Persepolis by Marijane Satripi

Summary: Satrapi's autobiography is a timely and timeless story of a young girl's life under the Islamic Revolution. Descended from the last Emperor of Iran, Satrapi is nine when fundamentalist rebels overthrow the Shah. While Satrapi's radical parents and their community initially welcome the ouster, they soon learn a new brand of totalitarianism is taking over. Satrapi's art is minimal and stark yet often charming and humorous as it depicts the madness around her. She idolizes those who were imprisoned by the Shah, fascinated by their tales of torture, and bonds with her Uncle Anoosh, only to see the new regime imprison and eventually kill him. Thanks to the Iran-Iraq war, neighbors' homes are bombed, playmates are killed and parties are forbidden. Satrapi's parents, who once lived in luxury despite their politics, struggle to educate their daughter. Her father briefly considers fleeing to America, only to realize the price would be too great. "I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?" he asks his wife. Iron Maiden, Nikes and Michael Jackson become precious symbols of freedom, and eventually Satrapi's rebellious streak puts her in danger, as even educated women are threatened with beatings for improper attire. Despite the grimness, Satrapi never lapses into sensationalism or sentimentality. Skillfully presenting a child's view of war and her own shifting ideals, she also shows quotidian life in Tehran and her family's pride and love for their country despite the tumultuous times. Powerfully understated, this work joins other memoirs-Spiegelman's Maus and Sacco's Safe Area Goradze-that use comics to make the unthinkable familiar. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Notable Information: This text has the power to convert the non-reader of graphic novels to an avid one! Reviewer after reviewer will testify that he or she sat down to begin the book and didn't get up until they finished. Middle and high school students can experience this, too. By starting them off with reading American Born Chinese, some will be ready to move onto this heavier, more mature text. The text is highly political while still managing to focus on the individual growth and development of the narrator. The reader has to rely heavily on reading between the lines of this text, as well as the illustrations in order to gain the full understanding of the story. Therefore, graphic novels, such as this one, create a rich environment to work on the tough reading and thinking skills of inference and interpretation.

Text Excerpt:

Sequel: Perspepolis II
This sequel begins where the first left off and chronicles the older years of Marji's life. This sequel presents a different subset of issues and best suits high school readers. Be advised: if this book sits next to the first one, the reader will immediately pick it up to find out what happened where the first left off!

Purchase

Homemade Love by bell hooks

Summary: PreSchool-K-Evans's wonderful illustrations raise this paean to parental love a notch above the ordinary. "My mama calls me girlpie. Her Sweet sweet. Daddy's honey bun chocolate Dew Drop. Homemade Love," says the small African-American narrator. The story line is minimal: her parents love her, even when she does something wrong, and their love supports her, even at night. The rhythm of the words, the smoothness of the text, and the positive message all combine to make a lovely read-aloud, despite a slightly treacly premise. Evans's folksy paintings, done in bright primary colors, are wonderful, with an appealing, dark-skinned, large-eyed little girl wearing dresses decorated with patterns that reflect the story. The artist fills up the pages so completely that readers only see the parents from the waist down for the first half of the book. When the child breaks something, her sorrow is evident, and after everything is all better, "kiss kiss," she goes outside and does cartwheels in the flowers, exuding happiness and a zest for life. An appealing addition for most collections. Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Classroom Implications: This book does not as strong of a story line as previous books by hooks, yet it still captures the love shared in a family. This story is about unconditional love, a subject that many students can identify or disidentify with based on their own experiences.

