Review of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-316-01369-7. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Arnold Spirit Jr. is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He's never fit in with his own people on the Spokane Indian Reservation because of his disabilities and figures that life can't get any worse than being dirt poor, bullied, and brain damaged. When he decides to attend the mostly white, wealthier public school off the reservation at the urging of one of his teachers, Junior finds out how far away from rock bottom he actually was when the whole reservation and his best friend turn against him. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS 
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a unicorn among young adult literature. Its protagonist is a 14-year-old boy, a Spokane Indian, who lives in the modern day. Stories featuring present-day Native American characters are special and rare finds, particularly when this book wins the National Book Award. Author Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an authentic, fictionalized inner look at the struggles Native Americans face on the Spokane Reservation. 

The story is written as a diary that the protagonist, Arnold Spirit Jr., keeps. Junior is addicted to comics and loves drawings, but he also writes about his experiences. Junior's life is not easy. He was born with excess cerebral spinal fluid on his brain that required a surgery when he was an infant. He was not expected to live through the procedure, but he did. Though his physicality and neurobiology were forever affected by the brain damage, Junior survived -- to face more challenges like being beaten and bullied, mostly from peers at school, but there were other people on the reservation who were quick to anger and fight. In fact, Junior learned the rules and culture of fighting on the reservation at a young age. 

What excites Junior, besides comics, is math. And when he finds out his poor public high school, Wellpinit, on the reservation had been teaching with the same textbooks that were used when his mother attended, Junior gets angry, misbehaves to the point of hurting a teacher and gets suspended from school for violence. His teacher, recognizing Junior's frustration with the lack of challenge in his school, asks him to consider transferring to Reardon, a public school 22 miles away, that had better educational opportunities -- because mostly white children with money attended. "I am really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation" (7). 

Figuring he had nothing to lose, Junior asks his parents "Who has the most hope?" And instantly his parents both respond with "White people" (45). The different cultural rules at his new school surprise Junior, but the constant flow of white privilege doesn't. "Let me tell you, we Indians were the worst of times and those Reardan kids were the best of times. Those kids were magnificent. They knew everything. And they were beautiful. They were beautiful and smart. They were beautiful and smart and epic. They were filled with hope. I don't know if hope is white. But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature" (51). 

Alexie focuses a lot on Junior's constant inability to see himself something other than poor and useless in the world. But slowly, in his new environment, Junior forms friends, finds success in sports and gets introduced to different concepts (like donating to the homeless) and cultural ideals than those he was raised with on the Reservation. But this new knowledge comes at a great cost, when the reservation acts angry toward him, particularly his best friend since birth, Rowdy. Assimilation into the white school is seen as a betrayal. In addition, Junior changes parts of himself to fit into white culture. For example, the Reardon students call him by his first name Arnold and not Junior. 

On the reservation, Junior is very aware of the influence of alcohol on the lives of everyone he loves. His father is an alcoholic. He refers to his mother as a former alcoholic. His father's best friend has issues with alcohol and Rowdy's Dad gets so angry he abuses Rowdy. Community events and fairs often include alcohol. Alcohol can be viewed as both a contributor to the poverty that exists on the reservation as well as a coping mechanism of all the hardship the community has faced historically. Poverty seeps into a lot of decisions and choices Junior has to make. He is often walking the 22 miles to school or hitching rides to get there because it's too much gas for his parents to transport him or sometimes his dad forgets to pick him up. 

In basketball, the racial tensions between the high schools come to a head when Junior plays against his former reservation school on the varsity team. The whole crowd literally turns their back on him as he talks the to the court, and then Rowdy used the game to knock Arnold unconscious.

But the real heartbreak of the story is the tremendous loss experienced within Junior's family, especially knowing how much family means to the Spokane tribal culture and Junior's family. The tragedies just keep building, exploding, and building again, while the drama goes from bad to worse. Junior is met time and time again with loss and sadness and the ugliness of what has happened to his people at the hands of white people and the long-term effects that include depression, alcoholism, violence, etc. What frustrates Junior, even more, is how oblivious white people filled with guilt appear to be too extreme hardship his people live with. "Do you know how many white strangers show up on Indian reservations every year and start telling Indians how much they love them? Thousands. It's sickening. And boring" (163). And Alexie lets his readers in on a not so quiet secret: the white invaders are often misinformed entirely about the Native American experience in America. And the effect on Indian culture by white people has altered their acceptance of their own people on a basic level in society. For example, Junior recognizes that people with epilepsy and people who were gay were once seen by Spokane Indians as magical until white people arrived and pressed religion on them. "Ever since white people showed up and brought along their Christianity and their fears of eccentricity, Indians have gradually lost all of their tolerance" (155). 

