20 Latinas Who Persevered: Picture Books for Grade 2

from The Flying Girl

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1.    Benatar, Raquel. (2004). Isabel Allende: Recuerdos para un cuento/Isabel Allende: Memories for a Story. Illustrated by Fernando Molinari.  Houston, TX: Piñata Books.

2.    Brown, Monica. (2017). Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos. Illustrated by John Parra. New York: NorthSouth Books.

3.    Brown, Monica. (2010). Side by Side/Lado a lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/La historia de Dolores Huerta y Cesar Chavez. Illustrated by Joe Cepeda. New York: HarperCollins/Rayo.

4.    Brown, Monica. (2004). My Name is Celia/Me llamo Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz/la vida de Celia Cruz.  Illustrated by Rafael López. Cooper Square Publishing.

5.    Chambers, Veronica. (2005). Celia Cruz: Queen of Salsa. Illustrated by Julie Maren. New York: Dial.

6.    Cohn, Diana. (2005). ¡Si, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A. (English and Spanish Edition). Illustrated by Francisco Delgado. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press.

7.    Engle, Margarita. (2018). The Flying Girl: How Aida de Acosta Learned to Soar. Illustrated by Sara Palacios. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

8.    Engle, Margarita. (2017). Bravo!: Poems About Amazing Hispanics. Illustrated by Rafael López . New York: Henry Holt and Co.

9.    Gonzalez, Lucia. (2008). The Storyteller’s Candle/La velita de los cuentos. Illustrated by Lulu Delacre. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press.

10.Herrera, Juan Felipe. (2014). Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes. Illustrated by Raul Colón. New York: Penguin Books.

11.Mora, Pat. (2002). Maria Paints the Hills. Paintings by Maria Hesch. Albuquerque, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press.

12.Mora, Pat. (2002). A Library for Juana: The World of Sor Juana Ines. Illustrated by Beatriz Vidal. New York: Knopf Books.

13.Mora, Pat. (2005). Dona Flor: A Tall Tale About a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart. Illustrated by Raul Colón. New York: Knopf Books.

14.Morales, Yuyi. (2014). Viva Frida. Illustrated by Tim O'Meara. New York: A Neal Porter Book.

15.Tafolla, Carmen and Sharyll Teneyuca. (2008). That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!: Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice/La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia.  Illustrated by Terry Ybáñez. San Antonio, TX: Wings Press.

16.Tonatiuh, Duncan. (2017). Danza!: Amalia Hernández and El Ballet Folklórico de México. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers.

17.Tonatiuh, Duncan. (2014). Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation. New York: Harry N. Abrams. 

18. Warren, Sarah. (2012). Dolores Huerta: A Hero to MIgrant Workers. Illustrated by Robert Casilla. New York: Two Lions.

19.Winter, Jonah. (2009). Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx: La juez que crecio en el Bronx. Illustrated by Edel Rodriguez. New York: Atheneum.

20.Winter, Jonah. (2002). Frida. Illustrated by Ana Juan. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.

Hillary Wins!

Girls Allowed (M.A. Reilly, 2016)

Such an historic evening. A win to savor.

K-4 Books about Women Scientists & Mathematicians: 2015 - 2016

from Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea: Marie Tharp Maps the Ocean Floor.

Burleigh, Robert. (2016). Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea: Marie Tharp Maps the Ocean Floor. Illustrated by Raúl Colón. New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books.
I have enjoyed many other books that Burleigh and Colón created.  The two bring us a picture book biography is of Marie Tharp who is credited with mapping the Atlantic Ocean floor. This title will be released 1.12.16.

Buzzeo, Toni. (2015). Passion for Elephants: The Real Life Adventure of Field Scientist Cynthia Moss. Illustrated by Holly Berry. New York: Dial Books. (32 pp.)
A picture book biography of Cynthia Moss, an elephant expert. This title will be released 9.15.15.

