scrounge: /skrounj/ informal verb: to actively seek [books] from any available source
With a title like Separate Is Never Equal, it makes sense to assume this book is about segregation and the Civil Rights movement, and it is -- but it takes place several years before the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. This story is about Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight to desegregate schools in their region of California. At the time this story takes place, Hispanic children were sent to separate schools than white children in some places.
The general story is framed by the story of Sylvia Mendez's first day at her new (formerly "white") school. She is nervous, and one child tells her to go back to the Mexican school. When she comes home and tells her mother about it, her mother reminds her why they fought -- which takes us back to the story of the Mendezes' battle to allow their children to go to the school nearest their home -- not to the "Mexican school" which was not equal in funding or quality.
Despite the fact that Sylvia Mendez spoke perfect English and was American by citizenship, not Mexican, she was told that attending a separate school was simply "how it was done." No one gave them a reasonable answer to their questions of "Why?" But it eventually came out in the court case, quite clearly -- the school administrators simply believed that white students were superior to Hispanic ones.
It's a very interesting story, and it communicates the timeline and scope of events in a way that children can understand. The framing of the story helps to give a context to all of the legal processes -- in the end, Sylvia is able to attend her new school with a sense of pride because she knows that she and her family fought hard for that right. It's not surprising that her case received support from the NAACP, among other organizations, because this case helped open the door for national desegregation of schools. And I'd never heard of it or Sylvia Mendez before now -- I'm grateful to author/illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh for making it accessible in this way.
At the end of the book are some more detailed notes about the events in the story and some photos, as well as a glossary and bibliography.
Scrounged From: Amazon (Kindle)
Format: Kindle
Author/illustrator: Duncan Tonatiuh
Pages: 40
Content Advisory: The court case involves expressions of racist views of Hispanic people.
We enjoyed reading another installment from the Messner/Neal duo, after reading Over and Under the Snow (see my review here). Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt includes beautiful, colorful artwork and tells the story of some of the things that go on in a garden over the course of a year. The text is spare and fairly poetic, and communicates facts about bugs, plants, and the food chain without a lot of technical terms.
The book follows a girl and her Nana as they haul off dead plants and sow seeds in the spring, watch the vegetables ripen in the summer, and harvest and put the garden "to bed" in the autumn, and soon it rests under a blanket of snow for the winter. We're also introduced to some of the creatures that live in gardens: ladybugs, earth worms, pill bugs, and even garter snakes.
It's a great reminder that there's a lot going on in one little garden, and it's all interconnected -- even down in the dirt where we don't often see it.
Scrounged From: Our local library
Format: Hardcover
Author: Kate Messner
Illustrator: Christopher Silas Neal
Pages: 52
Content Advisory: None
Destination: Planet Earth is a very thorough, colorful journey over our home planet -- landforms, earth science, geography. Each double-page spread includes a large illustration and small text blocks around it that cover details about each place or topic, such as mountains, the coastline, plate tectonics, volcanoes, biomes, etc.
At the end there's a couple sections about pollution and some of the things we can do to help reduce waste. The book as a whole really makes you feel like an explorer!
(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)
Scrounged From: NetGalley
Format: Kindle
Author: Jo Nelson
Illustrator: Tom Clohosy Cole
Pages: 40
Content Advisory: None
The Magic Garden is a simple book of lovely and whimsical illustrations that delves into the mysteries that exist right outside our doorsteps. It takes the reader on a little tour of an ordinary garden, pointing out some of the amazing creatures that live and work there, regardless of whether we notice them or not.
From snakes to spiders, bees to birds, we are encouraged to take a closer look at some of the more "shy" creatures that surround us every day. While I'm not really a fan of the word "magic" being used to describe nature, I do think the book is simply trying to communicate how intricate and mysterious some of the everyday facets of nature can be, even when they're ignored.
At the end of the book, there are some more detailed paragraphs about many of the creatures that are mentioned -- how they live, eat, weave, spin, etc.
(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)
Scrounged From: NetGalley
Format: Kindle
Author/Illustrator: Lemniscates
Pages: 32
Content Advisory: None
I'm a bit surprised that I managed to obtain an English degree without being assigned to read Their Eyes Were Watching God, because I can see why it's such a major American novel.
In the afterword written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., he mentions that Hurston saw her first novel (written a few years before this one) as "a manifesto against the 'arrogance' of whites assuming that 'black lives are only defensive reactions to white actions.'" This book also seems to avoid the reactionary point of view, and tries to simply capture black culture and people as they were, without requiring a "contrast" of white characters, unlike some of the other novels by black authors from the same period (a few of which I actually was assigned in college).
Hurston used vernacular speech in the dialog here, which for me meant it took a little longer to read, but sometimes that's a good thing. I loved the flow of the writing, and there were a few moments of humor as well. Toward the end of the story, the main characters are involved in a hurricane, which was a bit of deja vu to read during hurricane season last year when Florida had just been hit by Irma -- but this is one section where the descriptions are the best, and contains the title line.
To be honest, I didn't find Janie Crawford that sympathetic of a character in the beginning of the story, although the first page or so of the novel is a gem all on its own. But as the chapters passed and Janie and the scenery around her became more developed, I appreciated more the glimpse into this particular time and place, the way the story pulled me in, and the lyrical (as it has oft been described) style that is employed in so much of the narrative. The ending of the story navigated so well between heartbreak and determination, and kept me up past my bedtime (so in other words, I expected to like it a little but ended up liking it a lot).
Scrounged From: Our local flea market
Format: Paperback
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Pages: 237
Content Advisory: A few swear words, a violent scene at the end (involving a gun) as well as a few instances and mentions of domestic violence, and a couple non-explicit sexual scenes.
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