ehlert Bashista
Familes Are Forever by Shemin

Gender-free:
The Day We Met You by Phoebe Koehler
Kids Like Me in China by Ying Ying Fry *photo essay

Wow. An hours worth of research reveals that almost ALL adoption books are about international adoption by white couples. Many of these titles are based on the family of the author. Politically and culturally interesting that the folks that choose and are able to widely publish a book have adopted girls in much higher proportions. Listen up, authors and publishers, let's recruit some more diverse offerings!

Next up for research: foster parenting books...

montessori makes celebrity news story

A troubled fifteen year old girl was murdered in California after running away from home and then Georgia-state care. Her alleged murderer was a 20-year-old man she met while homeless and working as a prostitute. The news coverage of this event continues to reference that she is the great-great granddaughter of Maria Montessori.

Why? Of course her death is newsworthy because it represents a tragedy, and news consumers love tradegy. But, who is Maria in this story? A "celebrity" reference? An indicator of an ironic outcome for the descendant of an educational leader?

Just found a story from a Georgia alt weekly paper that gives this story the detail it deserves. Missing from Georgia DFACS group home facilities for a year, it seems many different state agencies failed in the effort to find a missing child. Hanna Montessori's death in California was first in the news as the story of an unidentified teen victim.

the internet responds:
Sacred Ordinary
Websleuths

Murder stories (mostly covered by the AP):
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Portland (ME) Press Herald (Montessori grew up in Maine)
Los Angeles Times

barcoding kids (for real!)

John Dewey might have said school is a factory.

Now, we get to say school is a Walmart stockroom.

Thanks to the forward thinking engineers at the National Institute of Justice, public schools are already piloting programs where students wear or carry a tag that uniquely identifies them using radio frequency identification technology. This technology allows real-time location tracking of whatever is attached the device, which according to the NIJ, somehow or another can improve school safety.

This from a government that wants to give the appearence of supporting small schools, instead we're taking the superstore approach the reducing shrinkage. Beneath the unfunded rhetoric of NCLB, grant money is being offered to schools that will agree to testing military-industrial technology on public school students. In an article for the New Standard, Catherine Komp presents the criticism that this is a means to acclamate students to high-tech surveillance.

Treating our children like volatile inventory is a means to continue decrease the dignity and humanity of young people. When kids are systematically made to feel worthless, they will not grow to be critical thinkers, active citizens or innovaters. Exactly the kinds of adults that corporations would love to employ, right? Folks who are easily intimidated into becoming by-the-book workaholics. And, of course, for the tracked children who are residents of marginalized communities, this is advanced preperation for what all ready goes on in prisons.

Can cash-strapped school systems resist the call of NIJ grant money? Or will children begin to find it normal that Big Brother is embedded into their trendy plastic bracelets?