Kids & School

Election Connection – Breaking News: Librarian of Congress Fired

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Carla Hayden, who was set to complete her term next year has been fired by the President as part of his rampage against “DEI” and “woke ideology”. [Those terms are in quotations because I feel the White House and many Republicans in Congress do not understand what those words mean, nor do they understand the function of the LIbrary of Congress.] The White House Press Secretary claimed it was for putting inappropriate books on the shelves for children. Anyone who understands how the Library of Congress operates (clearly not the Press Secretary or the President), understands that the LIbrary of Congress is not a circulating library. Research is done there, books do not leave the building, and children do not use the library other than to visit and see how the library operates.

The Library of Congress is responsible for receiving two of every book published. Every. Book. This is a function of its role in administering copyright law. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country, and has been known to be apolitical to the point that Ms. Hayden is only the fourteenth librarian since 1802.

Library of Congress Carla Hayden fired.

Library of Congress, official

Library of Congress: Ask a Librarian

Library of Congress, wikipedia

Nancy Mace is a Bully. And a Bigot.

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Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when we take account and remember those transgender people who have died, and been murdered, disproportionately trans women of color.

Today is also the day that Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina sponsored a procedure/rule banning trans women from using the women’s restrooms at the Capitol. I’m not sure if this includes tourists visiting the nation’s capital and its Capitol Building or just the ONE trans member of Congress who was just elected from Delaware. Either way, Nancy Mace has been using vulgar, transphobic, and bigoted language, and creating a hostile work environment, and creating potential hate attacks on others including youth in and out of schools.

Today is the day that Nancy Mace decided that THIS is the one issue that needs to be addressed in the last few weeks of the Congressional session.

On the other hand, Representative-Elect Sarah McBride of Delaware issued her own statement that she will abide by the rules set forth by the Speaker of the House (Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana), and she is in Congress to work for the people she represents in her district.

The difference between that reaction from Congressperson-Elect McBride and Rep. Mace tells you all you need to know about the morals of both of them and Mace’s lack of any.

Nancy Mace is a bigot; we know that. She is also a bully. This rule change won’t affect Ms. McBride as much as it will affect the hundreds of trans and non-binary kids who are getting bullied in classrooms from students their own age AND from teachers and staff.

I am disgusted with Republicans like Nancy Mace who should have better things to do than attack a fellow (soon-to-be) colleague.

I would say “shame on her,” but she clearly has no shame.

All of my well wishes go to Sarah Mc Bride.

Author & Books Rec: Jane Yolen

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Jane Yolen turns 85 today. She is the prolific author and/or editor of over four hundred books for both children and adults. She was born in New York City, and now resides in Massachusetts. The book that I loved as a teacher was Owl Moon. I read this to my young classes all the time, and it cemented Jane Yolen as a favorite author of mine. I also remember reading an anthology that included her when I was in college. Back then, I read nearly anything with the science-fiction/fantasy label.

She’s received numerous awards, including the Nebula, the Caldecott, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and most recently, the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

She is still quite prolific and released three books in 2023 – yes, three books:

Schlemiel Comes to America (illustrated by Oscar Perez)

The Scarlet Circus (introduction by Brandon Sanderson)

Smout and the Lighthouse (with John Patrick Pazdziora; illustrated by Lyndsay Roberts Rayne)

Valuable Links to Check Out:

Jane Yolen (Website)

Bibliography

Writer’s FAQ

For Writers

Happy Birthday, Jane!

My Jewish History, Part Two

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Before I had kids, things seemed so simple. My husband and I combined what we were already doing religiously. On the High Holidays and Passover, he usually went to work, so there was no conflict. At work, he ate what he wanted, and at home, we continued to eat matzo. It was the same when the kids were born. That is, until he began working from home, but we continued to make it work as we blended our two religions with our children.

Our wedding was an interfaith ceremony as well. We were married under a chuppah or canopy. We had a Rabbi and a Priest. We (my spouse) broke the glass, which represents the remembering of the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem. We celebrated Christmas and Easter with my in-laws, and the Jewish holidays and Thanksgiving with my family. This continued after our kids were born.

After we were married, we continued to celebrate the Jewish holidays with my family. We also celebrated Thanksgiving with my family and then went to my husband’s family for Christmas and Easter. Thanksgiving somehow felt Jewish to me. It wasn’t overly religious, especially if your family didn’t go to church. I also felt that it was inclusive of all traditions. No one was left out. Now, I realize today that when I thought that I wasn’t thinking about the Indigenous people who we peripherally celebrate on that day as well, but to me as a Jewish person, it was the one holiday that I wasn’t left out of things. It became a bigger holiday for me, and for my kids.