Illustrator Ellen Forney does a tremendous job drawing the actions and feelings Junior has about his life into his diary. They are fun and compelling and sad and sobering to complement Alexie's writing. Illustrated with pen or pencil sketches and done on hand-drawn notebook paper, Forney focuses on using materials Junior is likely to have available to him.  

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is not a happy book. It is laced with reality on steroids regarding race relations, family drama, and abusive behavior within the tribal community for a fiction piece. And although, I am more of a supporter of books that have less trauma and more positivity in regards to portraying minority cultures, that is entirely a reflection of my own privilege. Teen life is hard. It's especially hard if you're poor and not part of the dominant class -- and living with a disability. In that sense, Junior's survival and determination are extraordinary. Alexie leaves no rock of hard reality unturned in this novel. Readers are forced to feel all of Junior's loss, which Alexie writes as if it is just a regular part of the teenage American Indian experience. Since he writes from viewing his own experiences on the reservation, they very well may be the reality of Spokane teens. This begs the readers to extend their empathy and consideration to all racial groups in America who are pushed into segregated spaces, provided underfunded schooling and health care, and treated as second-class citizens.  

In addition, Alexie's work does a number of noble things. First, it addresses several present-day cultural markers for the Spokane Tribe including dressing in what you have and can afford (Grandma was my favorite), festivals and powwows where native song and dance are still displayed and enjoyed by young tribal adults, and recognizing the importance of the "rez," where generations of his people lived and died. Secondly, Alexie also recognizes the struggle characters like Junior's sister, Mary, experience when leaving their people for more opportunities off the reservation and how that separation impacts their psyches. And third, Alexie doesn't allow Junior to idealize any of it. Junior tells it like it is through the whole book. Younger readers might find his struggle difficult. The fact that physical violence, disappearing alcoholic parents, bullying, ostracizing, and death are common to such a young character with disabilities made my younger middle school son put the book down -- for now. But even though my son couldn't get through the first two chapters, he understands that Junior's voice is authentic and real and age appropriate. Indeed, many other 14-year-old boys who understand the world as a harsh place will relish Alexie empowering Junior with honesty. 

4.  AWARDS and REVIEW EXCERPTS
National Book Award Winner, 2007
YALSA Best Book Award for Young Adults, 2008
American Indian Youth Literature Awards, American Indian Library Association, Best Young Adult Book
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Fiction, and Poetry, 2008. 

From Booklist 
"Alexie's humor and prose are easygoing and well suited for his young audience, and he doesn't pull many punches as he levels his eye at stereotypes both warranted and inapt." 

From The New York Times
"Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of Indian and white worlds...The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian may be his best work yet." 

5. CONNECTIONS
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has been banned in various schools in the United States. Talking with students about banning books. Provide them a list of other books that have been removed from middle schools and high schools for their contents. Have them find common themes: sexuality, religion, swearing, violence, etc., as they related to young adult protagonists. What roles do these themes play in teen life? Are books like these helpful to understanding the diverse human experiences in the world or do they play a role in promoting risky or disrespectful behavior among young adults? 

On the ALA annual list of banned books, how many of them are written by diverse authors writing about authentic life experiences? Have the students research the list for the last 5 years. Is there a common theme? Are schools banning diverse voices more? What is there to be afraid of? 

Code Talker Review by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bruchac, Joseph. Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two. New York: Speak, 2005. ISBN: 978-0142-405963. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, 15 year old Ned Begay decides it's his duty to enlist in the Marines to help stop the Axis enemies in World War II. Little did he know he would become a top secret Code Talker. Using his native Navajo language that his white American boarding school teachers always told him was offensive and useless, Begay and hundreds of other Navajo Marines created an unbreakable code that was critical in the defeat of the Japanese. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS 
Joseph Bruchac's novel is - from start to finish - an illuminating work on the difficult and infuriating history between European Americans and Native Americans. Bruchac, who is Abenaki Indian, writes a respectful, authentic, and thoroughly researched novel representing Navajo life in the early 20th Century. Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Ned Begay, a grandfather, is using the oral tradition of his people to share his history with his grandchildren. 

He concentrates not just on the battles but starts at the beginning of his journey when he was sent to an American boarding school at age 5. Native families were told that in order to be successful they needed to send their children to boarding school to learn English and be educated in the ways of European Americans. When Ned arrived at the school he was relieved not to be alone. "Like me, many of them wore family jewelry made of silver, inset with turquoise and agate and jet. Our necklaces and bracelets, belts and hair ornaments, were a sign of how much our families loved us, a way of reminding those who would now be caring for us how precious we were in the eyes of our relatives" (13). The children were dressed in their best. Ned's mother dressed similarly on the day he left for school so that the last memories he would have of her were happy and celebratory (5-6). Bruchac takes great care to describe dress, language, pronunciation, physicality, the importance of the hogan (home), Navajo rituals and the love and care that is felt among Navajo people, even those from different regions. 

