Juvenile Nonfiction Double Feature

**These reviews were originally posted on a Juvenile Nonfiction discussion board for my Children's Literature class**

Title: Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras

Author: Duncan Tonatiuh

Genres: juvenile nonfiction, holidays around the world, read for school, juvenile biography

Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras is a combination picture book/informational book about the little known (at least in the US) Mexican artist, Posada. Funny Bones chronicles the life of Posada from budding artist days as a child, to print shop apprentice and political cartoonist as an adult. His experiences and talent eventually came together with his prolific creations of literary calaveras.

The illustrations are folk art in style, inspired by Posada’s playful skeletons and the book also contains an author’s note about the Day of the Dead holiday, a glossary and pronunciation guide of Spanish language terms, a bibliography, art credits, and a list of museums where visitors can view Posada’s works. Due to the amount of material in this book, I would recommend this as a readaloud book, if reading to younger children; older elementary-aged children with an advanced reading level could handle this on their own.

On pages 17-31, the author uses repetition and questions to keep a child’s interest. In this section Tonatiuh’s illustrations alternate with calavera drawings and questions about the deeper meaning behind the drawings. At first, I was annoyed that the questions appear to give away the symbolism and hidden meaning, but then I had to remind myself that this is a children’s book, and symbolism needs to be explained to children due to their age, stage of development, and limited life experience. Tonatiuh is “using a familiar, expected pattern to make children feel comfortable and ready to face the unfamiliar and unexpected” (Horning, 2010, p. 90). Both the holiday (Dia de los Muertos) and the concept of death are both unfamiliar to children. The use of questions in the text also serves multiple purposes:

·       add auditory variety to the text

·       keep little minds focused on the story

·       lets children try their growing critical thinking skills

·       gives the adult reader a quick assessment of the child’s understand of the text (Horning, p.91)

Dia de los Muertos is little known in much of the United States, but I have noticed in the past few years that sugar skulls (alfeñiques) are melding more and more with traditional American Halloween decorations. Dia de los Muertos occurs on November 1-2, right after Halloween, but it is not a scary holiday like Halloween can be. Although Halloween can be family-friendly, some people go over the top with the scary elements such as haunted houses, fantastical creatures, and various bits of gore. Dia de los Muertos is a holiday dedicated to respectful ancestor worship:

              “People often go to the cemetery to pray. They weed and repaint the gravestones of their loved ones. They bring their loved ones’ favorite food and tell stories about them. Sometimes they hire musicians to play their loved ones’ favorite songs. They have a picnic and spend the whole day at the cemetery. In some places they spend the entire night too” (Tonatiuh, 2015, p.36).

Now compare this to how most Americans view/treat cemeteries:

·       We only visit a cemetery when we have to (a funeral)

·       Cemeteries are run by funeral industry professionals (part of the reason why funerals are so expensive)

·       Local government-owned cemeteries are full and budgets are not which has led to a deterioration in upkeep

·       Old, private family cemeteries become overgrown and eventually forgotten

·       Genealogists wander around cemeteries taking photos of gravestones

If someone in the US stayed at a cemetery all day and night, other people would assume that person is mentally ill or homeless; that same person would be accused of loitering and escorted off the premises by the police. If someone painted a gravestone at a US cemetery, they would be arrested for vandalism; if musicians were hired to sing and play in a cemetery, everyone involved would be arrested for disturbing the peace.

Readalikes:

A Gift for Abuelita by Nancy Luenn [picture book] Review from Colours of Us blog: “tells the story of a young girl’s bond with her deceased grandmother. Abuelita taught Rosita how to braid, make tortillas, and grow chiles. On the Day of the Dead, Rosita makes a beautiful braid as a gift to her beloved abuelita. With unique paper pulp illustrations, this is an affectionate picture about loss and the healing power of remembrance.”

Day of the Dead Crafts: More Than 21 Projects that Celebrate Dia de los Muertos by Kerry Arquette, Andrea Zocchi, and Jerry Virgil. Instead of learning by reading, kids can learn by doing! Crafts include calaveras, masks, sugar skulls, altar, and jewelry. A nice way to tie in a hands-on element to learning about other cultures.

