Tag Archives: Civil rights

April 16, 2013 · 12:45 pm

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

ZeitounClearly I waited too long to read this book, even though it sat ready on my shelves and on my iPod for years. Before I lament further, you should know that if you choose to go audible, Firdous Bamji doesn’t disappoint; he remains one of the very few narrators whose name will make me pick up a book over that of the title and author.

So why the whinge-ing? I’m one of those readers who doesn’t like family trees in the beginning of books because I don’t want to know that Tom and Sally get married before they’re even born. I don’t like maps with the route clearly marked because then I’ll know that Joe got out of Dodge but didn’t make it to Paradise. What’s the point of reading to the final page if you already know what happens?

All that means that if you read the news, then you might already know what happens after the events contained in Dave Eggers‘ ‘best of’-lists-making, much lauded, true (-enough) Katrina title, Zeitoun. If you are one of the blessed few who know nothing, then please do NOT start a google search! I fervently wish I could have read this without bias …

As a story, Zeitoun is exciting and engaging, with only a few minor faltering moments (a few too many pages of waiting – for Katrina, for news, for answers). A Syrian Muslim by birth, an American citizen by choice, a successful New Orleanian businessman by tenacity, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who is known by his easier-to-pronounce last name, runs a painting contracting company with his American wife Kathy, who became a hijab-wearing convert to Islam before she met Zeitoun. The company’s ubiquitous logo sports a rainbow – the significance of which was originally unknown to Zeitoun – which inadvertently attracted gay clients, although other potential clients stayed away and a few workers even left the company. Once made aware of the symbolism, Zeitoun stayed firm: “Anyone who had a problem with rainbows, he said, would surely have trouble with Islam.”

When Katrina hit, Kathy and the couple’s four kids had already left New Orleans. Zeitoun stayed back to keep an eye on the business, the family’s home, and their many other properties. He boarded his canoe in the disastrous aftermath helping others, saving the lives of both people and pets. And then, without cause or warning, he was arrested in one of his own rental houses. He was held in the Greyhound bus station-turned-makeshift-jail without being charged for three days, then sent to Hunt Correctional Center – a maximum-security prison – for 23 more, where he was not allowed even a single phone call.

Meanwhile, Kathy and the kids were in Phoenix with Kathy’s childhood best friend, desperately searching for any news about Zeitoun, all the while fielding frantic worrying from Zeitoun’s internationally dispersed family. The personal losses Zeitoun suffered after Katrina were exponentially magnified by the theft of his basic civil rights as an American citizen fueled by post-9/11 paranoia at the hands (fists, feet, pepper-spray) of the very people the U.S. Government sent to protect the disaster victims. Lest you think Zeitoun was a lone target, Eggers includes even more “absurd” stories, topped by the arrest of Merlene Maten, a 73-year-old diabetic woman held at Hunt’s sister prison for retrieving a sausage out of her own cooler from her own parked car.

Zeitoun should have been a moving tale about a local hero within a shared witnessing of outrage against the miscarriage of justice in the wake of a natural disaster. If the story could have ended in 2009 when the book was published, it surely would have remained a beacon of hope and inspiration. Alas, history (or should I say, ‘his story’) will prove otherwise.

Ironically, in this morning’s New York Times‘ leading article about yesterday’s horrific tragedy, “Blasts at Boston Marathon Kill 3 and Injure 100,” an unnamed “Saudi man” gets two mentions as having been singled out, in spite of repeated claims that no suspects are yet in custody. Over at the Times‘ Op-Ed page, in “Living Through Terror, in Rawalpindi and Boston,” a medical resident writes, “And then, as we worked our way through the dazed throngs in Back Bay, I realized that not only was I a victim of terror, but I was also a potential suspect. As a 20-something Pakistani male with dark stubble (an ode more to my hectic schedule as a resident in the intensive-care unit than to any aesthetic or ideology), would I not fit the bill?” Any doubts? Read Zeitoun.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009

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April 7, 2013 · 10:46 am

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Known WorldWell, I’ve done it now. I’ve finished every Edward P. Jones book ever written … and I see no signs that more are forthcoming anytime soon. Anyone out there who knows otherwise, please do share!

Not to play favorites, but among Jones’ three indelible titles, his single (thus far) novel gets the preferred spot. I’m definitely in collusion with others as it won the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the 2005 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (which, with its €100,000 prize, is one of the most generous in the world). With such lauded original text, the audible version – most expertly read by Kevin Free and oh so highly recommended – naturally won a 2004 Earphones Award, too.

