Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer's
I Am Not A Number, illustrated by Gillian Newland and due out from Second Story Press on October 4th of this year (2016), is one of the books I will recommend to teachers and librarians.
Dupuis is a member of the
Nipissing First Nation.
In 1928, Dupuis's grandmother, Irene Couchie Dupuis, was taken to a residential school in Canada. "Residential" is the term used in Canada for the schools created by the Canadian government. They are similar to the government boarding schools in the U.S. These were schools designed to "christianize" and "civilize" Native children. Some of them were mission schools where efforts were made to convert the children to whatever denomination ran the school.
I Am Not A Number opens with a frightening moment. An Indian agent is at their door, to take Irene and her brothers to residential school. When Irene's mother tries to keep Irene, the agent says "Give me all three or you'll be fined or sent to jail." Irene's parents, like many Native parents, were coerced into giving up their children.
When Irene arrives at the school and tells the nun (it is a mission school run by the Catholic Church) her name, she's told "We don't use names here. All students are known by numbers. You are 759." Irene thinks to herself that she is not a number, hence, the title for the book.
Her hair, as the cover shows, was cut. That happened to children when they arrived at the schools. It was one in a long string of traumatic moments that Native children experienced at residential or boarding schools.
Another was being punished for using their own language. At one point, Irene gives another girl a piece of bread. The girls speak briefly to each other in their language, Ojibwe. One of the nuns hits Irene with a wooden spoon, telling her "That's the devil's language." The nun drags Irene away for "a lesson." The lesson? Using a bedpan filled with hot coals to burn Irene's hands and arms. It was one kind of abuse that children received, routinely.
Irene's story ends on a different note than many of the residential and boarding school stories. She and her brothers go home for the summer. What she tells her parents about her time at the school moves them to make plans so that Irene and her brothers don't go back. When the agent shows up in the fall, the children hide in their dad's workshop. The agent looks for them, but Irene's dad challenges the agent, saying "Call the police. Have me arrested." In a low, even voice, he tells the agent that he (the agent) will never take his children away again. In the Afterword, Dupuis writes that her grandmother was only at the school for that one year. Her father's resistance worked. She was able to stay home, with her family.
Residential and boarding school stories are hard to read, but they're vitally important. In the back matter, Dupuis and Kacer provide historical information about the residential school system. They reference the report the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the TRC) released in 2015, too. The work of the TRC is being shared in Canada, and books like
I Am Not A Number should be taught in schools in Canada, and the U.S., too. In my experience, schools don't hesitate to share stories of "savage Indians" who "massacre" those "innocent settlers." In fact, the Native peoples who fought those settlers were fighting to protect their own families and homelands. Depicting them as aggressors is a misrepresentation of history. The history of the US and Canada is far more complex than is taught. It is way past time that we did a better job of teaching children the facts.
I'll end with this: I'm thrilled whenever I see books in which the author/publisher have opted not to use italics for the words that aren't English ones. There's no italics when we read miigwetch (thank you) and other Ojibwe words in
I Am Not A Number. Kudos to Second Story Press for not using italics.
Earlier today, a reader pointed me to I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer. Due out in September of 2016, Dupuis shared this image and said people could share it with their networks:
From what I read, Irene (the character) is Dupuis's grandmother. I hope I can get an ARC for this one!
One of the highlights of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee session at the AJL Convention is the presentation of selected books we have read during the previous year. I was honored to “book talk” The Diary of Laura's Twin(Second Story Press) by Kathy Kacer. The story brings personal relevance to the history of the Holocaust by creating a connection between Laura, a Bat Mitzvah girl, and Sara, who grew up in the Warsaw Ghetto and was unable to celebrate her own Bat Mitzvah. Events in Laura’s life have new significance in light of Sara’s struggles. Through Sara’s diary, readers learn about the event of the Warsaw Ghetto from the authentic voice of teenager who experiences are relatable. The Diary of Laura's Twin is a contemporary story that melds history and current events in a meaningful way for young readers.
The Diary of Laura's Twin was honored with the National Jewish Book Council Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Youth Literature. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Kathy Kacer says, “Their stories of survival were an inspiration to me as I was growing up. As an adult, I was determined to write their stories and pass them on to young readers. In that way, future generations would never forget that time in history.”
I was thrilled for the opportunity to interview Kathy about The Diary of Laura's Twin.
