Slide 4: I first learned about the Japanese-American internment when I saw Chiura Obata’s art. It’s absolutely stunning. Here is one of his prints of Yosemite. 

Slide 6: All in all, there were ten different Japanese-American internment camps. These next two resources come from peoples’ experiences in Poston, Arizona. The first one is a picture book Write to Me. This is about the postcards that interned Japanese-American children sent their librarian Clara Breed. In turn, she sent them letters, supplies and books which helped make their experience in the camps less harsh. 

If you have a student who is really into this topic, they might want to check out the nonfiction resource Dear Miss Breed. This is a very large book. It’s chock-full of information. Unless you have a student that’s really into nonfiction, they probably won’t be interested. However, if you have a student who wants to learn as much as they can, then I definitely recommend this resource.

Slide 3: Smile by Raina Teglemeier is an excellent graphic novel to have in hand. The main character, Raina, also struggles to fit in just like Jordan does in his new school.

Slide 4: Another book in the same vein is El Deafo by Cece Bell. She, too, is struggling to fit in at a new school.
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Slide 6: The book that New Kid most reminded me of is The First Rule of Punk by Celia Perez. In The First Rule of Punk, Malu, that’s the main character finds a mentor not in her grandparent but in her friend’s grandparent. In New Kid, Jordan looks to his grandfather as a mentor.

Also, in The First Rule of Punk the ethnic slur coconut is discussed. It’s used to describe Malu. There is her nemesis that says Malu is a coconut—she looks Hispanic on the outside but acts like a Caucasian on the inside. In New Kid, an ethnic slur isn’t used against the main character, Jordan, but an ethnic slur is used for another child of African-American descent, Maury. They call him Maury-o, and that’s in reference to the ethnic slur Oreo. Both of these books look specifically at ethnic slurs.

Finally, in The First Rule of Punk the school administration doesn’t support Malu’s desire to showcase her punk rock band at the school talent show. She has to figure out a way to work around the system that’s discriminating against her. In the New Kid there is a teacher who doesn’t take the time to learn the names of the students of color. She doesn’t realize how racist she is. One day she comes across Jordan’s notebook and he’s drawn cartoon caricatures of her. This leads to a very important discussion between Jordan and the teacher.

Slide 3: Slide 3: The first picture book biography that Melissa recommended I read is The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Sarah Jacoby. This is an outstanding book. It’s a love letter to Margaret Wise Brown It celebrates her. It also celebrates the fact that the books that she wrote were considered strange, and even though they were considered strange, she didn’t care. She felt they had to be written for children. The book is forty-two pages and Margaret Wise Brown lived for forty-two years. So the number of pages correlates with her age. The artwork is absolutely exquisite.

Another great aspect of this book is that it has a lot of direct address which means that it asks questions of the reader as you go along. Not everyone likes direct address; however, if you are a teacher trying to implement an interactive read aloud in your classroom, I highly recommend starting with this book because the questions are in the text. You don’t even have to think about which ones you’re going to ask.

One person who is not portrayed positively in this book is Anne Carroll Moore. That’s because she recommended that people not read Margaret Wise Brown’s books. So I would pair this biography with Miss Moore Thought Otherwise.

Slide 5: The next biography Melissa suggested I read is Hedy Lamarr’s Double Life: Hollywood Legend and Brilliant Inventor. I am crazy about this book. I have loved Laurie Wallmark’s other biographies but this one is my favorite for a couple of reasons.

On a practical level, I can use this while teaching science. Every year I have to talk about frequencies which is not something I feel confident about. They actually illustrate wave frequencies in this book, and now I have a concrete example of why they’re useful. Hedy Lamarr designed a system called frequency hopping which allowed us to be successful in World War II. Frequency hopping enabled submarines to launch torpedoes and not have their direction affected by the enemy. Today we use frequency hopping to have private cell phone conversations or to send texts privately. Without Hedy Lamarr we may not have had this technology, or we may not have found it as soon as we did. So, we owe a great debt to Hedy Lamarr.

Besides the practical aspect of this book, what I absolutely love was that Hedy Lamarr was a gorgeous Hollywood actress yet she was incredibly smart. Yet people thought that just because she was beautiful that she couldn’t be smart. In fact, they thought she was dumb. One of my favorite quotes from the book is, “People seem to think because I have a pretty face I’m stupid… I have to work twice as hard as anyone else to convince people I have something resembling a brain.” I want my female students to know that they don’t have to choose between one and the other. They can be attractive and smart or smart and attractive. I think often times females think they have to choose between one and the other. 

Slide 7: If you want to find out more about women in science, but you don’t have time to read a novel, you can find out more about two of these women in these picture book biographies. One is also by Jeannine, it’s Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon. The other one is The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merriam’s Art Changed Science and that’s by Joyce Sidman.