World begins and ends with death, one peaceful, the others horrifically violent. In between the almost-400 pages (or 14+ hours stuck in the ears), the (very) nonlinear narrative falters once during Counsel Skiffington’s hallucinogenic wandering after he burns down his plantation. The rest is, indeed, history … of a not-so-well-known phenomenon of slave-owning African Americans in the South. Within the World‘s first five words, the “master” is dead: in July 1855, Henry Townsend, 31, leaves behind a wife … and a plantation of more than 50 acres which he owned, together with 33 human beings that were also his property. Henry himself was a former slave, whose freedom was bought by his parents when he was still a child, and yet whose allegiance and loyalty to his former owner, William Robbins, never wavers. Robbins, no less a complex character, is a white farmer who owns the largest plantation in fictional Manchester County, Virginia, who lives a double life – one with his white wife and daughter, the other with his slave mistress, and their two young children.

Jones’ storytelling jumps decades backwards and forwards, from before Henry’s birth, well into the next century with references to future historians working in the 1950s and even 1970s. Jones moves sometimes unpredictably between characters and experiences, between generations and social classes. He is not always patient, and doesn’t wait for the reader to make immediate connections, and yet he is partial to certain repetitions, including the reappearance of Tessie’s doll made by her father Elias which she will hold onto through her final hour at age 99, and the reunion of Minerva and her sister after 20 separated years marked by her sister’s reaction that begins “‘You done growed.’”

In spite of the movement in time, place, and people, the pieces merge together to create a Known World that haunts, shocks, and long-after resonates with the fates of a disparate community. Henry’s death sets in motion inevitable changes and unexpected events in the lives of his parents, his wife, his in-laws, his friends, his former master, and especially his slaves, as the intricate mosaic that once defined Henry’s existence shifts, transforms, and disappears.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2003

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, African American

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April 4, 2013 · 9:29 am

Where The Streets Had A Name by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Where the Streets Had a NameHere’s the seemingly simple story: When her grandmother falls ill, 13-year-old Hayaat decides that a jarful of her ancestral soil – a mere six miles away – will be the very thing that will make her grandmother well, so Hayaat grabs her best friend and goes off on her quest.

But … there’s always the ‘but’ … when home is a conflict zone, six miles might as well be 600. Hayaat is a Palestinian living inside heavily guarded walls in Bethlehem, her family forcibly displaced from her father’s home of many generations once filled with olive trees and open space. Now cramped into a tiny apartment, the family of seven is often at odds with one another, their movement restricted by long curfews. The family matriarch, Hayaat’s grandmother, has little left beyond her stories of another time and place, of family Hayaat can never meet except through the stories she never tires of hearing.

Hayaat bears the scars, both inside and out, of a childhood amidst guns, soldiers, and shifting borders. Her best friend Samy is a virtual orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle, having lost his father to prison and his mother to a heart attack soon thereafter. The intrepid pair venture forth through barriers, guard towers, and checkpoints – never mind not having any travel permits – and head toward Jerusalem with only a vague description of a long-ago neighborhood and a much-missed home. Their journey is aided by the kindness of strangers, including a peace activist couple, the husband a former Israeli Defense Force soldier who refused to finish his service in protest of the military mistreatment of Palestinians.

Randa Abdel-Fattah – Australian-born and domiciled, of Egyptian and Palestinian descent – offers a sobering novel about the harsh lives of children who inherit the consequences and tragedies of adult hostilities. In spite of childhoods stolen by violence, identities shaped by resentment and hatred, young people like Hayaat somehow manage to hold on to their humanity: “… so long as there is life there’ll be love … I’ll do more than survive … in the end we are all of us only human beings who laugh the same, and … one day the world will realize that we simply want to live as free people, with hope and dignity and purpose. That is all.”

Out of the mouth of babes …

Tidbit: Just as I finished writing this post, this link serendipitously landed in my inbox from a dear friend: “Books about Contemporary Palestine for Children” by Katharine Davies Samway. Timing really IS everything!

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2008, 2010 (United States)

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March 23, 2013 · 10:11 am

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

MudboundI think I was somehow predestined to read Mudbound when I did: just after I finished Barbara Kingsolver‘s mightily disappointing Flight Behavior, I turned next to Hillary Jordan‘s 2008 debut novel. While searching for an image of the book cover to load here, I noticed the golden sticker – an award nod for being the “winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction.” Timing is everything, right? – because the Bellwether (which morphed into the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction in 2012) was founded and funded by none other than Kingsolver herself.