Purchase

Skin Again by bell hooks

Summary: Kindergarten-Grade 4–As they did in Happy to Be Nappy (1999) and Be Boy Buzz (2002, both Hyperion), hooks and Raschka have created a verbal and visual celebration. This time the subject is skin, both what it is and, more importantly, what it is not. "The skin I'm in/is just a covering./If you want to know who I am/you have got to come inside/and open your heart way wide." While the message comes across loud and clear, the author's deft handling of language renders it gently persuasive rather than didactic. Raschka's impressionistic pictures amplify the theme as they shift from large, bold cartoons showing the outside of both white and black children, and then move to the inner patchwork of thoughts and feelings that make up "real" individuals. The illustrations will invite lengthy study, as Raschka shows the children passing through the various boxes as they reach inside to know each other and then come outside to see skin again with fresh eyes. Whether shared with a group or one-on-one, this is an excellent vehicle to initiate discussion on a sensitive and perennially important subject.–Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Classroom Implications: The poet and the artist who created Happy to be Nappy! (1999) and Be Boy Buzz (2002) take on another big identity issue with exuberant, playful imagery that will open discussion. The simple words spell out the overt message ("If you want to know who I am / you have got to come / inside"), and the pictures move from big, full-page portraits of kids with various skin colors to patchwork-style pages showing all the shifting bits and pieces inside each individual. Raschka's images, in many colors and shapes, shows everything from active children; winging birds; and a smiling snake to arms reaching out and dancing feet. The art vividly celebrates history and the realism, fun, and fantasy inside each one of us--the dreams of "all the way I imagine me." This is about skin color, but it's also about diversity within a group and within one child, and about finding the story inside the stereotype. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Purchase

Be Boy Buzz by bell hooks

Summary: From Publishers Weekly
This stunning volume celebrates all things boy. The creators of Happy to Be Nappy set the stage with the bold opening sortie: "I be boy" appears on the left of the spread, paired with a deceptively simple layering of rectangles in blue line that pulsates on the page; opposite, a thoughtful-looking fellow, all elbows and knees slightly bent, seems poised for action. This spare, poetic riff on young manhood plumbs the delights and contradictions of what it means to be a boy particularly an African-American boy in a brief handful of sentences and with a few well-placed pastel lines that imply motion and emotion. From boys soaring ("All bliss boy") to boys sulking ("All bad boy beast" here Raschka conveys the mood with just the right-hand side of a furrowed brow, and two arms seemingly blocking readers from view), at play ("I be boy jumping") and at rest ("all think and dream time"), the words pinpoint boyhood's unflagging energy and exuberance, vulnerability ("Hug me close. Don't let me down") and attitude. Hooks's rhythmic blend of brevity and eloquence launches Raschka's trademark visual haiku. His series of watercolor and pastel portraits set off against a warm cappuccino backdrop conjures fingers and toes, features and squiggles of hair from simple sweeps of his brush, and evokes characters suffused with humanity and tenderness. The graceful design visually balances the spare text, lively portraits and geometric graphics which harmoniously orbit the spreads. This life-affirming book will have readers as much "in love with being a boy" as are its own utterly irresistible characters. Ages 4-8. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Classroom Implications: This book poetically celebrates masculine identities. The language is descriptive, the images vivid, and the message clear: love all and every side of you! A nice addition to have in the library, especially for young male readers.

Purchase

I Love My Hair! by Natasha Tarpley

Summary: THE ROOT OF BEAUTY

Reviewer:

BeatleBangs1964 (United States) -

The narrator of this tale is a bright, beautiful little girl who is proud of her naturally thick curly Black hair. She, like most folks find combout sessions quite painful, but her very wise mother tells her why she is lucky to have such beautiful, thick, naturally curly hair.

Keyana, the child narrator describes the care her hair requires; her mother rubs coconut oil into her scalp to help the comb glide through it. Her mother applies rich poetic descriptions to Keyana's hair; she tells Keyana every time she corn rows it, it is like planting a beautiful garden; when she combs it out into a big, beautiful Afro, it is a globe as round as the world that contains everybody; she tells Keyana she can spin it like silk the way their ancestors spun silk on a loom. Each description is accompanied by a lovely picture showing the mother's vision; for example, when she applies the silk comparison, Keyana is drawn with her beautiful hair being spun on a loom.

Keyana herself celebrates her natural beauty, hair and all and takes pride in the myriad of hairstyles her thick, curly hair will allow her to try. I like the way she said that the hair styling sessions were a time of mother-daughter bonding and the illustrations are first rate.

This is a book all parents and educators will want to use to promote self pride among all children, particularly children who are black. This book celebrates the beauty of being human. It is for everybody. I love this book!