These positive portrayals meet the constant abuse and discrimination the Navajo faced from very young ages like waves trying to wear down large rocks on a shore. School was not a safe place. It was violent, regressive, and run with the intention of condemning all Navajo practices. For example, Ned Begay was not born Ned Begay. He was born Kii Yázhí, but at the American Boarding School Navajo children were stripped of their names and given new ones, usually after American presidents. They also stripped all of the children of their fancy clothes and jewelry (which was sold off), and cut off their long Navajo hair. "I could see it from the looks on their faces that losing most of their beautiful hair made those girls feel the same way I felt. Naked and ashamed" (20). 

The Navajo language plays a starring role in this novel both in describing the difficulty of the language to be broken as a code, but also the love Ned has for his native tongue, and that he gets to use it in a pivotal role in American history. Ned is only 16 when he becomes a Marine. His parents, moved by his sense of duty, allow him to enlist early, and because Navajos were not born in hospitals, but at home, they have no birth records for the military to confirm. To keep him safe, Ned wraps himself in the faith of his people. Before he leaves, he attends a Blessingway - a singing ceremony that keeps the recipient safe and out of danger (53-54).  From the Blessingway, Ned is given a bag of corn pollen, and every morning while he is away, he greets the sun, thinks of his homeland (Dinetah), and sprinkles the corn pollen (82). Ned was explicit through the story that this daily ritual and thinking about his family and homeland made him more at peace in times of great anxiety and evil anticipation: "Being a Navajo and keeping to the Navajo way helped me survive" (140). 

Bruchac creates Ned's character to be very honest about the state of the world in which he lives. In addition to being very self-aware of the divide between the Navajo people and white America. He writes Ned as a teenager who is fascinated with many cultures in the world. Ned has deep thoughts about what he has in common with those he fights beside, fights against, and encounters on his journeys through the Pacific. 

Specifically, Ned, who once, as a boy, sent aid to the people of Japan after a catastrophic earthquake, has trouble reconciling his feelings of empathy with the fact that the Japanese are now his enemy. His friend Sam, another Navajo, also sees more than just an enemy when he encounters the Japanese on the battlefield: "When we saw them we realized that our enemies were just human beings" (97). Ned approaches each new relationship with incredible openness throughout the book. At one point, he found deep understanding with one of the Solomon Islanders over a shared love of their homelands, which were changed after invasion (102). 

The author is very specific about acknowledging not just Navajos who served in the war but all of the different Native American tribes that Ned met while he served, including Lakotas, Cheyenne, Cherokees, Choctaws, Zuni (170). By including them in the story, Bruchac recognizes the incredible diversity that exists within the bland label of "Native American." In specific scenes, the author brings characters from these different tribes together. They are able to find that they share similar challenges living among non-tribal people. In Okinawa, Ned and his friends find a goat and cook it. The smell brings men from many tribes to the fire to share in the meal giving them a sense of the old days "before any white man's war" (204). 

While it is true that this book is about World War II, it serves more as an important view into the culture of one particular native tribe. Native people are often looked down upon in white American culture. They are stereotyped as lazy or savage or drunk. While Bruchac's novel represents a time in the past, there are many aspects of the cultural and civil rights issues that the Navajos faced that present-day students can identify with.  Bruchac took years to research and publish Code Talker (223). He was dedicated to illustrating positive and accurate images of Navajo culture. In doing so he seems to support the idea that books "are vehicles that transfer cultural knowledge, awareness, and thought and bear the responsibility of holding the truth of our nation's past" (Smolen and Oswald 2011, 135). 

Code Talker is written primarily about the world of men during World War II. There are few female characters (Ned's mother and sister). Though Bruchac writes about them with much love and positivity, they exist far outside of the realms of a World War II soldier. This is a story about war and the ugliness that men can do. Younger readers will find that Ned, as the narrator, is a relief to children, because from the first page, as Ned talks to his grandchildren, it is understood that he will survive the war and continue his native traditions with his own family. 

There are many positive takeaways from this incredibly crafted story. The most important, I think, is the fact that the Marine Corps kept the Navajo Code Talker program secret from the public until 1969. The move was not just a matter of national security (213). It was reflective of a long history of trying to erase Native people from America's history by not giving them a place in it: "because we were Indians in what was still...a white man's world" (87). 

At the end of the novel, Bruchac lists his acknowledgments, a helpful bibliography, and recommended further reading about the Code Talkers and World War II for students who are interested in continuing their studies. 

4.  AWARDS and REVIEW EXCERPTS
ALA - Best Book for Young Adults, 2006

From Booklist 
"Even when facing complex negative faces within his own country. [Ned] is able to reach into his culture to find answers that work for him in a modern context. Readers who choose the book for the attraction of Navajo Code talking and the heat of the battle will come away with more than they ever expected to find." 

