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April is National Poetry Month! All month long we’ll be celebrating by posting some of our favorite poems for Poetry Friday. For today’s Poetry Friday, we chose a poem from Under the Mesquite, written by Guadalupe Garcia McCall.

a mesquite in the rose garden

In the squint of the morning,

before anyone else is awake,

when the roaring sounds

of unbridled verses

rush furiously through my head,

the mesquite is my confidant.

I lean my back against its sturdy trunk

and read aloud every word

imprinted en mi corazón.

The mesquite listens quietly–

as if the poems budding in my heart,

then blossoming in my notebook,

are Scripture–and never tells a soul

the things I write.

Purchase a copy of Under the Mesquite here.

What are you reading for National Poetry Month? Let us know in the comments!

We are always excited to hear about unique ways in which our books are being used, and were thrilled to come across this review of Under the Mesquite that outlines how to use the book in a very special way: to help medical students gain cultural awareness and insight into the experiences of patients from different backgrounds. Author Mark Kuczewski kindly gave us permission to cross-post this review from the Reflective MedEd blog.

Helping medical students to gain cultural awareness and insight into the experience of patients and families from backgrounds different than their own is no small task.  And the search for poignant materials that are easily fit within the demanding environment of a medical school curriculum is never-ending. The good news is that I can unequivocally recommend Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Lee & Low Books, 2011). This narrative will help students to gain insight into the meaning of illness within families, especially within the context of a particular contemporary newly-arrived Mexican-American family…

The author, known as “Lupita” within the story, recounts experiences from her high school years when her mother suffered from cancer and underwent extensive treatment, sometimes for long periods at a medical center far from home. Because the author’s father accompanies his wife on these journeys, Lupita, the oldest daughter, takes on responsibility for the family. We are treated to her perspective in coping with her mother’s illness from spy work to find out the secreto that the adults guard in their hushed whispers to the difficulties that come when her parents are away such as being unable to keep order among her siblings. Lupita paints a portrait of a prudent family that begins a savings account with the birth of each child but whose resources are exhausted by the medical bills leaving her struggling each day to procure food to put on the table. And we come to know the importance of the arts, acting in school plays and writing in journals, as means to channel her anxieties and craft something beautiful.

Of course, the particular flavor of the narrative comes from the perspective of one who has significant roots on both sides of the border. She simultaneously gives us a window into the challenges of growing up bicultural and navigating the conflicting demands of loyalty to la familia that nurtured her and pursuing the dream of achieving a different kind of life that is available in the new world. The author lets us taste the bittersweet nature of this ambivalence both in her day-to-day growth as she is accused by her adolescent peers of trying to be something she is not as she loses her accent and in the more profound and cyclical heartbreak of separation. She relates her grief at abandoning her precious sunflowers when her father uproots her from her familiar home in Mexico and she in turn must break his heart as she heads off to college to pursue her dreams.

In sum, this book is among the most usable I’ve found with medical students for two reasons. First, it meets the main requirement of being an enjoyable and quick read. This autobiographical account is most likely to be devoured within a single day.  The author is a superb writer and some of our medical students repeatedly commented that they wish she said more in most passages. Second, she enables us to easily identify with her struggles. Because all adults were once adolescents, we have a framework regarding the struggle for self-discovery and identity into which her cultural context is infused. She enables us to access the different through the familiar. Guadalupe Garcia McCall is a first-rate guide and mentor to those of us who seek insight into the Mexican-American experience and the particular strengths and means of coping that a family steeped in this hybrid culture might possess.

Mark G. Kuczewski, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Medical Education and the Director of the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Purchase Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall here.

Jaclyn DeForge, our Resident Literacy Expert, began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In her column she offers teaching and literacy tips for educators.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been modeling how to do a close reading at several different grade levels. To close out the series: Close Reading in Fifth Grade using the X level text Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall.

One way to structure close reading questioning is to use the format laid out by the Institute for Learning of the University of Pittsburgh. Under their framework, students read the text selection four times: first, to get the gist; second, to find significant moments or ideas; third, to interpret the ideas in the text; and finally, to analyze the author’s methods (craft). Here’s an example of how to plan out your questions for close reading of the first poem of Under the Mesquite, entitled ”the story of us.”