When my kids were born, I knew that they would be raised in both faiths and celebrating both sets of holidays – Jewish on my side and Catholic on my husband’s side. Even though he and his family weren’t religious, they still celebrated Christmas and Easter in his family, and we continued that with our kids.

We would travel from our home in upstate New York to our families: mine for Thanksgiving, which my in-laws would attend, and his for Christmas. We would still see my parents during that time, but the primary celebration was spending Christmas Eve at my in-laws and spending the night. We didn’t begin to stay at our own home on the holidays until we had a house and wanted the kids to wake up there on Christmas morning.

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Native American Heritage Month

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Dream Catcher
(c)2023

A few days ago, the honoring of Native American Heritage Month began. Like Indigenous Peoples Day, I think this is timed for us to remember that there were both sides to Columbus’ landing in the New World and how we perceive the Thanksgiving story. The Thanksgiving story in and of itself isn’t as problematic to my mind as other European centered celebrations. We know and should acknowledge that the English settlers could not have survived their first (and to be honest, many subsequent) year in a new land without the help of the Native Peoples they met and who helped them immensely. I have always been a history buff and drawn especially to people of my own heritage and Jewish ancestry as well as people I feel somewhat paralleled that history including African- and Native- Americans. One of my favorite books as a child is The Magic Tunnel by Caroline Emerson. It had everything a young me could want in a book: time travel, the NYC subway system, NY history, American Indians. The perspective is of about a fourth-grade child’s view of history, but it’s a fun adventure for the elementary school age and a great jumping off point to discovering what’s true in their depictions and what is not.

As I’ve grown and became more of an in-depth reader, I’ve been exposed to more and more books about Native history both by Native and non-Native scholars. Living in New York state my whole life, we have a rich history of the Iroquois, and every place I’ve lived has had several towns still using names found from and in the variety of Native American languages found in the state. Some examples include: Shinnecock, Massapequa, Copiague, Hauppauge, Schenectady, Oneonta, Oneida, the Mohawk Valley, Chautauqua, Ontario, Otsego, Tioga, Cheektowaga, Ticonderoga, and of course, Niagara and Manhattan.

Over the next few weeks and through the end of November, I hope to offer you some resources to expand your knowledge of Native American history and culture as well as books, movies, and photos that you can enjoy in your explorations.

About a week ago, I was asked to give a meditation for what’s called an Ultreya, a gathering of Catholic Cursillistas for community and fellowship. I elected to read a Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It is called Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, which are the Words Before All Else. This is recited before any gathering or ceremony. At the beginning, prior to starting the reading, I explained to them that this is often different each time it’s told as it depends on the speaker to choose their own words. I explained that I, however, would be reading it. Two important things I stated before I began were who the Haudenosaunee were; we knew them as the Iroquois, which is the French word assigned to them by Canadian and French missionaries, and that we were currently on their traditional lands, the lands of the Mohawk. I also stated that I am not Mohawk, nor am I of First Nations descent. I have included a statement on my FAQ page.

I think it’s important to acknowledge whose land we’re on, and if we’re speaking authoritatively or in entertainment or spiritually, that we acknowledge when we are not Native and/or Indigenous People. I will also use Native American, American Indian, Native Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, and First Nations interchangeably unless asked specifically not to.

As we celebrate what we view as the first thanksgiving, it’s important to remember that the English settlers didn’t “give this tradition” to the Native Wampanoag people they met. The Native people across the continent had harvest festivals and days of giving thanks for their harvests towards the end of the fall and the coming of winter. This is what they shared with the settlers.

For my own Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my family and spending time with them, but I also think back to the historical first thanksgiving and look back on what could have been and look towards that future.

In this opening for me of Native American Heritage Month, I give you a few places to visit and learn from:

Native American Heritage Month

National Museum of the American Indian

Killers of the Flower Moon – the movie is in theatres now, and it was wonderful. Don’t be scared off by its length; I barely noticed and easily sat through the whole thing. I also read the book about a year ago. I highly recommend both:  Book

And Grandma Said…Iroquois Teachings & Traditions by Tom Porter

Project 562 by Malika Wilbur

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

RainSong: The Music of Terry & Darlene Wildman

Election Connection – Book Banning/Challenge Update

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This is specific to a Texas school district, but challenges are happening across the country.

A federal judge has ruled that the books in question be returned to the library within twenty-four hours and left accessible while the case is ongoing. They are prohibited from removing any books while the case is in litigation.

According to this CNN article, while the Texas school said the books were removed as part of their normal weeding procedures it is clear that there were outside influences at play based on the subjects removed, including topics of race and LGBT+.

