What Does Success Look Like?

When a "Black Lives Matter" group took over the pavilion in a park to broadcast a message by bullhorn last night, I was reminded of this question an interviewer asked a Black author on the "Book TV" program. I guess I would have answered her question by saying success in a Black neighborhood would look like a well-maintained school, no Pay-Day loan and liquor stores or abortion clinics. The kindly Black man on the "Today" show this morning, who had adopted a "family" of a dozen or so multiracial children would have answered differently. As would Rev. Derrick DeWitt, the director of the Maryland Baptist Aged Home whose residents have had no infections during the COVID-19 epidemic. Jasmine Guillory, an attorney who writes romance novels with Black female lead characters, might judge her success by publication of PARTY OF TWO, her fifth novel. Everywhere on the globe, no matter what your aim is: reforming a police department, feeding a hungry world or living a happy and fulfilling life, before beginning a task, ask yourself, "What will success look like?"

Live A Large Life

While residents of the Southern Hemisphere are coming inside for the winter and those in the Northern one are about to go outdoors, both groups are entering periods conducive to thinking about the future. Whether reading by the fire or surrounded by the wonders of nature, students can find seasonal inspiration for life choices that plunge them into the whole wide world.

     For a little help in seeing beyond the here and now, Luke Jennings, a British journalist and avid fisherman, provides his brief book, Blood Knots. Beginning with his title that combines references both to family ties and a way to prepare fishing tackle, Jennings shows young people how to push beyond the ordinary to reach the personal joy of achieving expertise in any field.

     Jennings' own inspiration came from a father who bore scars from pulling fellow soldiers from a burning tank in World War II, and the free-spirited, falcon-owning Robert Nairac, who valued the precision of dry-fly casting that demanded the frustrating "hard right way." Even before meeting Nairac, however, Jennings wrote there was no one in his family who ever fished, "So I learnt from library books by Bernard Venables, Richard Walker, Peter Stone, and Fred Taylor.

     What can be learned from books is not limited to fishing. Even in summer, there are rainy days, when a trip to the library can stimulate an interest that leads to adventures in foreign countries the way fishing took Jennings to Guyana, Australia, Hong Kong, and South Africa.

     Books enable young people who lack financial means to experience the same new ideas and cultures others derive through travel. In Blood Knots, I learned, for example, fishing hooks come in different sizes, a #18 is smaller than a #12. Dry-fly casting for trout begins with making a fly using a delicate bit of silk and feather and requires, like kite flying, an open space where swinging a fishing line overhead and forward will not tangle it in an overhanging branch. No wonder, trout anglers don hip boots and wade into rivers.

     If students are lucky, reading will enhance their means of expression and chances of winning Scrabble by sending them to a giant dictionary to expand their vocabulary with new words, such as numinous, pellucid, ilex, ferrules, elegiac, jejune, and jinking, some of the words Jennings used in Blood Knots. Young people also will begin to find themselves observing and describing their experiences the way Jennings did in the following sentence: "Pigeons flew over us, cresting the roadside trees with a single wing-snap and gliding to their roosts."

     Once students recognize time as a fusion of past, present, and future, the way Jennings came to view it, a lifetime holds a world of opportunity.



   

Problem-Solving Engineers' Fix for Education

Engineers at Tufts wondered how teachers trained in liberal arts could teach students critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

They suggested teachers find books, where protagonists face conflict. (It was as though they didn't know, in every good book, protagonists face conflicts. But no matter, let's go on.)

The teacher would then read the book, or assign certain pages for homework, up to a spot where the protagonist has sufficient details about the pending conflict to give students the information they need to come up with various conflict resolutions.

For younger grades, the Tufts engineers used the example of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. How can Peter keep his younger brother, Fudge, away from his turtle, when his mother won't let him close his bedroom door? The engineers figured Peter could rig up a pulley system to hoist his turtle into the air, whenever Fudge entered his room.

Students can engage in a problem-solving class discussion or break into groups to propose solutions and then report their ideas to the class. The class even could vote to choose the best solution.

Doesn't this sound like more fun than memorizing and passing tests?

Characters with Diverse Nationalities Populate A Summer Reading List

Children who read for fun under a shady tree or beach umbrella this summer will be in good company. Microsoft's co-founder, Bill Gates, considers "the chance to sit outside reading a great book" summer's gift for "gutting out" the rest of the year inside.

     No doubt young people will find the reading list selections made by Elizabeth Perez, a children's librarian at the San Francisco Public Library, more to their liking than the books Bill Gates put on his list:
     The Vital Question by Nick Lane, who explores the role energy plays in all living things, and
     How Not to be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg's take on the role of math in all things, and
     Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, in which Noah Yuval Harari speculates on the way things           like artificial intelligence and genetic engineering will change future humans.

     Perez chose books featuring characters with diverse nationalities, including children from Mexico, the Caribbean, Guatemala, Ghana, Somalia, and Korea. Her choices also include children who have dual nationalities, American and Vietnamese, for example. She has age-appropriate selections for students from age 4 to age 14.

