Literature That Helps us Find the Beauty

Diving into these texts…

Each of these texts offers a beautiful story with a rich and powerful meaning. I think that an over arching common theme between the three picture books is that beauty can be found in any situation- it is all about our perspective. I love a good, quality, children’s literature book- and each of the books this week meets that criteria. These texts have been recognized by various award committees such as The Newberry Medal, The Coretta Scott King Award and The Schneider Family Book Award. Please notice the design of each award logo. Each represents important features of the award itself. The Coretta Scott King award includes symbols and words correlated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission. The Newberry Medal describes what it awards and the Schneider award includes brail as a way to highlight one form of disability. I was moved by these texts because of the subtle morals they displayed. You could not go wrong by placing any of these books on your classroom library shelves.

The Coretta Scott King Award: This award is named after Coretta Scott King who was the wife of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. This award honors texts that include African American characters that highlight and foster appreciation for African American culture.

The Newberry Medal: This award is named after John Newberry and recognizes the “most distinguished contribution to American Literature for children.” This award is given to one book annually but also gives honor awards to those that were nominated for the award.

The Schneider Family Book Award: This award recognizes an exemplary text that celebrates and fosters appreciation for those with disabilities. These books have characters in them that have disabilities and celebrate their stories. This award is given to books that recognize and portray the disability experience for youth in children’s literature.

The Last Stop On Market Street

I LOVED this book. I have read this book several times throughout my teaching preparation courses- and each time I gain something new from this story. This story has so many elements to it; many of which I picked up after doing some research about the author Matt de la Pena. I think there are so many wonderful things about this book, but the one that I love the most is the way the character, CJ, learns to find beauty in their situation. CJ is a child who just wants to be like everyone else, and is not sure why his Nana brings him along on the city bus, with many different types of people, to go serve in the soup kitchen. His Nana encourages him throughout the book to appreciate his experiences and embrace each part of their journey. This story gives significant messages to it’s readers about the power of service, giving back and finding the beauty in your surroundings. I loved the illustrations in this book- and the personal statements that they include about their personal experiences with their grandmothers- which made me think about my relationship with mine and the memories I have growing up with them. The Last Stop on Market Street has received several honorable book awards for it’s literary quality including The Coretta Scott King Award and The Newberry Medal.

Rescue and Jessica A Life-Changing Friendship

This was such a beautiful story. I was SO moved at the end when I discovered that this was a true story about a survivor of the Boston Marathon Massacre. This is such an important event in history of my lifetime- and many of the students we will teach would have at least been born- so this is a historical even in their lifetime that will love on like the events of September 11th. It really resonated with me that this was something that had happened so recently (or what seems recent.) I’ve always been fasciated with how people handle tough life situations- and I think this book gives children (and adults) a very clear image of what it is like to experience something tragic and then learn to find he beauty in the outcomes that it faced. This book also is a recipient of The Schneider Family Book Award, which celebrates a book that was written with a disabled character. In the video below, these authors give some of their own insight to what readers can take away from this story. One of their messages to their readers was the power of loyalty- loyalty between people and animals. What a beautiful story of loyalty.

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Red: A Crayon’s Story

I also really enjoyed this book and the message it conveyed about labels and the power that they have over people. In this story, a Red crayon is actually Blue. Throughout the story, Red struggles to live up to the label that he has been given. This is such a strong message for children about being who you are, and expressing yourself no matter what others may think. These days, society is so quick to place labels on people for many types of things. People are labeled based on race, culture, economic status, gender, sexual identity and many more. This book offers a great sense of social consciousness for readers as it teaches them to foster an appreciation for the “labels” they have been given and to celebrate who they truly are. I think this is a great story to use to teach kids to break the mold of labels and live their lives being who they are and proud of what they can do. Please visit the author, Michael Hall’s, website where you can enjoy a selection of his books and explore the story he has behind creating them!