In case you’re starting to wonder, here’s the verdict: Mudbound is the far better title on the page, and stuck in the ears, as well. You’ll find no anemic, strangely accented, self-narration here; instead, a full cast voices the multiple narrators, with especially effective performances by Kate Forbes as the controlled Laura, Ezra Knight as desperately proud Ronsel, Brenda Pressley as the stalwartly tragic Florence. Mudbound proves to be one of the those rare assured debuts that send you instantly looking for more: luckily, Jordan has another title I’ve already iPod-loaded.

Mudbound opens with death: two brothers, Henry and Jamie, are digging their father Pappy’s grave. The power of a dead man to ooze such vitriolic hate over the 300-plus pages that follow is a horrific reminder of the worst in mankind. World War II is over, and the Americans who return home are both victorious and maimed, most deeply by scars invisible to the eye. In the deep South of the Mississippi Delta, the McAllan cotton farm – owned by land-loving Henry and his city-raised wife Laura – welcomes two veterans, Henry’s much younger brother Jamie and Ronsel Jackson, the oldest son of Henry’s tenant sharecropper. Ronsel’s father Hap works Henry’s land; his mother Florence helps Laura in the rustic farmhouse. Both Jamie and Ronsel are decorated war heroes, and yet Ronsel’s dark skin will damn him to abusive treatment without cause.

Jamie, Laura, Ronsel, Henry, Florence, and Hap each take narrative turns, and yet the story is driven by Pappy’s inescapable hate … with heinous consequences. The last few chapters of the book are unrelenting nightmares, once read/heard/imagined, never to be erased. And yet somehow, with Pappy finally in the ground, hope might prevail: “Might even find something like happiness. That’s the ending we want, you and me both. I’ll grant you it’s unlikely, but it is possible.”

Sometimes that possibility is all that keeps us going …

Readers: Adult

Published: 2008

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, African American, Nonethnic-specific

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March 3, 2013 · 9:55 am

The Stamp Collector by Jennifer Lanthier, illustrated by François Thisdale

Stamp CollectorHere’s how this mesmerizing book begins … and ends:

“This is a story of not long ago and not far away.
It is the story of a boy who loves stamps and a boy who loves words.
This is the story of a life that is lost.
And found.”

The boy who loves stamps lives in the city, “in the shadow of a grey prison.” His philatelism originates with “a scrap of paper on the street,” which his grandfather deems ”not rare or precious’” upon inspecting the emerald-green stamp, “‘[b]ut it is beautiful.’” In a nearby village lives the boy who loves words, who “devours every poem and fable” and yet “hungers [f]or stories.” Lost in his own world, he “finds stories all around him. He learns to capture them. He writes.”

Both boys grow up. One puts his dreams of far-away away, and becomes a prison guard. The other buries his stories within and finds a factory job. When his soul is near bursting, the village boy writes a story that brings “joy and hope to the villagers. But it brings fear to others.” His “dangerous” words land him in the guard’s prison.

Years pass, and the guard and the writer tentatively attempt a silent friendship. It begins with a single stamp passed through the bars: ”[e]very stamp tells a story without words. The writer knows he is not alone now. Not forgotten.” When stamps are not enough, the guard secretly delivers letters from all over the word that the writer was never supposed to see, each asking for “one more story.” The writer weakly whispers, the guard bravely listens … and just how much both are willing to risk for that final tale is a bittersweet triumph to behold.

Captured in remarkable, atmospheric art by François Thisdale, who fills the pages with such exquisite, breathtaking details that will make you pause with every turn, The Stamp Collector is both illuminating storytelling as well as an act of sheer defiance. Author Jennifer Lanthier reveals in her closing essay, “Freedom to Write, Freedom to Read”: “This story was inspired by two writers: Nurmuhemmet Yasin and Jiang Weiping.” The latter, a journalist, lives free in Canada after surviving six years in a Chinese prison for exposing government corruption. The former, a writer, has already lost 10 years in jail for writing “The Wild Pigeon,” a short, allegorical fable that represents the indigenous Uyghur experience under Chinese rule. In 2009, the International PEN Uyghur Center‘s website tragically “… reports from credible sources that Nurmuhemmet Yasin may have been tortured to death in prison.”

