Birmingham, 1963

Birmingham, 1963        Carole Boston Weatherford         Wordsong 2007

This poem uses a fictional narrator to recount the events in Birmingham before and after the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing.

Along with the poet’s voice, the accompanying photos give context and lend impact to the events depicted. The book as a whole is an excellent answer to the question of how do you use fiction to tell a nonfiction story.

The information on the photos used is given in the back of the book. Some photos have clear documentation about their content and context, while others do not.

It would be a very good exercise to have kids find the missing information for the photos that lack clear documentation. Students can check the digital archives of the Birmingham Public Library. Also, this may provide an opportunity to introduce the kids to reverse search engines.

The author’s note in the back provides historical background and context for the presentation, and it is the logical starting point for presenting this book to students

I, Too, Am America

I, Too, Am America Poem by Langston Hughes, Illustrations by Brian Collier

Simon and Shuster   2012

For our purposes, let’s start at the back of the book and refer to the illustrator’s notes. The poem is written in a collective voice in which the narrator’s identity is not specified. Collier’s execution of the artwork provides a fantastic example of using cross curricular connections to link the text of the poem to African American history.

He highlights the practice of Pullman porters collecting newspapers, magazines, and blues & jazz records that were left behind by passengers in order to toss them out of the last car of the train so that people who could not afford or otherwise obtain these items could access them.

This practice became the central metaphor for Collier’s treatment of the poem. The items that the Pullman porters gather travel through time and space across the deep South of the time to contemporary New York as a reflection of the progress that has been made. Regardless of time or distance, the recipients are elated to receive the objects and the messages that they contain.    

In another historical parallel, the objects that the Pullman porters release follow the trajectory of the Great Migration. This book would be an ideal match for Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration book and The Jerry Pickney illustrated “God Bless The Child”.

Another use for this book would be to have this as a template for students' artistic interpretation of the poem. Who would they pick as their narrators, and how would their sentiments be expressed artistically? Those are very interesting questions.  

What Color is My World

What Color Is My World? The Lost history of African American Inventors

Very interesting and engaging!

This book is kind of a strange hybrid that pulls together a variety of elements

We have a story about a brother and sister who move into an old house. Mr. R. E. Mital, the local handyman helps them clean up the house, gets them to work together, and uses his engaging narrative to hip the kids to the hidden history of African American inventors.

There are three distinct elements that come together in this book. You have the story of the siblings and R. E. Mital. The second component is Mital’s embedded and interspersed information about black inventors. The third component consists of the notes and entries from the “journals” that the kids make based on their conversations with Mital.

The effect is quite profound. Information is presented on different levels and in different voices. For example, the kids’ journals boast a more informal writing style and provide a kids’ eye view translation of Mital’s information. This contrast is an opportunity to provide students with insights into note taking and putting information in your own words.

The inventions and topics of focus include the following.

Gamma Electric Cell

Induction Telegraph

Louis Latimer

Computer Innovations

Foil Electret Microphone (commonly used in cell phones)

Bread Machine

Food Preservation Innovations

Potato Chips

Refrigerated Railroad Cars

Open Heart Surgery

Charles Drew

Ice Cream Scoop

Super Soaker

There are also some very engaging graphic novel style pages. My favorite is the one that features Garrett Morgan’s first use of his “safety hood” invention. This device was a precursor to gas masks and respirators. It was previously untested when Morgan happened upon the scene of a fire. It was too smoky for the firefighters to go in and rescue the people inside. When Morgan showed them the invention, the firefighters doubted that it would work. Morgan and an assistant donned hoods and went inside to rescue people. Once they emerged, the firefighters were convinced, and they put on hoods and joined Morgan.

All in all, I must say that I am very excited about this book; However, I do have some caveats.

The first is very minor. At the end of the day, when the kids are discussing their experience with R. E. Mital, they piece together his name by running it backwards –Latimer, and when they look up Latimer, they find the image of Mital. If I had ten dollars for each time that I have seen this cliché , I would own real estate on Nob Hill. What makes a cliché is repeated overuse, However, kids often have not had accumulated experience with the hackneyed in order for it to become stale. It takes an accumulation of a critical mass of repeated exposure for one to become jaded in this regard.