From School Library Journal
"Begay's lifelong journey honors the Navajo and other Native Americans in the military, and fosters respect for their culture." 

5. CONNECTIONS
In the book, Ned talks about many cultural beliefs that Navajos have that make his experience in the Marines easier and harder. Make a list showing things that were easy (e.g. knowledge about plants to survive on in the desert, being in extraordinary physical condition) and things that were difficult (e.g. being near and stepping over dead bodies). How was Ned able use his spirituality and the spirituality of the Navajo people to keep moving forward through battles, the death of friends, homesickness, gunfire, etc.? 

Make another list of the things in YOUR lives that you find challenging to deal with or easy to deal with. What or who do you look to help you get through your life challenges? Are there any parallels you are able to make with Ned even though you are from different backgrounds and live in different time periods? 

Next, get together in a small group or with a partner and share the parts of your list that you are comfortable sharing. Can you make the same parallels with your peers that you made with Ned? 

In addition to the previous exercise in empathy. Consider reading Code Talker alongside your history curriculum on World War II. Have students look through their history chapters. Are there any references to the Code Talkers? If not, ask them why not? If so, how many pages of the chapter include conversations about Native people. This may be a great time to teach students how to use an index, too. 

Other Source: 
Smolen, Lynn Atkinson and Ruth A. Oswald. Multicultural Literature and Response: Affirming Diverse Voices. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2011. 

Niño Wrestles the World Review by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Morales, Yuyi. Niño Wrestles the World. New York: Roaring Book Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1596436046. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Young Niño loves lucha libre wrestling: the drama, the moves, the costumes, the characters! At home, he uses his imagination to become a masked man in underwear to take on some of Mexico's biggest cultural characters in his own personal wrestling ring. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Through the use of his incredible imagination, the protagonist Niño, a young Latino boy, enters the world of lucha libre, a type of wrestling popular in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries. Similar to the real-life wrestling heroes, Niño wears a mask to hide his identity as he fights several mythical figures in Mexican culture like: La Momia de Guanajuato, Cabeza Olmeca and La Llorona, and more. A Pura Belpré winner for her illustrations, Yuyi Morales' artwork is colorful and vibrant, which adds to the explosive excitement of the wrestling storyline. Similar to the old Batman television show and comics that used "Pow" and "Wham" in cartoon-like fonts to show action, Morales mimics that comical style with Spanish expressive words like "Slish," "Zok" and "Pachatas!" (p. 8). She switches back and forth between Spanish and English in the text frequently and also changes fonts throughout the book to highlight the rising and falling energy levels, but in the end children are introduced to a Latino child with jet black hair and beautiful brown skin who is a superstar. He is a boy who embodies heroism with his courage and showmanship.

Morales text introduces young children to the elaborate plot lines of lucha libre. She also provides a look into the rich Hispanic history behind Niño's nemeses through short biographies on the end pages of the book. She entices children to cheer on Niño by having him battle his enemies with common toys and treats that many children likely have access to like puzzles, dolls, marbles -- and popsicles. Niño is the champion in the wrestling ring within the safety of his small, toy-covered living room -- until along come Las Hermanitas, who are still in diapers and don't fight fair! He is an appealing character that children ages 3-8 will love to emulate both in play and in Spanish expressions ("Ay Ay Ay Ajúa!").

Adding to the history, Morales leaves a note about the cultural influence, mystery, and popularity of lucha libre in the back of the book.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S) and AWARDS
Pura Belpré Award Winner, Illustrations
ALSC Notable Children's Book.

From Publisher's Weekly
"Morales takes her theme from Mexican professional wrestling and the resulting story is every bit as fun and as campy as the theatrical fighting it's based on." 

From Booklist
"Morale's illustrations have just enough competing font styles and explosive-looking backgrounds to conjure the feel of an authentic lucha libre poster, and kids with multicultural classmates will recognize (or learn) Niño's many Spanish exclamations." 

5. CONNECTIONS
Consider exploring other picture books by written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales, including: Little Night Nochecita (ISBN: 978-1250073242) and Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book (ISBN: 978-1596433298). 

Have children try to write and illustrate their own books. For younger kids, write down their stories for them and let them color the pages and staple them together. Discuss with them what kind of stories they like to pretend when they play at home. What do their costumes look like? Turn Friday into a creative costume day where everyone wears their dress up to school. (You might want to let them know that they can't come to school in their underwear like Niño, though. That's just for home.) 

Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems About Love Review by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mora, Pat. Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems About Love. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN: 978-0375843754. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
In this young adult-focused collection of poetry about love, Pat Mora covers the whole experience of the emotion, including aspects from romantic love, family love, friend love, infatuation, heartbreak, and death. Each poem recognizes people of different ages, backgrounds, cultures, sexualities, and life experiences, and provides a comprehensive representation of the strong emotional connections that complete us, ruin us, and propel us forward as a species.

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Pat Mora's exploration into the human experience of love is both a tribute to the bliss and complexity of the emotion and also a lyrical instruction manual to understanding the personal destruction it can leave in its wake. What's elegant about this collection is that it takes two different avenues of poetry education and blends them together to give readers a whole picture of her concept. On the left, throughout the book, Pat Mora introduces different kinds of poetry like couplets, sonnets, tankas, letter poems, tercets, etc. These may be literary devices and types of writing that teens are not familiar with. But rather than bogging them down in instruction, she gives them a simple definition and then guides them through the process in her poems. Noticing how she uses the structure of the different poetry in her work is a wonderful way to teach about writing poetry.

Mora's poems are filled with all kinds of diverse life experiences that will likely relate to a young adult audience. For example, in "With Feeling" Mora portrays a young student who is frustrated that the adults in her life are always demanding feelings from her, as if she, as a teen, doesn't feel emotionally overwhelmed all day long. "Where's the feeling?/ My piano teacher growls./ I struggle to contain/ tears, giggles, fears, hate, anger,/ and love, so much love, all have me spinning/ in my purple-green-red-black-yellow private vortex/" (101). Some of Mora's poetry is very emotionally heavy, while others, like "Opposites" is very lighthearted and sweet (136-137).

Mora also uses some of the common themes in Hispanic American literature and some common literary devices of bilingual authors to give substance to the cultural heritage of the characters in her poems. She makes use of interlingualism and code switching in some of her poems going between English and Spanish. Or she offers an entire poem in Spanish and then in English. Her poem "Conversation/Conversación" is a delightfully flirty exchange between one person who is an English speaker, but speaks very basic Spanish and the girl being talked to, who only speaks Spanish (45). Reading the poem is like watching a text message of banter back and forth, hoping for a glorious outcome.

In "Mariachi Fantasy" a character relates to the mariachi performer's emotional expression, when she is unable to show her own while being in proximity of her love interest's girlfriend: "head thrown back,/ singing/ letting all his inside feelings/ rip/ out into the desert/ like I'd like to do" (21).

In addition to young love, Mora explores many themes of family love — particularly devotion to grandparents, which is a powerful part of Hispanic heritage. However, her poem "Sisters" is also a delightful representation of how familial love can make life worth living. She also makes important connections through poetry by having characters and narrators address life's hard questions like, "Who am I?", "Do people see me?", "Am I broken?" and more. These are all vital parts of the adolescent experience related to growing up. Mora doesn't leave any groups out. She works to connect everyone to love's intrinsic and attractive web without sacrificing any authenticity.

4. AWARDS AND REVIEW EXCERPTS
Eureka! Children's Non-fiction Award, Silver Honor, California Reading Association
Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, American Library Association
America's Commended List, Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

From School Library Journal 
"Peppered with Spanish, the selections define the emotion in countless ways. The quiet lyricism of some lines will prompt many readers to roll them over and over on their tongues."

From Kirkus Reviews
"The poet's voice is multifaceted: tender, humorous, and joyful but also profound... The author employs an extraordinary diversity of poetic forms." 

5. CONNECTIONS
So much of poetry for children is taught only in elementary school by Shel Silverstein's work or in high school by reading canonized literature including Shakespeare's sonnets or Robert Frost. It is not an educational norm - yet - to learn poetry from multicultural authors. Pat Mora's collection of poems about love manages to transcend any kind of boundary someone might attempt to put on it because of her heritage, while she also embraces and elevates multicultural themes, particularly for Spanish speakers in a very real and authentic way. Listening to Ms. Mora read her own poetry and talk about writing can provide great insight and bring more Hispanic students to poetry through representation and inclusion. 

Building upon the knowledge formed from reading Dizzy in Your Eyes, young adults can further their exploration into poetry written by authors of Hispanic heritage through Pat Mora's collection My Own True Name: New and Selected Poems for Young Adults (ISBN: 978-155852921) and Gary Soto's A Fire in My Hands (ISBN: 978-0544104822). 