Classroom Implication: This book pairs nicely with Happy to be Nappy and Nappy Hair, both books that praise African and Black American hair. This read aloud approaches the subject gently and could spark a nice conversation of what it means to celebrate identity.

Purchase

Happy to Be Nappy (Jump at the Sun) by bell hooks

Summary: Grades 1-4 Renowned feminist and social critic bell hooks takes on... hair! "Hair for hands to touch and play! Hair to take the gloom away." This rhythmic read-aloud is, on the surface, all about hair: nappy, plaited, long, short, natural, twisted, "soft like cotton, flower petal billowy soft, full of frizz and fuzz." Comb through the surface and find a celebration of childhood and girls and the freedom to express individuality. The rituals implied in the book are rooted in the traditions of hooks's own childhood, when "doing" hair was just as much an excuse for girls to laugh and tell stories and just be together. Going still deeper is the much-needed message encouraging girls to love and accept themselves (and others) just the way they are. In bell hooks's first venture into children's books, she wisely teams up with Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator Chris Raschka (Yo! Yes?, Mysterious Thelonious). Raschka's bold paint strokes on a color wash background are strikingly original--a perfect match for the exuberant text. This beautiful picture book will surely make any reader, young or old, happy to be nappy--and anyone who raved or ranted over Carolivia Herron and illustrator Joe Cepeda's Nappy Hair will welcome this joyful, celebratory book. --Emilie Coulter

Classroom Implication: A critical book at this time, bell hooks advocates for self-love and acceptance of individuality. She works to reclaim a term that has been used derogatorily and breeches the subject delicately through poetic texts. This picture book could pair nicely with identity-based novels, such as The Skin I'm In.

Text Excerpts:


Purchase

There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me by Alice Walker

Summary: From Publishers Weekly
Walker (The Color Purple; Finding the Green Stone) praises the surroundings that fortify the human experience. In her vision, people do not work their will on the things around them, but rather the people and the universe influence each other: "There is a flower/ At the tip/ Of my nose/ Smelling/ Me./ There is a sky/ At the end/ Of my/ Eye/ Seeing/ Me." Vitale (When the Wind Stops) paints great swaths of sunset sky that glow from the horizon, illuminating the serene face of a dreaming girl who looks as if she would be at home anywhere. "There is a dance/ That lives/ In my bones/ Dancing/ Me," reads the text, as the heroine, charged from within by streams of incandescent energy, leaps and sways in swirls of sunlight that stream out from her fingertips. "There is a story/ At the end/ Of my arms," Walker concludes, "Telling/ Me!" Now a rainbow falls over the girl's face, and creation holds out marvelous possibilities. Smaller versions of herself surround the girl in a frieze: in these miniature images she flies, dives into the waves with a fish and climbs the leaves of an enormous white flower to kiss its face. It's less a story than an illuminated prayer"an expression of gratitude for one girl, all humans and the whole of the cosmos. All ages. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Classroom Implications: In the author's note in the back of the book, Alice Walker writes that this book began as a thank-you note. Students would really latch onto this concept. This text extends the idea of gratitude and shifts to a more universal way of looking at things. Middle school students may use this as a mentor text to inspire a new kind of writing that originates from a different, more universal perspective.

Text Excerpt:


Purchase

Who Am I Without Him?: Short Stories About Girls and the Boys in Their Lives by Sharon Flake

Summary: Gr. 6-12. Hilarious and anguished, these 10 short stories about growing up black today speak with rare truth about family, friends, school, and especially about finding a boyfriend. Erika is a "ghetto girl" who likes white boys; she can't help it, and the other black kids in school can't stand her, because they know. Class is a big issue for Erin, who steals clothes so he can take a suburban girl to the homecoming dance. The church girls are forbidden to date, and they get hurt when they go hunting for boys. But their well-meaning parents don't have it right, and the girls won't stop looking. As with Janet MacDonald's fiction, the talk here is wild, angry, and outrageous, but there's no overt sex or obscenity. Yes, there are messages, but the narrative is never preachy or uplifting; it's honest about the pain. When one girl's boyfriend hits her, she apologizes "just like my momma does when daddy slaps her." The best advice comes from a dad who abandoned his family, who now tells his teenage daughter how to avoid getting stuck with someone like him ("you is so much more than a pretty face and a tight pair of jeans, some boy's girlfriend or some man's wife"). Not everyone makes it. The stories work because Flake never denies the truths of poverty, prejudice, and failure. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Purchase