Disagreeing with the subject matter is not a reason to remove the books from the library. I also disagree with the comment in the article that pastors should be involved. Absolutely not. The separation of church and state is critically important both to the founding of this country and its ongoing evolution of welcoming all, despite the recent contradictions to that.

Part of the problem is the ignorance of those complaining about the books. They call many LGBT+ books pornographic when they are not sexual in nature and simply talk about feelings and gender as any adolescent character in a book would do. They are also trying to restrict CRT (critical race theory) which none of these books teach despite perhaps being written by a person of color or are about a person of color. As has been explained over and over again, CRT is not something that is taught in the schools, not even at a high school level. It is typically a subject in post-graduate and law schools.

As a writer, I understand that not all books are for everyone, and I agree that parents can determine the appropriateness of books for their children within reason (as I have done for my children without banning books for everyone), but I expect that we should trust in the schooling and expertise of librarians and teachers who have studied this field for a number of years.

I am also concerned about a random group of uneducated people coming in and removing books rather than letting individual parents and children make the determinations for their families on what is age-appropriate.

I hope the country steps back from the abyss; we are well beyond the slippery slope, and we need to offer modern books with timely subject matter while also encouraging the reading of classics while explaining the reasons that some of the material isn’t appropriate, and maybe never was.

Times change. We should change with them.

The Best of Me

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When my daughter came along, she was a welcome addition – an unexpected surprise, but welcome, nonetheless. She spent her nine months in womb quietly biding her time; an easy pregnancy during a stressful time, letting her older, soon to be middle brother enjoy his limited babyhood at ten to fifteen months old before she came into our world. Little did he know how his young life would change. Even now, seventeen years later, they continue to have a love-hate relationship.

She was scheduled to be born the first week of January and the c-section was planned owing to the previous two c-sections in my life, but she gave us an inkling to her personality the night when I was in the hospital Christmas Eve trying to convince her and the hospital staff to let her wait a week.

It was a dance we would have with this beautiful, thoughtful, independent, non-conforming girl-child often and we should have known from this unforeseen side-trip to the hospital where she would ultimately be born just shy of two weeks later.

There was one other week where we didn’t feel her moving and went in for an ultrasound prior to this. She was fine. Clearly, she was testing us. She was saving up her energy. You really do need to watch out for the quiet ones.

After she was born, we should have known her devious ways when she was quickly sleeping through the night. Little did we know.

We soon learned that when she wanted something, she wanted it then, that minute or there would be consequences. She did call us with her crying like any other baby, but if we were delayed for whatever reason (I mean we still had a toddler who needed attention, plus all the other household chores and the like), she would take care of business on her own. Her life was too exceptional to waste waiting.

Most babies would cry louder or throw things from the crib. Nope. Not her.

We’d (I’d) ask her to wait a minute, just trying to catch my breath, and the next thing I knew she was standing/kneeling/crawling right in front of me. Yup, that little girl had climbed out of her crib. Once she could stand, she could climb.

She’d appear before us, sans diaper, new diaper in hand, with a look that was not to be trifled with.

I once had a cable rep on the phone ask if everything was all right when he heard her screeching her displeasure. She was on the second floor of the house, in a room with the door closed. I was in the kitchen as far away from the stairs as I could be. We lovingly nicknamed her banshee.

I went into the kitchen on an unusually quiet day to find her trying to get something off the top of the fridge. Most children her age might have gotten a chair and climbed up, reaching, perhaps whining, but not my darling daughter. She had a chair, yes, but on top of the chair was a step stool, a cardboard box, a lunch box sized plastic bin, and her at the top of this precarious perch, reaching for the teddy grahams on the fridge. She looked down at me, oblivious to her instability, grinning that grin. She was grabbed one handed around her waist, terror in my voice, laughter in hers.

As the kids got older and moved into their own rooms, we knew that she could never move to the first floor. Who knows where she’d end up. Even being on the second floor, her windows were checked and secured each night. What she’d get up to, no one could predict. There’s curious and then there’s my adored and adorable girl.

She has remained curious and questioning as well as obstinate and stubborn, all good characteristics to complement her independence. She’s her own counsel, but still asks questions and does her best to already have the answers. There is still so much learning that she needs to do, as do we all, and I know she’ll lead herself down new roads and paths that take her forward, but also upside down and around to fill her personality, but also to expand herself and teach others that they too can be great.

But not as great as her. A healthy dose of self-esteem is a gift, and she has it in abundance.