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Engle, Margarita. The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom. New York: Henry Holt, 2008. ISBN: 978-0805086744. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Characters Rosa, Lieutenant Death, José, young Silvia, and other townspeople, and military representatives tell the highly emotional story of Cuba's three waves of war for independence that represent over five decades of violent struggle during the second half of the 19th century in this poetic historical masterpiece by Margarita Engle. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom uses free verse poetry to describe the struggles of the Cuban people during their long war for independence from the Spanish from 1850-1899. The historical fiction story is told by multiple narrators: Rosa, who is a former slave turned nurse/natural healer; Lieutenant Death, a former slave hunter whose life-long pursuit of Rosa consumes him; José, Rosa's husband and protector of her nomadic medical care efforts; and Silvia, a young preteen, who has lost her entire family to the wars, and has escaped the world's first concentration camp to train as a healer with Rosa. There are other insights from characters like writers, community members, and military personnel, but they are not as involved as the four mentioned above.

I listened to this book as an audio text via Overdrive from my public library. From start to finish, Engle's poetry rises and falls with the action. "I cannot save the poet from bullets," Rosa laments, as she looks over the flowers and natural herbs she collects and grows to try and help those who are sick, show signs of infection, or injured. But her flowers and herbs are up against a growing wave of cruelty and despair that is hard to confront. During the war with the Spanish, the first concentration camp in human history is created to detain Cuban peasants and slaves. Rosa identifies the camp as what it is — a prison, as there were no houses or tents, just lots of people herded into one place and kept behind fences with very little food or care.

Young Silvia who is taken to the camp at age 11, after the troops steal what they want from her house and burn it to the ground, is motivated to stay alive to fulfill her grandmother's suggestion that she find Rosa and join her cause, if anything should happen to her family.

As I listened to the audio I wonder will Lt. Death ever catch up with Rosa and what will happen if he is finally able to act on his decades of mounting hatred? When slavery ends in The Surrender Tree in 1886, many years after Rosa and Lt. Death meet for the first time, Lt. Death is confused to see light and dark men fighting as allies, even though they are all people from different regions and socio-economic divisions. Cuban landowners fighting next to their slaves from the Canary Islands, Africa, China, etc. He is despondent that the "art of slave hunting" is lost, and he feels devalued and frustrated by the change in the world. There's a definite reason Rosa calls him Lt. Death, even though she met him when he was only a boy. His survival had always depended on enslaving and making others afraid of him and perpetuating the racial and socio-economic inequalities in Cuba, and he is unapologetic for it.

In contrast, for her whole life as a healer, Rosa stays calm and committed to her values to assist everyone who is injured: Cubans, Spaniards, Americans, etc. She does not discriminate by what side a soldier fights on, the color of their skin, or their socio-economic place in society. Rosa's narration by Yesenia Cabrero is hard to listen to sometimes. It's like she reads too slowly. Her breaks in her lines don't flow as well as they could, but the other voice actors don't have the same difficulties. Their monologues roll of their tongues effortlessly in character. In the audio edition, each actor has to say the name of their character before they read, so the listener understands whose ideas follow. This is sometimes helpful and sometimes jarring to the flow of the text. It is important to know what's going on, but by a third of the way through the book, listeners, even younger audiences, are likely to know which actor represents each character and the identification seems unnecessary and obtrusive, where as in written text, a name at the beginning of a chapter is quickly processed and moved on from.

Engle's story represents many themes common to Hispanic Literature. The concept of strong family and community bonds, the oral tradition of passing stories on from generation to generation, and addressing specific historical and cultural aspects of Cuban and Spanish history are all themes repeated through the book. For example, José protects Rosa's work and moves the medical facilities from cave to hut and back to caves. He looks over her and watches for enemies. Rosa takes in Silvia and raises her after recognizing she has lost everything and everyone to the war. Silvia holds dear her memories of her grandmother and how much her grandmother trusted in Rosa, so Silvia chooses to follow Rosa's lead to make positive changes in her homeland by training as a healer.

Historically, Engle's spoken author's note says that Rosa's character is based on a real person in history—Rosa Bayamesa. Engle also recognizes that Rosa's existence in the war as a doctor is strange, from a political standpoint, not just because of her unwavering care for all people, but because most other medical personnel that were recognized during this time period weren't women -- and they certainly weren't former slaves. Rosa was the first woman to be named Captain of Military Health. (As a side note, Margarita Engle was the first Latina author to be awarded the Newbery Award in 2009.)

In addition, at the beginning of the book, slaves are escaping from their Cuban masters, but it doesn't take long for the relationships between the Cuban landowners and the Spanish invaders to deteriorate causing the landowners to free their slaves and to join up with the independent resistance fighting against the common enemy of foreign invasion. After witnessing this integration among her own countrymen, Rosa is confused when the Americans show up and light men and dark men work in segregated brigades, but, as they die, are buried together. The nonsensical reasons behind segregation repeat over and over in this book.

By the end, Silvia, who has grown to be a young adult and a volunteer nurse of Rosa's, lives up to Rosa's self-sacrificial creed as a caretaker: "The wounded are sacred. We never leave them. When every else flees the battlefield nurses are the ones who rush to carry the wounded to Rosa. I am learning how to stay far too busy for worries about dying."