An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Summary: Gr. 7-12. "Dating is not a concept adults in our barrio really get." The contemporary teenage voices are candid, funny, weary, and irreverent in these stories about immigrant kids caught between their Puerto Rican families and the pull and push of the American dream. The young people hang out on the street in front of the tenement El Building in Paterson, New Jersey, where the radios are always turned full blast to the Spanish station and the thin walls can't hold the dramas of the real-life telenovelas. As in her autobiographical adult collection Silent Dancing (1990), Cofer depicts a diverse neighborhood that's warm, vital, and nurturing, and that can be hell if you don't fit in. Some of the best stories are about those who try to leave. Each piece stands alone with its own inner structure, but the stories also gain from each other, and characters reappear in major and minor roles. The teen narrators sometimes sound too articulate, their metaphors overexplained, but no neat resolutions are offered, and the metaphor can get it just right (the people next door "could be either fighting or dancing"). Between the generations, there is tenderness and anger, sometimes shame. In one story, a teenage girl despises the newcomer just arrived from the island, but to her widowed mother, the hick (jibaro) represents all she's homesick for. Raul Colon's glowing cover captures what's best about this collection: the sense of the individual in the pulsing, crowded street. Hazel Rochman

Themes: Culture, Hybrid Identities, Generational Differences, Individuality, Community

First Sentence:
When I was sent to spend the summer at my grandparents' house in Puerto Rico, I knew it was going to be strange, I just didn't know how strange.

Classroom Implications: Many classrooms have and use W.D.Myer's 145th Street Stories or G. Soto's Baseball in April collection of stories. Ortiz adds to this base of literature and gives a voice to the Puerto Rican communities that she reflects in her writing.

Purchase

Call Me Maria by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Summary: Ages 9-12 Maria is a girl caught between two worlds: Puerto Rico, where she was born, and New York, where she now lives in a basement apartment in the barrio. While her mother remains on the island, Maria lives with her father, the super of their building. As she struggles to lose her island accent, Maria does her best to find her place within the unfamiliar culture of the barrio. Finally, with the Spanglish of the barrio people ringing in her ears, she finds the poet within herself. In lush prose and spare, evocative poetry, Cofer weaves a powerful novel, bursting with life and hope.

Themes: Identity, Family, Community, Clashing Cultures

Classroom Implications: Poetic novels are a wonderful addition to classroom libraries. They build off of the alluring nature of poetry and reframe it in the context of a novel. Judith Ortiz Cofer is a must-have author in the classroom and speaks to the Puerto-Rican/American experience.

Judith Ortiz Cofer has an interesting outlook on language and identity. This excerpt may be an enriching addition to use with students while reading her works:

"People ask me: If I am a Puerto Rican writer, why don't I write in Spanish?" noted poet, essayist, and author Judith Ortiz Cofer in the online publication, The Global Education Project. "Isn't writing in English a sellout? I respond that English is my literary language. The language of the country my parents brought me to. Spanish is my familial language, that lies between the lines of my English language. Because I am a daughter of the Puerto Rican diaspora, English gives life to my writing." (http://www.answers.com)