McCully, Emily Arnold. (2016). Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor. New York: Square Fish.
Originally released in 2006, this biography of inventor Mattie Knight, dubbed The Lady Edison, is being reissued in paperback format. This title will be released in paperback on 1.19.16.

Stanley, Diane. (2016). Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer. Illustrated by Jessie Hartland. New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books.
Another picture book biography of Ada Lovelace--19th century mathematician and computer programmer. This title will be released 5.3.16.

Van Vleet, Carmella  and Dr. Kathy Sullivan. (2016). To the Stars! The First American Woman to Walk in Space.  Illustrated by Nicole Wong. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge. (40 pp.)
A picture book biography of Kathy Sullivan, a NASA astronaut. This title will be released 1.6.16.

Wallmark, Laurie. (2015). Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine. Illustrated by April Chu. Berkeley, CA: Creston Books. (40 pp.)
A picture book biography about Lord Byron's daughter, Ada--a19th century mathematician who wrote the world's first computer program. This title will be released 10.13.15.

On Witnessing, Testing and Art: Want More

Tattoo of My Lover's Blood (M.A. Reilly, 2015)


“Every wall is a door."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I.

When I first read the headline in the Times Magazine, Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry, I was drawn in--moth to flame.  It's an older article, from 2012 written by Eliza Griswold and chronicles women poets who belong/ed to Mirman Baheer, a women’s literary society based in Kabul.  Many of the women belong in secret and others who cannot attend the meetings in person, phone in and sometimes read their poetry.  Griswold tells the story of one young woman, Zarmina, and it is this bearing witness that catches in my throat and I know I'll be putting paintbrush to paper if for no other reason than to try to honor this young woman in some modest way.

Griswold writes:

Rahila was the name used by a young poet, Zarmina, who committed suicide two years ago. Zarmina was reading her love poems over the phone when her sister-in-law caught her. “How many lovers do you have?” she teased. Zarmina’s family assumed there was a boy on the other end of the line. As a punishment, her brothers beat her and ripped up her notebooks, Amail said. Two weeks later, Zarmina set herself on fire.

We all create--some more dangerously than others.

II.

Take away one's art and what is left?
A hollow shell?
A remembrance?
Stop one from creating and not even the shell remains.

There's an urgency to the telling--an urgency to express and poetry so often is a means unlike any other. These Afghan women, these sisters, risk life to put words to the page.  They create folk art by making Pahstoun poems.

I had not read, nor heard Pashtun poetry before reading the article.  Griswold explained:

Pashtun poetry has long been a form of rebellion for Afghan women, belying the notion that they are submissive or defeated. Landai means “short, poisonous snake” in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai are safe because they are collective. No single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers.

Is not all art part artist part not?

Later I found this video also about the women poets and Griswold & Murphy's work. Take a listen.




III.
   
Such risk these women make in their desire to compose art--in their felt necessity. There's something so elemental for us to learn here. Something we need to privilege in our education of learners.

One only needs to think of Albert Camus (1957) or Edwidge Danticat (2011) to conjure an image of the artist creating dangerously.  Each wrote about such necessity and in our chase of cheap national literacy standards and higher PARCC and SBAC scores we have failed to privilege this, failed--perhaps to even understand the artist creating dangerously and how such acts are caught up alongside freedom and liberty. 

Sacrifice the artist creating dangerously, sacrifice the child learning the value of creating dangerously and we sacrifice our selves, our country, our freedoms.

Camus (1957) in writing about the artist said:

...If liberty has become dangerous, then it may cease to be prostituted. And I cannot agree, for example, with those who complain today of the decline of wisdom. Apparently they are right. Yet, to tell the truth, wisdom has never declined so much as when it involved no risks...

Standards are all about efficiency and teaching only what can be measured and scored easily. Standards and the tests that always accompany them are apt expressions of closed boxes that can be replicated over and over and over again.

We need to want more.

Danticat (2011) advised the writer to "[c]reate dangerously, for people who read dangerously." She tells us:

This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them. (Kindle Location, 181-182).