4. AWARDS AND REVIEW EXCERPTS
Newbery Medal 
Pura Belpré Award
Claudia Lewis Award
Jane Addams Children's Book Award
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Book

From Booklist 
"The switching perspectives personalize the dramatic political history, including the establishment of the world's first 'reconcentration camps' to hold prisoners, as well as the role of slave owners who freed their slaves and joined the resistance against Spain."

From Audiofile
"Written in free verse, the novel presents a challenge to the narrators, who have to respect the form of the poetry and the flow of the story." 

5. CONNECTIONS
Most American students may not know that the idea for concentration camps came from Cuba's war with Spain. They will likely first associate concentration camps with the Holocaust in World War II. Researching the many "first" in war tactics came from the Cuban fight for independence, including how countries used encampment to detain prisoners either in the name of security (American Japanese internment camps) or in the name of genocide is an important part of understanding and identifying worldwide current and past humanitarian crises. 

In addition, The Surrender Tree can be complemented with another one of Margarita Engle's books, The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano (ISBN 978-0312659288). With America's constantly changing relationship with Cuba over the last five years, knowing more about the history of the people to our south and their culture is critical in understanding how the two countries have related to one another as close neighbors with differing political views. 

Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down Review by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pinkney, Andrea Davis. Sit In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-31607016-4. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Four college friends sit at the lunch counter at Woolworth's on Feb. 1, 1960, in Greensboro, NC, and wait to order a doughnut and coffee with cream on the side. But their chance never comes, because in 1960, African Americans were not allowed to eat at the lunch counter with white folks. Their silent protest of segregation in the United States was an important part of the country's Civil Rights Movement, and is told beautifully by Andrea Pinkney (author) and Brian Pinkney (illustrator) who take readers on a journey of the students' non-violent protests that started America's integration process. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS 
Although the story's initial main characters are college friends David, Joseph, Franklin and Ezell, Andrea and Brian Pinkney write and illustrate Sit In as a journey through the timeline of peaceful protest toward the Civil Rights Movement's goal of racial integration in the 1960s. Andrea's flowing free verse and heavy use of metaphors give young readers a firm understanding of the importance of the Civil Rights struggle as the young protestors faced crowds of hateful people resistant to social change. During the most violent part of the book where white people dumped food and hot coffee all over the young African American protestors and treated them as if they were less than human, Brian makes an interesting choice to not give much color tone or determined features to the white aggressors. Instead, he focuses on the peaceful determination of the students. Two of them sat withdrawn from the angry mob, their eyes shut concentrating, and one girl, eyes wide open, with a look of empty determinism, stares straight ahead at the reader -- enduring the pain, hatred, and intimidation for a larger cause (22). 

Not treating African Americans as if they, too, are human was a theme throughout the book. Young children might be surprised or hurt when they learn about the "Whites Only" signs mentioned in the text, which were posted all over communities to tell African Americans where they could not share public spaces or facilities including: bathrooms, pools, parks, and certain sections of the buses. "This was the law's recipe for segregation. Its instructions were easy to follow: Do not combine white people with black people. Segregation was a bitter mix" (5). 

By not integrating, white people were able to "ignore" and "refuse" to serve black citizens in a myriad of ways (6). But by turning the tables on the white rules, the protesters were refusing the status quo that kept them down. 

Another main character in the book who is never visually depicted but is with the protesters and the Civil Rights Movement throughout the text is the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Andrea uses his words as inspiration during important parts of the story urging the protestors to continue to "demonstrate calm dignity" (26). 

Brian's swirling and colorful drawings keep up with the pace of Andrea's poems. The two work together seamlessly to tell the story of one of the most important periods of America's history. To support the accuracy of the story, the author also offers a non-fiction timeline of the Civil Rights Movement and "A Final Helping" of notes about the people the characters were based on in the book. Extra readings and websites pertinent to the subject are listed on the back page, as well. 

4.  REVIEW EXCERPTS
From Booklist 
"Food-related wordplay adds layers to the free verse, as in the lines about the protesters' recipe for integration: 'Combine black with white/ to make sweet justice'... The recipe metaphors are repetitive, but at the core of the exciting narrative are scenes that show the difficulty of facing hatred."

From School Library Journal
"With swirling swabs of color that masterfully intertwine with sometimes thin, sometimes thick lines, Brian Pinkney cleverly centers the action and brings immediacy to the pages." 

5. CONNECTIONS
America's racial divide has deepened since the last presidential election. For African Americans protests in response to police violence against black people, particularly young boys, have had increased attention in last decade due to the internet and 24-hour news coverage. It is impossible to have an understanding of how America got to where it is today in regards to race relations, without understanding what the country was like over 50 years ago. Telling this history is important so that people can continue to understand the struggle and perseverance of African Americans in the United States. 