Purchase

The Tequila Worm by Viola Canales

Summary: Gr. 6-9. From an early age, Sofia has watched the comadres in her close-knit barrio community, in a small Texas town, and she dreams of becoming "someone who makes people into a family," as the comadres do. The secret, her young self observes, seems to lie in telling stories and "being brave enough to eat a whole tequila worm." In this warm, entertaining debut novel, Canales follows Sofia from early childhood through her teen years, when she receives a scholarship to attend an exclusive boarding school. Each chapter centers on the vivid particulars of Mexican American traditions--celebrating the Day of the Dead, preparing for a cousin's quinceanera. The explanations of cultural traditions never feel too purposeful; they are always rooted in immediate, authentic family emotions, and in Canales' exuberant storytelling, which, like a good anecdote shared between friends, finds both humor and absurdity in sharply observed, painful situations--from weathering slurs and other blatant harassment to learning what it means to leave her community for a privileged, predominately white school. Readers of all backgrounds will easily connect with Sofia as she grows up, becomes a comadre, and helps rebuild the powerful, affectionate community that raised her. Gillian Engberg Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Themes: Leadership, Family, Traditions, Identity, Community, Privilege, Prejudice

Classroom Implications: This book speaks to the development of a child's identity within her Mexican-American heritage. Many traditions are interwoven through the text that help celebrate and educate around Mexican-American traditions. The book is entertaining, but also delicately tackles white privilege and prejudice. This notion of white privilege is also covered in Woodson's If You Come Softly and would make an interesting parallel text for this piece.

Purchase

Finding Miracles by Julia Alvarez

Summary: Grade 6-9–In spite of her family's openness, Milly Kaufman has never wanted to talk about her adoption. However, during ninth grade, Pablo Bolívar, a refugee from an unnamed Central American country, joins her class and immediately identifies her as someone who might have come from his family's hometown. Then, her grandmother attempts to make a will that differentiates between her and her siblings. While her mother and father's angry reaction makes the woman back down, their increasingly close relationship with Pablo's family makes it impossible for Milly to stop thinking about the parents who gave her up and the war-torn nation she came from. When that country's dictator is deposed in a democratic election, the Bolívars go home to visit and invite Milly along. There she discovers a world quite different from her Vermont home, an extended family, a boyfriend in Pablo, and several possible sets of birth parents. She realizes, too, how much she loves her own family, and they join her for a grand reunion. The strength of this book lies in its description of adoption issues–Milly's feelings of abandonment and difference and her sister's fear that Milly's increased identification as Latina will destroy their close relationship. However, the plot is contrived to help Milly find her identity, and the characters never really come alive. The home country has been stripped of any identifying characteristics that might make the setting interesting. Still, readers interested in this subject will be pleased with the satisfying resolution.–Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Themes: Adoption, Family, Identity, Heritage, Abandonment, Belonging, Hybrid Identities

Classroom Implications: Becoming Naomi Leon iimmediately comes to mind when the character in this book struggles with a piece of her identity that lingers in her native country. Alvarez carefully explores relationships in this book--relationships between characters, countries and identities.

Purchase

How Tia Lola Came to Stay by Julia Alvarez

Summary: (Ages 9 to 12) Amazon.com Review With her brilliantly hued flower-print dresses, her maracas and tambor, and the migrating beauty mark over her lipsticked mouth, Tia Lola stands out in Vermont like a tropical bird in a snowstorm. Her nephew, 10-year-old Miguel, just wants to fit in to his new home. He and his mother and sister have just moved here from New York following his parents' divorce. With his black hair and brown skin, it's hard enough already without the flamboyant antics of his friendly, nutty aunt, visiting from the Dominican Republic. But even while she is dancing her merengues in front of his new friends and painting the white farmhouse purple, Tia Lola is also weaving a magical spell of love and support that Miguel and his wounded family sorely need. Miguel's growing appreciation for his crazy aunt's ways, and the entire town's admiration and respect for an outsider who, without even speaking the same language, wins the hearts of all, is a funny, uplifting story. Julia Alvarez is the author of many award-winning novels, including How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, and the picture book The Secret Footprints. She writes with a warmth and humor that crosses all boundaries. --Emilie Coulter

Themes: Family, Identity, Membership

Important Links:
Author's Bio
Complete List of Author's Works
Book in Spanish

Classroom Implications: Julia Alvarez's books typically work best with upper-level readers in 8th grade classrooms. However, this book fits very nicely with younger readers, ages9-12. This book could bridge readers into Alvarez'a more difficult books.