This is the gold these women in Afghan remind us is at stake.  Create something that someone would be willing to risk their life to read.

It's not the plethora of practice tests that the folks at Pearson and PARCC and Smarter Balance are hawking on their websites that are the apt measures of our creative selves. It's never been the single measure, corporate-produced, that tells such heart.

We need to want more.
We need to learn how to be hungry for the well said word and learn how to say no to the cheap fare we are offering to children daily.

Borders & Ordinary People: Can Democracy Survive?

(M.A. Reilly)

"Almost all borders have been imposed and maintained by violence, and are quite arbitrary," writes Noam Chomsky in the article, Who Owns the Earth?

I.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

It's hard not to think about borders these days as we wind our way to the end of summer 2014--a summer that is steeped in blood, difference, and distance.  I spent the summer making collages (here and here) each day based on the reported news, most often as found in the New York Times. 

I can barely bring myself to read that paper these days. Most days now, I do not.

Tonight I'm thinking about the women of Gaza and Israel and wondering whether love can ever be strong enough to heal such pain, such wrongness.  The mother of one of the Israeli teens who was killed last June, Rachel Fraenkel, spoke out  against some of the violence that has been committed in the name of vengeance for her son:

Even in the abyss of mourning for Gil-Ad, Eyal and Naftali, it is difficult for me to describe how distressed we are by the outrage committed in Jerusalem – the shedding of innocent blood in defiance of all morality, of the Torah, of the foundation of the lives of our boys and of all of us in this country. 

Only the murderers of our sons, along with those who sent them and those who helped them and incited them to murder – and not innocent people – will be brought to justice: by the army, the police, and the judiciary; not by vigilantes. 

No mother or father should ever have to go through what we are going through, and we share the pain of Mohammed’s parents. The legacy of Naftali, Gil-Ad and Eyal is one of love, of humanity, of national unity, and of integrity. (From here)

I wonder what she thinks now, months later given the death toll in Gaza and the arrest of the six boys from the racist soccer team, La Familia, who are suspects in the 'revenge' murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khudair, a Palestinian child who was beaten and set on fire by the Israeli youths.  

These are borders we make that break us.


II.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Tonight I am thinking about US women and the social and personal borders the Supreme Court has erected in their ongoing decisions to limit women's rights as well as a story that ran in the Times at mid-summer about the hundred of thousands of rape kits that are collected and left unprocessed--stored in warehouses unbeknown to the victims as their rapists go free to commit more and more rapes. More crimes against women. What borders are being erected between women and the police and prosecutors who are protecting rapists by not processing rape kits? What borders are made between women and their independence by the Supreme Court's latest decisions? The costs associated with processing rape kits apparently is too great.

What price is this border crossing and can you afford not to pay it?  

III.

From Ladue, MO to Freguson, MO. 12.8 miles.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Tonight, I'm remembering Ferguson, MO where people are still protesting, still being arrested as I write this. Ferguson is a little less than 13 miles from Ladue, MO--but the true distance between is best not represented as miles. The residents of Ladue enjoy one of the highest median incomes for any city in the United States.  They are #32.

The good people of Ferguson do not enjoy such riches.

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

I think of this as I recall reading in a local newspaper this week that here in NJ, the percentage of people living in poverty rose again (figures for 2012).  Nearly one-third of NJ residents live in poverty. 

That's 2.7 million people. 

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Imagine those 2.7 million reside not too far from the land of hedge-funders and 1 percenters who live in Saddle River, Milburn, Alpine, Rumson, Harding Township, Essex Fells, Bernardsville and so on.  These people live with comforts beyond our very ordinary dreams.

These are the borders that our politicians protect in ways they fail to protect us.

IV. 

(M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Tonight, I reread Umair Haque's words, Can Democracy Survive? and think that each trip from what we know as home allows us to understand, often in new ways, how the geo-political (in)forms our personal worlds.  Haque writes:

from Can Democracy Survive? - Umair Haque

Beneath each clash are gross economic and power differences: Palestine and Israel, women and all the powers that suppress them, African Americans and police, 1 percenters and the poor.  