“Countless writers” remain trapped throughout the world, Lanthier reminds, “because of something they wrote.” Organizations like PEN International are advocating on behalf of these writers, and also corresponding directly with the prisoners and their families “… to reassure them that they are not forgotten.” In solidarity and support, partial proceeds from Stamp are being directed to PEN Canada, which helped orchestrate Jiang Weiping’s release and immigration. That’s irrefutable testimony to the power of words: while words can tragically bind you, words are also the very tools that can – and will – set you free.

Readers: All

Published: 2012

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Filed under ...Absolute Favorites, ..Adult Readers, ..Children/Picture Books, ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, Canadian, Chinese

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February 26, 2013 · 9:53 am

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine

Lions of Little Rock1958, Little Rock, Arkansas: A year has passed since nine courageous African American students – history’s “Little Rock Nine“ – integrated Central High School. Just days before the new school year is scheduled to begin that September 15, then-Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus closed the city’s three high schools rather than adhere to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to continue integration.

Not directly affected herself, Marlee, 12, starts middle school. She’s gifted with numbers, but has trouble with words … especially when she has to speak them out loud. Her excruciating shyness keeps her voice locked inside: “… I’m not stupid, I’m scared.” Then she meets Liz, the new girl, who immediately stands up to the class queen bee, but with such delightful aplomb that she is instantly everyone’s friend, including Marlee. In the midst of working on a school project – which Liz has convinced Marlee that Marlee can and will present to the whole class in her own voice! – Liz disappears. The truth is highly disturbing: Liz is barred from school … because in spite of her light skin, she is black. Marlee learns the ugly reality of “passing.”

Life at home becomes increasingly unstable. Her older brother has left home for college. Her older sister – and greatest ally – has been sent to live with their grandmother so she can continue high school elsewhere. Her parents are fighting more and more – seemingly arguing opposite sides of the integration divide. Citing her safety in an already volatile situation, both parents forbid Marlee from any contact with Liz. Then the family’s maid’s teenage son gets arrested for a crime he didn’t commit – and Marlee knows he’s innocent because she knows who’s really guilty. Little by little, she realizes that doing the right thing sometimes means you’ve got to start with doing more wrong.

Kristin Levine – whose mother was born in Little Rock – has constructed a remarkable novel, so intricately layered and yet perfectly pieced together. Beyond its feat of page-turning storytelling (track-whooshing, too, if you choose to listen to Julia Whelan’s excellent narration), Lions also is an outstanding history lesson, made even more extraordinary by its lack of finger-pointing judgment. Beyond the huge public moment in 1957 that was Little Rock integration, Levine returns to the citizens’ everyday experiences after the national news cameras turned off: “Many citizens of Little Rock were embarrassed that the world saw only the hate and bigotry in their town,” she writes in the “Author’s Note” at book’s end. “In contrast, by 1958-59, some people in Little Rock had started to speak out … when the city seemed to find a voice.” That voice Levine entrusts to young Marlee, who learns to use it with deliberate tenacity and unswerving courage.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2012

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February 19, 2013 · 9:49 am

Heathy Kids by Maya Ajmera, Victoria Dunning, Cynthia Pon, foreword by Melinda French Gates

Healthy Kids“All children, regardless of where they live, should have the opportunity to grow up healthy and lead a productive life,” writes Melinda Gates in her foreword to this, the latest “A Global Fund for Children Book.” As she shares the wrenching statistic that over seven million children die every year before the age of 5, she quotes her father-in-law with a sobering, “these are not just numbers, these are our neighbors.” Indeed, providing every child with a fighting chance at healthy survival should be tasked to every able neighbor throughout our global community.

Get inspired by the happy, hopeful, proud faces of children from all over the world: “Healthy kids grow up strong, active, and ready to go!” Being healthy means sharing a nutritious meal with your family in Vietnam, enjoying a roasted ear of corn in Mexico, or being breast-fed in Cuba. Healthy includes clean water, whether from a water fountain in Japan or a hand pump in India. Healthy means proper hygiene, enjoying an outdoor shower in Taiwan or using a countryside privvy in Sweden.

Staying healthy relies on having a safe, clean home, like a delightfully hand-painted A-frame wooden house in Suriname or a cozy fur-and-rug covered yurt in China. Regular health (shots!) and dental care (toothbrushes!) are a must, as is exercise and just good ol’ playing whether it’s rugby in Australia or sledding in Greenland. Most of all, best of all, healthy kids need families and communities to feel “safe and loved.”