I’m glad I decided to celebrate my independent, self-motivated, and determined baby, who’s not so much a baby anymore on this International Women’s Day. She is not only the future of the world, but also its present, and using the homonym she is a present, a gift to me and everyone she meets.

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Black Media & Black Culture

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In a companion to my recent post Black History in Film, I’m sharing the NAACP Legal Defense Fund‘s link on Black Media & Black Culture. The NAACP LDF has put together a list of over 50 works recommended by the staff of the Legal Defense Fund. It showcases their mission to “defend, educate, empower.”

This single link offers links to their recommendations with how to view, read, or listen to them.

Included in the list are books, both non-fiction and fiction as well as for younger readers, television shows, movies and films, podcasts, and of course, music, which, as a white person, I say where would we be without Black music and its influences across every genre.

Visit your local library or e-library and see what’s available.

If you’d rather buy, this link will take you to a list of 149 Black-Owned Independent Book Stores.

In addition, Haymarket Books is offering three FREE e-books:

They also offer free books to the incarcerated through their Books Not Bars program. Donations for these programs can be made here.

As the Haymarket group said, “The struggle is long, but we are many.”

Read Banned Books

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I’ve spent a couple of days looking at Florida’s list of banned books, and it is disproportionately authors of color. There are many with authors and references to LGBT+ issues and information, but diversity seems to be the “problem” for Florida’s governor, from banning books about Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente to calling the AP African-American course “contrary to Florida law” and states that it “significantly lacks educational value.”

There is a list of 176 books from one county alone. I’ve chosen a few to highlight the ridiculousness of this ban. I will say that some of the books on the list are not for all ages, but almost no book is. That is where parenting comes into play. I help my own kids choose books, and when I have a question (which I have had in the past) I speak to the teacher, and we sort it out. I try not to censor my kids, but I do if I need to base on age-appropriateness.

I will also say, in all fairness, that many of the books on the list will be returned to the school libraries after they are examined and approved. I wonder what is the point of having a professional educator and librarian who spend years becoming experts in their field only to have a parent, who has a bias against certain kinds of books make the decision for all the parents in the school system. It makes no sense. And yes, I will stand by my characterization of a biased parent. Look at some of these books (these are in no particular order, and you may google them for descriptions, but some are obvious).

  1. Wilma’s Way Home: The Life of Wilma Mankiller by Doreen Rappaport and Linda Kukuk
  2. Two Roads by Joseph Bruchac
  3. Time to Pray by Maha Addasi, Ned Gannon, and Nuha Albitar [If this book was about Christian prayer, do you think it would have been questioned?]
  4. Thank You, Jackie Robinson by Barbara Cohen & Richard Cuffari
  5. My Mother’s Sari by Sandhya Raot and Nina Sabnami
  6. Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968 by Alice Faye Duncan and R. Gregory Christie
  7. The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie de Paola
  8. Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin, Jr., John Archambault, and Ted Rand [These are the same authors of Here Are My Hands, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, preschool aged books that I used when I taught early-childhood.]
  9. Dim Sum for Everyone by Grace Lin [What could this book be about?]
  10. Celia Cruz: Queen of Salsa by Veronica Chambers and Julie Maren [In 2011, she appeared on a US postage stamp]
  11. Brother Eagle, Sister Sky by Chief Seattle and Susan Jeffers [This is a book I used in early childhood programs often.]
  12. Barbed Wire Baseball: How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII by Marissa Moss and Yuko Marissa Shimizu
  13. Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West by Lillian Schlissel

The #1 banned book is George Orwell’s 1984. Also banned are The Dictionary, The Bible, and Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl.

Profiles of banned books from Carnegie Mellon can be found here.

Banned Books Week will be the week of October 1 through 7 in 2023. In 2015, according to the Banned Books Week website, nine out of ten books banned contained diverse content. What does that tell you?

If you are having trouble finding a banned book in your area, and you are between the ages of 13 and 21, you can go online to the Brooklyn Library and get their e-card that lets you take out books online, so you can read the books. Email them at: booksunbanned@bklynlibrary.org

If you are a New York State resident and teenager, you can apply for BPL’s free e-card here.

Another place to get information on banned books (and other books) is the American Library Association. They are the oldest and largest library association in the world.

Read banned books. Read all books. Speak up against this authoritarianism. We are on the slippery slope.

African-American Inventors

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I am trying to share Black History, especially if I can find it through Black voices. I saw this on my timeline on Spoutible (open to the public on Thursday – there will be a review coming then). As a studier of history, I am always surprised to discover something else that I didn’t know. It is so important to keep our minds open to learning new things. If you know of someone not on this extensive list, please add them in the comments.