Tell me about the "Twinning Ceremonies" in The Diary of Laura's Twin.
The idea for The Diary of Laura’s Twin actually came about because I wanted to write a book that documented for young readers the history of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. I was struggling to come up with a novel premise for that book. And then, my publisher, Margie Wolfe, told me about having attended a Bat Mitzvah here in Toronto where she witnessed a “twinning ceremony.” The practice of having young people in the free world ‘twin’ their Bar- and Bat-Mitzvah celebrations with children who were unable to celebrate for themselves originated in the 1980's when many young North American, British and Israeli celebrants were ‘twinned’ with youngsters from among the Refusenik families in the Former Soviet Union. Today, in synagogues across North America young people are encouraged to share their Bar or Bat Mitzvah with a child of the Holocaust. My publisher thought I should write a book about a twinning ceremony and I thought I would combine that wonderful premise with my desire to write about the Warsaw Ghetto. And that’s how The Diary of Laura’s Twin came about.
In the book there is a lot of information, including photos, about the Warsaw Ghetto. How much research was involved in writing the book?
Research is a huge part of what I do in my writing in general. All of previous books have a strong historical component – either focusing on a particular event during the Holocaust, or a specific place, or a particular person. It always starts with the research. For The Diary of Laura’s Twin, I interviewed several survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and their family members. I read extensively about the ghetto and the events that had taken place there. I found a fascinating history of the events of the uprising in a book called Brave and Desperate which I actually had to buy on ebay because it was out of print. I looked for photographs that would help illustrate the events of the Warsaw Ghetto for my readers. I never mind doing the research – I’m quite fascinated by it. My problem is knowing when to stop! Sometimes the research is more interesting and certainly easier than the writing.
What was the most interesting thing you learned in the process of writing The Diary of Laura's Twin?
I knew a bit about the twinning program before I began to write this book, but I did not know the amount of work that young people have to do to prepare for their own ceremonies. Here in Toronto, it is the Holocaust Centre that coordinates the program. It helps pair young people with survivors, outlines the kind of work that needs to be done between the two, and coordinates a “graduation” at the end of the year where the young people and the survivors with whom they have been twinned come together to honor one another. In The Diary of Laura’s Twin, Laura spends only a few weeks preparing for her twinning ceremony. In reality, young people can spend many months participating in this program.
Are there real people who inspired Laura and Sara?
There are no specific people who inspired Laura and Sara, though I always draw on a number of people I know and have met when I am developing my characters. Because I had interviewed a number of young people who had completed their own twinning ceremonies, I drew on aspects of each of them in creating Laura. I think she is a pretty typical young girl. She is living a normal life in present day, caught up in her many activities, and many friends, and somewhat reluctant to take on this project of having to find out about a girl who in her words, “lived a million years ago.” That’s how I tried to create her. I actually wrote Sara’s diary separate from the rest of the story and then put the two pieces together. I wrote the diary in long hand in a journal, as if I were inside Sara’s head, trying to understand how she might feel in the terrible circumstances in which she was living. I have that hand-written journal which I take with me when I speak to young people in schools and libraries.
I have struggled for years with how to make the Holocaust a meaningful event in history for young readers. Given the fact that it happened so many years ago, it is difficult for young people today to make sense of anyone from that time period. The Diary of Laura’s Twin allows readers to connect with a contemporary girl, and through her experience of finding and reading the diary of a girl in the Warsaw Ghetto, to then make the bridge to the events of the Holocaust. That is what is unique about this story. It is the co-existence of two important lives, one from today and one from the past who come together in the pages of this book.
What are some fun facts about you?
I always dreamed of being a writer. It took me a long time to get here. In fact, I started my work life as a psychologist, working with troubled teens and their families. I did that for twenty years, but always dreamed that one day I would write books for young readers. The thing that turned me on to writing was keeping a journal. I used to keep a journal when I was young. I still do today. Back then, I would fill my journals with stories about the people in my family – the interesting and amusing things they did, the adventures they got into, etc. I still have many of those journals today. Other than writing, I also love music, theatre, art, and especially painting. My walls are covered with the watercolors that I have done over the years. I love painting and wish I were better at it!
Kathy, Thank you for sharing your writer’s journey. I have no doubt that The Diary Of Laura’s Twin will inspire readers for years to come!
To learn more about Kathy and her work, please visit http://www.kathykacer.com/.
