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Freddie Ramos Springs into Action by Jacqueline Jules, art by Miguel Benitez. Albert Whitman, 2012. Freddie Ramos is a boy superhero. He has purple sneakers with "zapato power". When he is walking they are just like normal sneakers, but when he runs they ZOOM across the playground or down the street in a puff of smoke. The smoke can be a problem when grownups complain about it. The speed can be

by Sundee T. Frazier. Delacorte Press, 2010. (Library copy). Minni and Keira are eleven years old twins. They are biracial, with a Black mom and white dad. Minni is lighter skinned and looks like dad, while Keira is darker and looks more like mom. Everywhere they go people remark over them and wonder how they could be born of the same parents, since they look so completely different. Minni and

I am taking a grad course in YA Lit for library school this month. We have to read 24 YA novels chosen from the ones referenced in the textbook: Nilsen, Alleen Pace and Kenneth L. Donelson. Literature for Today’s Young Adults. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2009. We also have to read another textbook, several articles, write a couple papers, compile a YA library with a $3000 budget, and do a "

by Laurie Halse Anderson. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 2008. Isabel is a twelve year old African American girl in slavery in Rhode Island in 1776. When her mistress dies she expects to be freed, since it is in her mistress's will. Unfortunately the heir is a man who wants to sell her and her little sister, 5 year old Ruth, in auction. He has no patience for her claims and the lawyer

by Marina Budhos. Atheneum Books, 2006. Nadira and her family are illegal aliens from Bangaladesh in post-9/11 New Jersey. After the government starts a registration program aimed at all males from Muslim countries, her family flees to the Canadian boarder in terror. They are afraid the father will be deported or imprisoned. They are rejected by the Canadians at the boarder, and her father is

by Rachel Harper. Simon & Schuster, 2006. Library copy. Brass Ankles was recommended to me by Firemom about a year ago. I put it on my To Be Read list but didn't get to it until this past week. I didn't even know what it was about until I started reading it so I didn't understand why Jenna thought I would like it. It was a big Aha! moment for me.Nellie is a 15 year old mixed girl traveling with

by Langston Hughes, photographs by Charles R. Smith, Jr. Simon & Schuster, 2009. Advanced Review Copy.I was so excited to get the chance to look at this beautiful picture book matching stunning photographs with one of my favorite Langston Hughes poems "My People". When I was teaching first grade I used to have the children learn this lovely poem in Readers-Writers Workshop. It is so perfectly

Back in January I signed up for the Diversity Rocks! Challenge. I committed to reading at least 12 books by authors of diverse culture/ethnicity/nationalities, preferably authors new to me. I want to update my list of books read and what's on my list for the next couple weeks.Read and reviewed here on the blog:My Life as a RhombusRed Scarf GirlNo Mush TodayBringing in the New YearHere is what is

by Becky Birtha, illustrated by Colin Bootman. Albert Whitman& Co. 2005. This is a picture book that eloquently tells the story of a six year old girl and her family dealing with segregation in the 1950s American south. They live up north but take the bus down to visit Grandmama's. Sarah Marie can't quite understand why they can't eat at lunch counters, sit in the bus station waiting room that

by Walter Dean Myers. Scholastic, 1994. Library paperback. This is a family saga telling the story of the Lewis family in South Carolina, Chicago and Harlem from 1753 to the 1970s. The first section starts out with the story of eleven year old Muhammad Bilal off the coast of Sierra Leone, West Africa, when he is captured by slavers and brought across the sea to the Caribbean. The story skips

by Shelia P. Moses. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2004. Library copy. In 1947 Rich Square, North Carolina twelve year old Patty Mae lives with her mother and grandparents and adores her Uncle Buddy. He's handsome and smart and just home from living up North in Harlem. Pattie Mae's mother is a sharecropper and she and Pattie Mae live in a former "slave house", complete with the bell in the yard

by Adeline Yen Mah. HarperTrophy, 2005 Yen Mah has written several books based on her childhood in Shanghai. Secret Dragon Society is a fantasy book written in the style of a kung-fu novel. In the classic form of this genre the hero starts out downtrodden and abandoned but through hard work, persistence and study of martial arts and the traditional Chinese philosophies of Confusionism, Buddhism

by Jules Feiffer. Michael di Capua Books (Hyperion), 2005. We just got this book into our library and I adore it. Feiffer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist (The New Yorker) who lives in New York City with his family. He's written and illustrated more than ten books for children, including The Man in the Ceiling and A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears, which are on my summer reading list.