My second quibble is anything but minor. Red flags immediately went up when I read the book’s treatment of the gamma electric cell. The book posits that nuclear power plants directly produce electricity from the nuclear reaction, and that gamma cells make this possible.

Contrary to popular thought, nuclear power plants do not work in this fashion. The fission reaction is used as an ultra efficient way of producing steam. This steam is used to run the turbines that produce the electricity.  It is the heat energy from the reaction that is leveraged into producing electricity. The radiation is a by product.

It is true that the gamma cell uses radiation to convert into electricity, however, this is not the linchpin of how nuclear power plants produce electricity. There are no power plants that use gamma cells as a primary means of electrical production.

So I did a little digging around to find out more about gamma cells. Information on the web widely varied and was imprecise. I found myself wishing that I could ask the inventor about it when I realized that I could. I looked up the patent of the gamma cell in order to determine its capabilities.

If you subject a gamma cell to radiation, it will generate electricity. Its most common current use is to detect radiation in the ground. If electricity is produced in the measuring device, then radiation is present. Since power is produced in the detection process, no external power supply is needed.

Gamma cells are also used in some nuclear power plants, however their utility is limited. One use is to measure the radiation output of a power plant. Another use is to have gamma cells integrated into the shielding mechanism of the power plant. In this capacity, it would absorb some of the radiation while serving as a source of auxillary power for the operation of the plant.

I feel that this particular oversight stems from the popular assumption that nuclear power plants use an esoteric process to leverage the energy of the reaction into electricity. I am curious, however, whether this is the only oversight of this nature that made it into this book.

I absolutely love the book in spite of this caveat; however, I will take a much closer look for any other errors. If I find them, I will post an update.

I See The Rhythm

I See The Rhythm   Text By Toyomi Igus   Paintings By Michelle Wood  Childrens Book Press 1998

This is a stunning book that provides a sweeping overview of 500 years of  African American musical developments rendered through stunning paintings and poetically rendered prose.

Michelle Wood’s art provides a colorful representation of each genre, and within the paintings, one can often find cultural and historical points of reference.

The caption for each painting gives more specific information about the context, purpose, function, and aesthetics of each musical style.

Additionally, there is sidebar featured for each genre that highlights historically significant events in African American History and in the development of the music itself. I find this historical context to be quite valuable. One could use this as a springboard to initiate a conversation about how contemporary socio-economic and historical factors can influence the development and expression of a music.

Likewise, music sometimes plays a prominent role in catalyzing role in movements that create social and economic change. Consider the role of music in the Civil Rights movement and in the history of the Labor movement in this regard.

This last consideration is well beyond the scope of this book. The text is rather sparse, and the book is designed to provide an overview. Any study in depth would require additional resources.

However, this book can be used to study the development of music over time.

It can also lend flavor and introduce some additional context to a larger study of a time period.

The Great Migration

The Great Migration: An American Story  

Paintings By Jacob Lawrence       Harper Trophy Books     1995

This book collects the entire series of 60 paintings that constitutes Jacob Lawrence’s stunningly iconic Great Migration series.

Jacob Lawrence created this exhibit as a young man. He was 22 when he started painting the series in 1940, and he completed the 60 paintings over the course of a year. As part of the exhibit, Jacob Lawrence wrote a narrative that describes, links, and unifies the paintings in order to explain the subject.

Utterly fantastic! This book is perfect for introducing the great migration. The art and the narrative combine to provide a surprising amount and depth of information for such a sparse format.

This book pairs extraordinarily well with some of the other outstanding  picture books that treat the Great Migration. “God Bless the Child” and “I, Too, Am, America” immediately come to mind.

Additionally, this book is a fantastic example of sequential art, and how it can be used to tell a story, frame a narrative, and depict events. I think this book would be invaluable in this respect as well.

You can look at the book as a guide on how to format student art that accompanies student generated stories, personal narratives, instructional text assignments, etc.

Also, I think that an interesting exercise would be to use this book in a comparative study with graphic novels. One could compare & contrast, find similarities & differences, and figure out the defining features of the format and how it works to tell a story.