October 4, 2015
Dear Bonnie Bader, Grosset & Dunlap, and Penguin Young Readers Group,
Your book, Who Was Christopher Columbus, published in 2013, has major errors in it (p. 4, Kindle edition):
The error is in that last line that reads "Christopher Columbus had discovered a new world." Maybe you think that the sentence before it makes it ok because it tells readers that no one in Europe knew about this land. It doesn't make it ok. Later, you tell readers he discovered an island he named Dominica. And that he also "discovered the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico" (p. 72-73 in Kindle version). Simply put, you can't discover something that someone else already had. With this book, you're misleading children. You're mis-educating them.
Your
Who Was Christopher Columbus is loaded with other problems, too. My suggestion? Withdraw it from publication.
My suggestion to all the people who already bought Bader's
Who Was Christopher Columbus?
Do not use it with young children. Instead, write to Penguin and ask for your money back, or, use it with older children and adults in a text analysis activity. Read what Bader wrote, and compare it to other sources. A
great set of resources for this activity is at the Zinn Education Project website. Another excellent resource is
Rethinking Columbus.
You, Ms. Bader, and your editors at Grosset & Dunlap (it is an imprint of Penguin), can do better. I hope you do. Recall the book. Refund the money parents, teachers, and librarians spent on it, too.
And do better.
Sincerely,
Debbie Reese
American Indians in Children's Literature
Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson's edited volume, Rethinking Columbus, was being used in the Tucson Unified School District a year ago, but was subsequently removed from the classrooms when the district shut down its Mexican American Studies classes.
Rethinking Columbus is an outstanding book, offering readers the opportunity to develop and apply critical thinking skills to events--like Columbus Day--that carry bias in favor of one viewpoint, at the expense of the viewpoint and perspective of others.
When Rethinking Columbus was removed from the classrooms in Tucson, essays and poems by Native writers were also removed. Their essays and poems are in Rethinking Columbus. Among them are:
- Suzan Shown Harjo, who wrote "We Have No Reason to Celebrate"
- Buffy Sainte-Marie, who wrote "My Country, 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying"
- Joseph Bruchac, who wrote "A Friend of the Indians"
- Cornel Pewewardy, who wrote "A Barbie-Doll Pocahontas"
- N. Scott Momaday, who wrote "The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee"
- Michael Dorris, who wrote "Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving"
- Leslie Marmon, who wrote "Ceremony"
- Wendy Rose, who wrote "Three Thousand Dollar Death Song"
- Winona LaDuke, who wrote "To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility"
In addition to
Rethinking Columbus and the Alexie and Zepeda books, over
50 other books were removed.
......................................................................
When you remove a class, you remove its
syllabus and everything on it.
......................................................................
As TUSD administrators moved forward in shutting down the Mexican American Studies courses, they prevented students from reading Sherman Alexie's
Ten Little Indians and
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and Ofelia Zepeda's
Ocean Power.
The teachers who taught in the program were reassigned and no longer called Mexican American Studies teachers. As they created new syllabi, they were also told they
could not teach from a Mexican American Studies perspective.
But, I wonder... Are teachers who were not previously teaching in the Mexican American Studies classes teaching
Rethinking Columbus this year? Or Alexie? Or Zepeda?