For today's Nonfiction Monday post I am not going to review a book. I just want to link to a great blog called Light-skinned girl. She is doing a series of biographies of Mixed-race individuals for the month of May. She says, "I've changed the official name to Mixed Experience History Month because it's important to highlight not only Mixed individuals, but also important historical events in the

by Grace Lin. Little, Brown & Co., 2007. One of the happy things about this past weekend was that I got to sit back and read The Year of the Rat. We just got it into our library and I snatched it right up before any kid could grab it. (I put it back on the "new books" shelf already, I promise.) I adore Grace Lin's writing. Last year I reviewed Year of the Dog and this one is a lovely

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: website: www.fusionstories.com email: [email protected] FUSION STORIES: New Novels For Young Readers To Celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (May 2008) Newton, Ma, April 2, 2008 Ten new contemporary novels by Asian Americans aren’t traditional tales set in Asia nor stories about coming to America for the first time. They’re written by authors who

At Mitali's Fire Escape I just read about a new blog initiative celebrating Asian American kidlit. From the press release: "This year’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month begins May 1, 2008, and ten authors are banding together to offer FUSION STORIES (www.fusionstories.com), a menu of delectable next-gen hot-off-the-press novels for middle readers and young adults. FUSION STORIES' critically

by Patricia Polacco This is a story from Polacco's childhood. As a girl she and her neighbors Winston and Stewart want to raise enough money to buy the boy's grandmother a new Easter bonnet that she has been admiring. Patricia is over their house for chicken dinner every Sunday and she considers Miss Eula her grandmother too. When they go to try to get a job at the hat shop they are mistaken for

This is why I am voting for this man: he gives me hope. From Barack Obama's speech today in Philadelphia on on race and the campaign: "Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss

for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color. Poems by Elizabeth Alexander & Marilyn Nelson, Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Wordsong, 2007. In 1832 Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolteacher and head of The Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury, Connecticut admitted her first Black student. The town's people, who had been very pleased with her running the school up until then, were

Yesterday I went to the SCBWI-FL conference in Orlando, and followed the poetry track, where we spent the whole day with Lee Bennett Hopkins, who has done numerous anthologies for children, and Kristin Daly from Harper Collins, who aquires poetry, picture books, and a few other things.

A couple things I learned about writing poetry:
1. Make every word count...there is no room for fillers.NO 'empty calories' allowed. That means do not use the words JUST, BUT, AND, THE, QUITE. Each syllable of a poem must move it to action.

2.Watch out for uneven or forced meter...do not give the editors an excuse for dumping your poem.

3. Don't be afraid to stand out from the pack. Use themes based on basic childhood experiences...with a new twist.

There are three types of poetry books:
1. Original poetry...your own collection
2. General anthology...a conglomeration of poems with little or no connection
3. Specific anthology...theme-based books. These sell the best.

Poetry-friendly magazines:
Babybug, Boy's Quest, Cicada, Cricket, Hopscotch, Iguana (must be originally written in Spanish), Odyssey.

Poetry-friendly publishing houses:
Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
Greenwillow Books
Margaret K. McElderry Books/Simon and Schuster
Wordsong/Boyds Mills

And, I would say, Harper Collins.

At the end we had 'Poetry Idol.' Our assignment was to write a poem about something that began with the same letter as our last name. I won.It was a great day...and has inspired me to get writing on poetry again... Read the rest of this post