For ages 4-8
Emmanuel's Dream: the True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson.
     A Ghanaian boy, born with one less developed leg, becomes a professional athlete.

For ages 5-8
I'm New Here by Anne Sebley O'Brien
     Children from Guatemala, Somalia, and Korea begin to adjust to a new school with the help of new classmates.
Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina
     A parrot becomes a go-between for a little girl who doesn't speak Spanish and her grandmother who does.
Mama's Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation by Edwidge Danticat
     Librarian Perez advises adults to read this book first before deciding if children should find out letters are the only way some children have contact with their parents in detention camps.

For ages 5-9
Juna's Jar by Jane Bank
     Juna uses a Korean kinchi jar to store her dreams.

For ages 6-10
Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras by Duncan Tonatiuh
     A non-fiction book about an illustrator famous for drawing Mexican Day of the Dead skeletons.

For ages 8-12
Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai
     Unwillingly an American girl visits Vietnam with her Vietnamese father and grandmother to learn what happened to her grandfather during the Vietnam War and to discover the Vietnamese part of her identity.
Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Hilton
     This book uses a half Japanese girl's interest in space to describe her feeling of being an alien in a town where almost everyone is white.

For ages 9-12
The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
     An heroic young girl is determined to save her Caribbean island from the ghostly Jumbies that appear in folk tales.

For ages 10-14
Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan
     During World War II a harmonica weaves together stories about a family living in Nazi Germany and a Mexican-American family and Japanese-American family living in the United States.






   

Join a Book and a Fox to Make a Box

On holiday trips in trains, planes, and automobiles, pass the time by helping kids create funny new word combinations.

     According to an item in Entertainment Weekly (Dec. 4, 2015), Jeopardy champion, Ken Jennings, said his son came up with a salmon covered with Nutella and called it "salmonella." Or just create nonsense words by making a brilk out of breakfast and milk.

     The earlier post, "Word Games Lead to Reading Fun," has word combination examples that use names to create new words.

     In any language, kids can use this technique to become their own versions of Dr. Seuss.

Books with International Themes for Boys (and Girls)

PBS.org/parents/best-books-for-boys/ just posted a very useful resource: a reading list for young, middle school, and advanced readers. It picks up on ideas in my earlier posts: "How Do You Get Boys to Read (about the World?)" and "Word Games Lead to Reading Fun."

Books from the PBS list that have international themes are listed below:

• Arroz Con Leche: Songs and Rhymes from Latin America by Lulu Delacre
• Tu Mama es una Lama? by Deborah Guarino
• Pierre: a cautionary tale about a hungry lion by Maurice Sendak
• Storms and Volcanoes, 2 books by Seymour Simon
• It's Disgusting and We Ate It: True Food Facts from Around the World by James Solheim
• Slinky, Scaly Snakes (from around the world) by Jennifer A. Dussling

Word Games Lead to Reading Fun

Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, suggests introducing kids to the fun of making new words by combining names. A child named Oleg and an adult named Boris can combine to be Oloris. Billy and Pat become Bat.

     In his book, Raising Kids Who Read, Willingham notes kids will think reading is fun when their early books include rhymes. Think Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose nursery rhymes. And, if they see adults and older siblings reading, they will want to imitate them.

     Let kids know this is a classroom of students or a family that likes to read, because we like to learn (and share) new things, says Willingham. Strategically place books where kids will see them when they're bored.

     Also see earlier posts dealing with reading: "How Do You Get Boys to Read (about the World)?" "Travel the World with Summer Reading," and "A Winter's Tale."

How Do You Get Boys to Read (about the World)?

Since authors know girls like to read, one of the ways they lure boys to a book is by making their protagonists look just like them. Jeff Kinney's wimpy kid is Greg Heffley, and J.K.Rowling's young wizard is Harry Potter.

     Karen Katz uses the same approach in her new book, Roar, Roar Baby, for babies up to two year's old. She has a little boy looking for a tiger behind flaps that open to find  animals hiding all over the world. In Temple Run: Race Through Time to Unlock the Secrets of Ancient Worlds, Tracey West has a boy protagonist who finds clues that help him navigate safely through ancient civilizations. 

     Jon Scieszka, Stephanie Roth Sisson, and Brad Meltzer use a somewhat different approach to attract young male readers. In his series, Guys Read, Scieszka collects the true stories of adventure, sports, and male comedians that he knows little dudes would like.

     By presenting the true life stories of Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein, Sisson and Meltzer provide models of what boys can do with their lives. Sisson's book, Star Stuff, takes young men to the wonders of the 1939 World's Fair to illustrate what inspired Sagan to explore the mysteries of the universe. I Am Albert Einstein, by the historian Brad Meltzer, shows boys how ordinary people can change the world, even if they like to do things their own way, or maybe because they like their own ways of doing things. (Meltzer also has written a book about Amelia Earhart to inspire young girls.)

     Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, in his book, Raising Kids Who Read, urges families to let their children know, we are a family who likes to read because we like to learn (and share) new things. Kids who see adults and older siblings reading will want to imitate them.