These are borders that need to fall.

Poetry Break: "What Do Women Want?” by Kim Addonizio

Untamed Women (M.A. Reilly, 2008)

"What Do Women Want?”

  - Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress. 
I want it flimsy and cheap, 
I want it too tight, I want to wear it 
until someone tears it off me. 
I want it sleeveless and backless, 
this dress, so no one has to guess 
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store 
with all those keys glittering in the window, 
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old 
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers 
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, 
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. 
I want to walk like I’m the only 
woman on earth and I can have my pick. 
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm 
your worst fears about me, 
to show you how little I care about you 
or anything except what 
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment 
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body 
to carry me into this world, through 
the birth-cries and the love-cries too, 
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin, 
it’ll be the goddamned 
dress they bury me in.

20+ Picture Books About Women Athletes: Bodies in Motion

1. Adler, David A. (2005). America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle. Illustrated by Terry Widener. Orlando, FL: HMH Books for Young Readers.
2. Adler, David A. (2003). Mama Played Baseball. Illustrated by Chris O’Leary. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
3. Barber, Barbara. (1998). Allie’s Basketball Dream. Illustrated by Darryl Ligasan. New York: Lee & Low Books.
4. Copeland, Misty. (2014). Firebird. Illustrated by Christopher Myers. New York: Putnam Juvenile.
5. Corey, Shana. (2009). Mermaid Queen: The Spectacular True Story Of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way To Fame, Fortune, & Swimsuit History. Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. New York: Scholastic.
6. Corey, Shana. (2003). Players in Pigtails. Illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon. New York: Scholastic.
7. Deans, Karen. (2007). Playing To Win: The Story Of Althea Gibson. Illustrated by Elbrite Brown. New York: Holiday House.
8. Govenar, Alan. (2006). Stompin’ at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller. Illustrated by Martin French. Somervile, MA: Candlewick.
9. Green, Michelle Y.  (2004). A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson Paperback. Illustrated by Kadir Nelson. New York: Puffin.
10. Hopkinson, Deborah. (2006).  Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings. Illustrated by Terry Widener. New York: Aladdin.
11. Hubbard, Crystal. (2005). Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream. Illustrated by Randy DuBurck. New York: Lee & Low Books.
12. Krull, Kathleen. (2000). Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became The World's Fastest Woman. Illustrated by David Diaz. Orlando, FL: HMH Books for Young Readers.
13. Kuklin, Susan & Sheryl Swoopes. (2001).  Hoops With Swoopes. Illustrated by Susan Kuklin. New York: Jump at the Sun.
14. Lang, Heather. (2012). Queen of the Track. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
15. Malaspina, Ann. (2012). Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman, Olympic High Jumper. Illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Albert Whitman & Company.
16. McCarthy, Megan. (2013). Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton. New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books.
17. Moss, Marissa. (2004). Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen. Illustrated by C.F. Payne. New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books.
18. Rappaport, Doreen & Lyndall Callan. (2000). Dirt On Their Skirts: The Story Of The Young Women Who Won The World Of Championship. Illustrated by E.B. Lewis. New York: Dial.
19. Rosenstock, Barb. (2010). Fearless: The Story Of Racing Legend Louise Smith. Illustrated by Scott Dawson. New York: Dutton.
20. Stauffacher, Sue. (2011). Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History. Illustrated by Sarah McMenemy. New York: Alfred Knopf.
21. Tallchief, Maia & Rosemary Wells. (2001). Tallchief: America’s Prima Ballerina. Illustrated by Gary Kelley. New York: Puffin.
22. Stauffacher, Sue. (2011). Nothing But Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson. Illustrated by Greg Couch. New York: Dragonfly Books.

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23. Vernick, Audrey. (2010). She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story. Illustrated by Don Tate. New York: Balzer + Bray.