1st reading (read to get the gist):

• Who is the narrator? What have we learned about her? What can we infer about her so far? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
• What is Mami like?  What have we learned about her?  What can we infer about her so far?  Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
• What happened in the first poem?  What was Lupita doing?  What was she looking for? What does she find?  How does Mami react?  What can you infer about their relationship?   Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

2nd reading (read to find significant moments or ideas):

• What is the most important thing you learned or that happened in this section of the text? Why is it significant?  What was the purpose of this poem?  Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

3rd reading (read to interpret ideas):

• “No, today I am Eve in the garden, / stealing secretos, / mining for knowledge, / hoping for a taste / of the forbidden fruit.”  What is this section of the poem an allusion to?  What does this reference reveal about Lupita and her background?  Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
• Why does Mami keep Lupita’s umbilical cord?  What does it mean to her? What is the cord a symbol of?   What does that tell you about their relationship? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

4th reading (read to analyze the author’s methods/craft):

• How is this text organized? How is it different from other novels you’ve read? How is it similar? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
• What is the tone of the piece?  Formal?  Informal?  Serious?  Light? etc.  What effect does the tone have on the way the audience reads the piece?  Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
• What are some of the strongest images Garcia McCall has created so far? How do these images set the mood for the piece?  Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

By asking students to ground their responses in the text by citing text-based support for their answers, the following Common Core Standard is addressed:

Reading Literature, Grade 5, Key Ideas and Details, Strand 1: Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

How does close reading look in your classroom? Any tricks and tips to share?

Further reading:

• What is close reading?
• What does close reading look like in Kindergarten?
• What does close reading look like in First Grade?
• What does close reading look like in Second Grade?
• What does close reading look like in Third Grade?
• What does close reading look like in Fourth Grade?

Happy 10th Birthday PaperTigers!

I’ve been blessed to be a part of the PaperTigers’ team since December 2006 when I took on the role of Eventful World Coordinator just prior to the launch of the PaperTigers blog. As the years passed and PaperTigers continued to grow, evolve and expand (most noticeably with the launch of our Spirit of PaperTigers Book Sets and Outreach Program) my role within the  organization changed too. In 2010 I was offered the job of Associate Editor and since then have worked closely alongside our wonderful and very talented editor Marjorie Coughlan to produce PaperTigers’ three components: the website, the blog and the Outreach site .

I consider myself so lucky to be doing a job that I love in a field that I love! Children’s literature has always been my passion and during my years with PaperTigers I’ve not been the only one in my family to benefit from the pile of  books that just have to be read for work. (Insert a big smiley face here because really…how wonderful is it to have to read books!) When I started working at PaperTigers my children were in elementary school so naturally we focused a  lot of our reading time at home on children’s and junior books. However as PaperTigers and my kids grew I found myself developing more and more interest in Young Adult books. Now I have to say that although children’s picture books will always hold a very special place in my heart , Young Adult books tug strongly at my heart too!  So when it came time to do a Top 10 list for PaperTigers’ anniversary celebration, it only made sense for me to select my favorite Young Adult books. Drum roll please….in random order I present:

1.  Secret Keeper  by Mitali Perkins (Delacorte Press, 2009)

When her unemployed father leaves India to look for work in America, Asha, her mother and sister move in with family in Calcutta. When news comes that her father is accidentally killed in America and her family’s financial difficulties intensify, Asha makes a heartwrenching, secret decision that solves many problems and creates others.

2.  Borderline by Allan Stratton (Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2010)

When Sami catches his father in a lie, he gets suspicious as does the FBI who descend on his home, and Sami’s family (the only Muslims in the neighbourhood) becomes the center of an international terrorist investigation.

3. Keeping Corner by Kashmira Sheth (Hyperion Books for Children , 2008)

12-year-old Leela’s husband unexpectedly dies and custom requires her confinement at home for a year, “keeping corner.” Prohibited from ever remarrying, Leela faces a barren future: however, her brother has the courage to buck tradition and hire a tutor to educate her. This powerful and enchanting novel juxtaposes Leela’s journey to self-determination with the parallel struggle of her family and community to follow Gandhi on the road to independence from British rule.

4. I am a Taxi by Deborah Ellis (Groundwood Books, 2006)

12-year-old Diego is deep in the Bolivian jungle, working as a virtual slave in an illegal cocaine operation. As his situation becomes more and more dangerous, he knows he must take a terrible risk if he ever wants to see his family again. As well as being a great read, I am a Taxi  packs in a store of information about Bolivia and the exploitation of children in the drug-trade, and raises polemics about the growth of the coca plant.

5. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (Harper Collins, 2011)

During the Vietnam War  Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family.

6. Karma by Cathy Ostlere

On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi is gunned down by two Sikh bodyguards. The murder sparks riots in Delhi and for three days Sikh families are targeted and killed in retribution for the Prime Minister’s death. It is into this chaos that fifteen-year-old Maya and her Sikh father, Amar, arrive from their home in Canada. India’s political instability is the backdrop and catalyst for Maya’s awakening to the world. Karma is the story of how a young woman, straddling two cultures and enduring personal loss, learns forgiveness, acceptance and love.

7. Orchards by Holly Thompson

After a bullied classmate commits suicide, Kana Goldberg – a half-Japanese, half-Jewish American- is sent to her family’s home in Japan for the summer. Kana wasn’t the bully, not exactly, but she didn’t do anything to stop what happened, either. As Kana begins to process the pain and guilt she feels, news from home sends her world spinning out of orbit all over again.

8. Tall Story by Candy Gourlay (David Fickling Books, 2010)

Andi hasn’t seen her brother  for eight years and when he steps off the plane from the Philippines, she cannot believe her eyes. He’s tall. EIGHT FOOT TALL. But Bernardo is not what he seems. Bernardo is a hero, Bernardo works miracles, and Bernardo has an amazing story to tell. In a novel packed with quirkiness and humor, Gourlay explores a touching sibling relationship and the clash of two very different cultures.

9. Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Lee and Low Books, 2011)

As the oldest of eight siblings, Lupita is used to taking the lead—and staying busy behind the scenes to help keep everyone together. But when she discovers Mami has been diagnosed with cancer, Lupita is terrified by the possibility of losing her mother, the anchor of her close-knit Mexican American family. Suddenly Lupita must face a whole new set of challenges, with new roles to play, and no one is handing her the script.

10. Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan (Groundwood Books, 2009)

Set in war-torn Afghanistan, post-Taliban and just after the American invasion in 2001, Wanting Mor brings a ravaged landscape to life and portrays the effects of war on civilians caught up in conflict, especially on children. Based on a true story about a girl who ended up in one of the orphanages Rukhsana sponsors in Afghanistan through the royalties of her book The Roses in My Carpets.

We won’t be at the Texas Library Association annual conference this week, but if you’ll be there you can still connect with two fantastic Lee & Low authors!

Don Tate, author of It Jes’ Happened and illustrator of books like Summer Sun Risin’, will be a keynote speaker at the Black Caucus Roundtable (April 19, 8-10AM) and will also appear on the panel “Books, Boys, and Boxing: Motivating Minority Males to Read” (April 19, 2-3:50PM). He will also be signing copies of It Jes’ Happened with Overlooked Books at booth #2629 (April 18, 12-3PM).

Guadalupe Garcia McCall, author of Belpré winner and Morris finalist Under the Mesquite, will be reading her poetry during the 8th Annual Poetry Roundup: “Face to Face for All (April 20, 10-11:20AM). Guadalupe will also be signing Under the Mesquite at the Overlooked Books booth, #2629 (April 19, 12-3PM).

Under the Mesquite author Guadalupe Garcia McCall thanks the William C. Morris and Pura Belpre award committees that honored her book, along with readers:

Here’s one of my very favorite parts of Guadalupe’s Morris Ceremony speech at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference:

lotsa bling

I realized that I had to write not to be published, but to be read. I wanted young people to connect with my book, to have it make an impact on them. I wanted my book to help them.

You see, I have taught many Lupitas in my 23 years in the classroom. I’ve listened to them talk, to me and to each other, but I’ve also read their innermost thoughts, their dreams, their fears, their triumphs, their losses.  Sometimes, their stories spill out of them, sometimes they keep their pain tucked away, where no one can see it.

I wrote this story for those young people who can’t talk about it, for those who are struggling alone in the dark. I wanted to show them that they have great strength within them, that the human spirit is resilient, that the loss of a loved one does not mean the end of love, that we carry that love inside, that we can take it with us; it is ours forever.

The full text of Guadalupe’s speech will be posted on the YALSA web site soon, and I’ll link to that as soon as it is. Meanwhile, if you can’t get enough of Under the Mesquite, you can listen to podcasts of Guadalupe reading four poems from the book here.

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