Through the power of diverse photographs, the authors – Global Fund for Children founder Maya Ajmera, Global Fund VP Victoria Dunning, and Director of Global Fund for Children Books Cynthia Pon – subtly, rightfully remind us that ‘healthy’ kids do not mean ‘perfect’ kids. From the smiling Argentinian girl with Downs Syndrome on the first double-page spread, to the laughing Turkish boy with crutches on the last, all children are welcome throughout these vibrant pages.

The final few pages offer additional suggestions on how to get even healthier, no matter where you are. Plant a garden, conserve water, sing the ABC song while you scrub your hands to banish all the germs, recycle, get regular check-ups, keep your brain active by reading books, organize a neighborhood clean-up day, or donate your allowance to organizations committed to better health for kids everywhere.

“Starting with little steps can lead to big changes. So get out there and be a healthy kid!” Parents, too! We’re never too old to be healthy kids, regardless of our long-ago birthdates.

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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January 30, 2013 · 3:00 pm

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis

Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa ParksAlready designated “definitive political biography” on its back cover, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Brooklyn College political science professor Jeanne Theoharis will reside in my personal reading history as the most difficult book I’ve ever reviewed. Never before – and hopefully never again – have I faced such a vast divide between significant content and frustrating execution. As the most exhaustively researched biography thus far on Rosa Parks, Theoharis’ new title is inarguably an essential addition to any library or classroom, and yet readers will need serious patience to sift through tedious repetition, fragmented chronology, and countless “might have/could have” assumptions to reach the final page.

Fable, myth, caricature are not words historically linked to Rosa Parks, who is publicly remembered as the quiet, tired seamstress whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus sparked the U.S. civil rights movement. When she died at 92 in 2005, Parks became the first woman and second African American to have her body lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda; 40,000 – including President and Mrs. George W. Bush – bore witness, with additional mourners paying tribute at overflowing memorials held in Montgomery, and Detroit, where Parks spent more than half of her life.

“[T]he woman who emerged in the public tribute bore only a fuzzy resemblance to Rosa Louise Parks,” Theoharis proves. “[R]epeatedly defined by one solitary act on the bus,” Theoharis insists Parks was “stripped of her lifelong history of activism and anger at American injustice.” Instead, “the public spectacle provided an opportunity for the nation to lay rest a national heroine and its own history of racism.” In other words: 50 years earlier, this tired woman couldn’t sit on a bus, but look where she’s lying now.

Theoharis “was captivated and then horrified by the national spectacle made of her death.” She gave a talk about “its caricature of [Parks] and, by extension, its misrepresentation of the civil rights movement,” which she was asked to turn into an article: “It became clear how little we actually knew about Rosa Parks.” Even Rosa Parks: A Life, the biography by lauded historian Douglas Brinkley, “is “pocket-sized, un-footnoted,” while the autobiography Parks wrote with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story, is targeted for young adult readers. “[T]he lack of scholarly monograph on Parks,” Theoharis observes, “is notable.”

More than a personal biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Theoharis uses the honorific Mrs. to add “a degree of dignity, distance, and formality to mark that she is not fully ours as a nation to appropriate”) is a political reclamation of Parks’ almost-70 years of activism. As the grandchild of slaves, Parks knew “[f]rom an early age, … ‘we were not free.’” Pushed by her mother, a teacher, towards an education, “her discovery of black history in high school was transformative.” Family responsibilities kept Parks from finishing 11th grade; she wanted to be nurse or social worker, never a teacher after the “’humiliation and intimidation’” she watched her mother endure. Her husband Raymond Parks was “’the first real activist I ever met.’”

Her acts of resistance began small and early – she refused to drink from segregated water fountains – then public and even life-threatening – she registered to vote and assisted others “despite enormous poll taxes and the unfair registration tests.” She was Montgomery’s NAACP secretary, long aligned with controversial activist E.D. Nixon; she experienced interracial leadership training and race equality at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. [... click here for more]

Review: Christian Science Monitor, January 30, 2013

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013

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January 14, 2013 · 2:11 pm

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid

House of StoneThe late Anthony Shadid is back in the headlines today with happy news: the double-Pulitzer winner’s resonating memoir is one of the autobiography finalists for the National Book Circle Critics awards for the publishing year of 2012. House of Stone recounts Shadid’s restoration of his great-grandfather’s home in old Marjayoun “in what it is now Lebanon,” all the while recounting his family’s journey from a troubled ancestral country to a reinvented life based in Oklahoma, U.S.A. The memoir is even more poignant that it was published just after his sudden death on February 16, 2012, from an asthma attack while he was on assignment in Syria; the scheduled March 27 publication date was moved to February 28. That looming, tragic death becomes an unintended character throughout.