For elementary school children, the current racial tensions are likely more in their faces than some adults may think. Reading books about the movement, its leaders, and how they were able to make positive change for not just African Americans, but for all minority groups can give voice to children of color in the classroom, and build empathy and understanding for those who were unaware of the struggles other people face in their day-to-day life. 

Consider reading several companion picture books to Sit in like Lillian's Right to Vote: A Celebration of Voting Rights by Jonah Winter (ISBN: 978-0385390286) and The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks: A Young Civil Rights Activist by Cynthia Levinson (ISBN: 978-1481400701). Whether citizens are seniors, like Lillian, or young, like Audrey, standing up for equality for all people is a social imperative. 

Ghost Review by Dana Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reynolds, Jason. Ghost. New York: Atheneum Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7. 

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Castle "Ghost" Cranshaw doesn't know why he can run fast, all he knows is that he can, and he doesn't need any fancy clothes to do so. But one day while walking home from school, he catches a group of children his age at track practice and decides to take on the fastest runner there. To everyone's surprise, wearing street high tops and jeans, Castle keeps up with the team's fastest new sprinter. In response, Coach Brody decides to see if he can't help Ghost refine and strengthen his athletic gift by inviting him to join the team. What Ghost discovers is a lot more than how fast his feet can run, he finds a circle of friends he never knew he needed. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
In Ghost, Jason Reynolds tells the story of an African American middle schooler Castle "Ghost" Cranshaw, who lives on the poor side of town with his single mother, who works full-time and goes to school. His father is in prison serving time for domestic abuse, and Ghost wanders around his neighborhood playing basketball (sometimes), eating sunflower seeds, and going to school without much direction, interest, or passion. What he does know is that he's a fast runner and he wants to be famous for something that will get him into the record books. When he gets the opportunity to train with a track team in the park, Ghost is unsure how he will fit into the team. Lu, the sprinter, is a definite competitor, but Patina, who is also a sprinter, welcomes him. 

Ghost realizes that being a fast runner in short distances is very different than being a distance athlete, and he learns to respect and understand each of the kids on his team and to see them as whole people, and not just their track events. "I felt like they could see me. Like we were all running the same race at the same speed" (133). The track team also introduces Ghost to a more integrated social experience than the neighborhood where he lives. 

What is more difficult for Ghost to work through is how to meet track team social norms -- knowing his mom can't afford fancy running shoes or track suits. 

Through the love and discipline of Coach Brody, his neighbor, Mr. Charles, and his mom, Ghost learns that it feels good to be seen and recognized for hard work and perseverance. What is even better is having an adult (or three) in your life who see you for who you are trying to become, and always have your back, no matter how many mistakes are made or how big you try to talk. 

Reynolds' shows how for some children, particularly those who have experienced trauma, racial discrimination, and poverty, finding adults who they can consistently count on to show up and care about them as a parent, a mentor, or a role model helps ground them into their lives. Many kids miss these connections at home and at school, where parents and teachers may be seen as disconnected oppressors, often in positions of power. Reynolds does an outstanding job with developing Ghost as the protagonist, recognizing that kids' realities are never perfect, and to deny teens' emotions about the state of their existence is dangerous and negligent. In Ghost's case, it was as if he was treading water for a long time, feeling all by himself, and by learning to run, he learned how to pull himself out of the water. 


4. AWARDS AND REVIEW EXCERPTS
National Book Award Finalist
YALSA 2017 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults
CSMCL Best Multicultural Book of 2016
2016 Cybils Award Winner, Middle Grade Fiction
The Kirkus Prize, 2016 Nominee, Young Readers
NCTE Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children, Winner
Publishers Weekly Best Books 2016, Middle Grade

From Horn Book Magazine 
"Reynolds has created a wonderfully dynamic character in Ghost; his first-person narrative is one with which young readers will readily identify. Conflicting emotions are presented honestly and without judgment."

From Publishers Weekly
"Ghost is a well-meaning, personable narrator whose intense struggles are balanced by a love of world records, sunflower seeds, and his mother." 

5. CONNECTIONS
Ghost is the first of a series of four books Jason Reynolds has committed to writing about the Defenders track team participants. His second, Patina (ISBN: 978-1481450188) was recently released. In addition to this series, Reynolds has several middle grade fiction and young adult books that are reflective of the African American experience. 

As Brave As You Are (ISBN: 978-1481415903) is at the same reading level and maturity of Ghost and Patina, but if your middle schoolers are interested in a story that has all of the heart of Ghost, but a little more teenage grit and angst, have them read Boy in the Black Suit (ISBN: 978-1442459519) or All American Boys (ISBN: 978-1481463348) and have them do an author study on Jason Reynolds.