https://www.michaelhallstudio.com/index.html

Informing Educational Practices

I think there are many educational practices that can be taken away from these professional readings. Many teachers use the practice of modeling a love for reading and excitement as they read a book to get students engaged in the text. However, this is not the only way to get the students interested in reading texts. Choosing texts that you know students will enjoy is the key to getting them engaged. But also, finding texts that your students can personally relate to is another great way of getting them to engage with the text you are giving to them. The best way to do this is to build a diverse classroom library. Rudine Bishop offers some great insight on the importance of a diverse classroom library as she argues that diverse material is critical! Bishop offers a “3 Prong Strategy” that I think is worth my time to implement into my future educational practices which include engagement, appreciation and taking a critical stance. When using The Last Stop on Market Street, Rescue and Jessica or Red: A Crayon’s Story in my classroom, I can be sure to get my students engaged with these books through the powerful stories they tell and the beautiful spreads or illustrations they have within the covers. I can also share an appreciation for diverse peoples with my students as they will be learning about class/ socio-economic differences, persons with disabilities and labels that society forms. In order to teach my students to look at text through a critical lens, I will then have them try to relate/ make connections to their world in order to get them thinking about social issues. There are several social issues expressed in these children’s picture books that can help teach students valuable things about homelessness, hunger, disabilities, labels and more! I would love to implement activities into my classroom that students can do to get hands on experience with these issues such as having a class canned food drive or inviting someone with a service animal into our classroom to talk about their personal experience and relate that to the character/ authors of Rescue and Jessica.

Critical Literacy Strategy

Rudine Bishop offers a unique perspective on the importance of diverse literature within our classrooms. She argues that we do need diverse texts and that the reason behind that is because our students deserve the opportunity to know that they have a voice and that they are represented in literature they are reading. She introduces a 3 step process which I discussed earlier as well as some critical thoughts about issues that this text addresses. There are many great literary elements of The Last Stop on Market Street. This book brings up several social issues such as poverty and hunger. In the book, CJ and his Nana utilize public transportation in their urban area to travel to the other side of town where the soup kitchen is. Based on the illustrations in the book, you can see the transition from one side of town, the wealthy side, to the other which is more poverty stricken. This addresses the issue of distribution of wealth and how many different types of people are effected by poverty’s reign. Also, the issue of hunger is shown in this book because of the service that CJ and his Nana provide at the soup kitchen. This book teaches children about the issue of hunger in many urban areas, and solutions that have been implemented to help relieve the issue of hunger for those who are homeless or cannot afford their own food. The Classroom Bookshelf, a book blog, addresses a really good point about the diverse characters in this book. The writer talks about how Matt de la Pena, without intentionally teaching diversity, is able to teach diversity to his readers through the characters and experiences he created in the story. One really great critical literacy strategy that can be used in the classroom to help teach critical awareness is the connection stems strategy. This strategy encourages students to make different kinds of connections as they grapple with the text. There are prompts that the teacher can give students to help them foster thoughts about various connections they can make to the story whether it be to the characters, the way the characters feel, an experience they once had or something that it reminds them of. These help students monitor their thinking and reflect on the text- which is part of looking at text through a critical lens.

Resources:

• Bishop, R. S. (2016). A Ride with Nana and CJ: Engagement, Appreciation, and Social Action. Language Arts, 94(2), 120–123.
• Pena, M. de la. (2016). Newberry Medal Acceptance Speech. Association for Library Service to Children
• Cappiello, M. A. (2015). The Classroom Bookshelf. School Library Journal .Bishop, R. S. (2016). A Ride with Nana and CJ: Engagement, Appreciation, and Social Action. Language Arts, 94(2), 120–123.
• McLaughlin, M., & DeVoogd, G.L. (2004). Critical literacy: Enhancing students’ comprehension of text.
• Rescue & Jessica. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://scottmagoon.com/rescue-jessica
• Author’s Statement: Michael Hall – Red: A Crayon’s Story. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.michaelhallstudio.com/pages/books/crayon/authors-statement.html