Generations ago, Isber Samara, born in 1872 – “a rich man born of a poor boy’s labors” – built a house of stone. He “left it for … his family, to join us with the past, to sustain us, to be the setting for stories.” On the other side of the world, his American great-grandson Shadid, well understood the importance of bayt: “Bayt translates literally as house, but its connotations resonate beyond rooms and walls, summoning longings gathered about family and home. In the Middle East, bayt is sacred. Empires fall. Nations topple. Borders may shift or be realigned. Old loyalties may dissolve, or, without warning, be altered. Home, whether it be structure or familiar ground, is, finally, the identity that does not fade.”

In July 2006, war brought Shadid to Marjayoun and left behind a half-exploded Israeli rocket in the second story of Isber’s house. What the original stonemasons had considered “impenetrable” a century earlier, “with new technologies and old antagonisms in play, there is nothing war cannot crumble in a heartbeat.” Shadid did not abandon the family bayt: he planted a splindly, hope-filled olive tree, determined that Isber’s house would remain “a house worth care.”

When Shadid’s own nuclear family falls apart – his marriage ends, he is separated from his only child – he returns to Marjayoun in August 2007 with “foolish and rash … not to mention reckless, dangerous, and altogether ‘American’” intentions: to rebuild Isber’s house. His odyssey is filled with a cast of encouraging, truculent, self-important, even comical characters, many distantly related, of course. Through reconstruction over the next nine months, Shadid, an internationally renowned journalist who escaped violent threats, survived bullet and kidnappings, who has “never been the type to stay home,” restores his own self, as well.

History – both personal and political – seems forever intertwined in the volatile Middle East. Shadid’s superb journalistic acuity, his determination to honor his ancestors by preserving the past for future generations, his longing for his young daughter Laila, all meld together to create a gorgeous patchwork of family and country, of leaving and return, and most of all, of stories worth preserving.

Tidbit: The ONE thing I really missed in the book were pictures, especially of the house. But, thanks to googlemagic, you can share Shadid’s renovations in a 10-part series, starting with Chapter 1: “Returning Home” by clicking here. How sadly surreal to have Shadid be your tour guide …

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Lebanese, Lebanese American, Middle Eastern

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January 1, 2013 · 12:13 pm

America the Beautiful: Together We Stand by Katharine Lee Bates, illustrated by Bryan Collier, Raúl Colón, Diane Goode, Mary GrandPré, John Hendrix, Yuyi Morales, Jon J. Muth, LeUyen Pham, Sonia Lynn Sadler, and Chris Soentpiet

America the BeautifulReady to ring in the new year? Sing with me now – I’m pretty sure you know the words to this one: “O beautiful for spacious skies …” Yes, the patriotic classic gets a brand new kiddie book … with phenomenal illustrations created by a long list of award-winning artists who each command a line of the 1893 poem by pioneering poet/professor Katharine Lee Bates.

Every illustrated-stanza-double-paged-spread also includes a pithy presidential quote, from George Washington to Barack Obama. No worries – the choices are most definitely non-partisan: Jimmy Carter, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, FDR and his (fifth) cousin Teddy Roosevelt, and George H.W. Bush, all get a say. And, just in case you’re feeling like you’re missing a favorite president, the whole book cover cleverly opens up on the other side to showcase all 44 POTUSes!

The awe-inspiring result might represent a rather different U.S. of A. than perhaps our forefathers envisioned centuries ago, but America the Beautiful is nothing less than stupendous. Take that cover, for instance: the always-delight-inducing LeUyen Pham‘s vision for ” … with brotherhood …” couldn’t be more inclusive, not to mention accurate for what 21st-century America looks like. And, call me crazy (many have), but I like to think that’s young Sasha Obama reaching for the stars! Go, girl, go!

To quote our favorite peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter: “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” The perfect words to start a thus-far perfect, brand new year. Here’s to a happy, merry, healthy 2013 to all indeed!

Tidbit: Can I just say that certain folks in the publishing world had major faith in Obama’s re-election??!! The book (which pubs today) arrived in my mailbox quite a bit before November 6, 2012. The bottom right picture on the POTUS  grid of the inside-side-of-the-cover – specifically the spot for the current president – just happens to be none other than Barack Obama … leaving no room whatsoever for anyone but. I’m just saying …

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, .Poetry, Nonethnic-specific

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