Purchase

Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen

Summary: (Ages 12 and older) Cole Matthews is angry. Angry, defiant, smug--in short, a bully. His anger has taken him too far this time, though. After beating up a ninth-grade classmate to the point of brain damage, Cole is facing a prison sentence. But then a Tlingit Indian parole officer named Garvey enters his life, offering an alternative called Circle Justice, based on Native American traditions, in which victim, offender, and community all work together to find a healing solution. Privately, Cole sneers at the concept, but he's no fool--if it gets him out of prison, he'll do anything. Ultimately, Cole ends up banished for one year to a remote Alaskan island, where his arrogance sets him directly in the path of a mysterious, legendary white bear. Mauled almost to death, Cole awaits his fate and begins the transition from anger to humility.

Ben Mikaelsen's depiction of a juvenile delinquent's metamorphosis into a caring, thinking individual is exciting and fascinating, if at times heavy-handed. Cole's nastiness and the vivid depictions of the lengths he must go to survive after the (equally vivid) attack by the bear are excruciating at times, but the concept of finding a way to heal a whole community when one individual wrongs another is compelling. --Emilie Coulter

Themes: Survival, Tradition, Anger and Redemption, Healing

Classroom Implications: This may be more fitting in the social issues book category, but the symbolic image of the bear compelled me to place it under Fantasy. It makes a good match with Hatchet and Bang!, both being survival stories but in different contexts. It is also a great CONTEMPORARY Native American book to have in the classroom.

Purchase

Switchers by Kate Thompson

Summary: Tess has a secret that keeps her apart from others: she can change into an animal at will. Disturbed when scruffy Kevin keeps following her after school, Tess wonders what he wants from her, and why an arctic front is sweeping over the globe, causing a blizzard in Dublin in September. Then she learns that Kevin shares her gift, and they set out across Ireland, disguised as rats, and guided by fellow rats to "little old lady" Lizzie. The eccentric woman sends them on a quest north to stop the krools, ravenous monsters responsible for the Earth's ice ages. The pair races against time (Kevin is about to turn 15, when all Switchers have to choose their final form) and U.N. warplanes seeking alien invaders, to halt the global icing. In occasionally poetic language (which may need some explaining to younger readers), Thompson interweaves elements from mythology and science fiction with insights into animal nature to create a coming-of-age fantasy that, like Peter Pan, ends with an open window and, for many readers, a lump in the throat. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Themes: Identity, Adventure

Classroom Implications: This text does have a nice blend of mythology and science fiction that combines to create a fantasy novel best used with lower level readers in a middle school classroom. Students can explore the genre of fantasy by examining the symbols and themes of the novel.

Purchase

What Are You?: Voices of Mixed-Race Young People by Pearl Fuyo Gaskins (Editor)

Summary: Grade 8 Up-In this sensitive, thoughtful collection of interviews, essays, and poetry, over 40 young adults ranging in age from 14 to 26 relate their experiences growing up in the United States. Their racial identities represent a wide blend of cultures: European, African, Asian, Native American, Jewish, Arabic, Caribbean, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander. Arranged thematically with occasional author notes offering clarification and transition, the primarily upbeat testimonies address issues of discrimination, dating, family dynamics, and self-esteem. The contributors have had to respond to prejudice both inside and outside their own ethnic groups in addition to universal problems, such as financial worries, divorce, parent and sibling conflicts, and academic pressures. Although American society challenged them to "check one box," declaring the race they belong to, they have resisted categorization, seeking instead to understand and express the rich blend that is their personal heritage. They have drawn strength and optimism from a support network provided by family members, organizations, and/or advocacy groups. A helpful resource section includes annotated lists of affinity and advocacy groups and Web sites, as well as relevant fiction and nonfiction books, magazines, and movies and videos. While underscoring the complexity of the mixed-race experience, these unadorned voices offer a genuine, poignant, enlightening and empowering message to all readers.Gerry Larson, Durham School of the Arts, NC Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Themes: Identity, Hybrid Identities, Classification

Classroom Implications: Students will be drawn to this book of nonfiction writing because of the authentic expressions of identity that are included in this complication. This nonfiction collection adds another layer of identity exploration middle school students should be engage in during their young adult years.

Purchase