Citations:

Arquette, K., Zocchi, A., and Virgil, J. (2008). Day of the dead crafts: more than 21 projects that celebrate dia de los muertos. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Horning, K.T. (2010). From cover to cover: evaluation and reviewing children’s books. New York: HarperCollins.

Luenn, N. (2004). A gift for abuelita. New York: Cooper Square Press.

Tonatiuh, D. (2015). Funny bones: Posada and his day of the dead Calaveras. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

Title: My Names is James Madison Hemmings

Author: Jonah Winter and Terry Widener

Genres: juvenile nonfiction, juvenile biography, read for school

In the article, “How Nonfiction Reveals the Nature of Science,” the authors caution against selecting science books that contain “idealized descriptions of scientists as heroic and larger than life” (Zarnowski and Turkel, 2013, p. 298). This same advice could also be used when selecting nonfiction materials related to the Founding Fathers of the United States, of which Thomas Jefferson was one. Jefferson has been memorialized as a president and author of our nation’s founding document, The Declaration of Independence. This memorialization in text and architecture (the Jefferson Memorial) glosses over the more disturbing details of Jefferson’s life. Like all of us, he was imperfect, but after reading this book, he could also be viewed as hypocritical too (or some will argue, a man of his time). In the Author’s Note, Jonah Winter states that “Jefferson’s life and legacy are full of contradictions” (Winter, 2016, p. 31), which is putting the contradictions in Jefferson’s personal life and public politics, quite mildly!

In My Name is James Madison Hemings, we read about Jefferson’s son was born into slavery due to the slave status of his mother, Sally Hemings. We read about James’ efforts to reconcile that his master was also his father, and that he would never receive the same amount of love or education that Jefferson’s white children and grandchildren received. Although James, his mother, and his siblings were slaves, they were spared some of the harsher parts of slave life due to their biological connection to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson spared the Hemings family from participating in backbreaking field labor, gave the Hemmings boys violins, and let the Hemings children learn to read and write, in a time when it was illegal to educate slaves in any manner.

There is debate nowadays on whether the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson was consensual or not. While this book doesn’t talk about that aspect of the Hemings/Jefferson relationship, the book tells us that Sally and her children were relocated from the slaves’ quarters to the dependencies- rooms near a smokehouse and the horse stables. Moving the Hemings family to the section of Monticello where animals lived and died was an act of kindness with a double meaning; this relocation could be interpreted that the Hemings were viewed in a liminal status by Jefferson: not animals, but not quite human either.  After Jefferson died, his children were freed from the bonds of slavery, but Sally, their mother, was not.

Although the author notes that he “presented this story in a first-person narrative as historical fiction” (Winter, 2016, p. 31), the spine label on my library copy says, “J B Hemings” for Juvenile Biography. If I were to recommend this book to someone, I would tell them not to be fooled by the slimness of the text. Although the book may be small in pages, the content within is intense for a children’s book. I would recommend this for an older elementary child due to the serious content of the book. The impressionistic art style of the illustrations mirrors James’ uncertainty about his father’s affections and his own place in the world.

You can read more about Sally Hemings and her legacy at the Monticello website.

Readalikes:

Lift Your Light a Little Higher: The Story of Stephen Bishop: Slave-Explorer by Heather Henson. (Synopsis from Kirkus Reviews): “This story whispers of the life of a man most contemporary American readers should know but don’t. Stephen Bishop, born circa 1821, had intimate knowledge of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, where he served as guide for visitors who traveled far to tour the underground passageways. Despite the ban against teaching slaves to read, Stephen acquired literacy and wrote his name on the ceiling of Mammoth Cave by using smoke from a lighted candle. Henson weaves Bishop’s impressive scientific discoveries of cave life into the sparse narrative, demonstrating the magnitude of his contributions despite that little is known of his life or death…A story that recovers an important piece of African-American history inextricably tied to the history of Mammoth Cave, a national monument visited by 2 million people each year.”

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford. (Synopsis from Kirkus Reviews): “An eccentric, smart, and quirky bibliophile, Arturo Schomburg fueled his life with books. This picture book of free verse poems, lavishly illustrated in oils, opens with stories from Schomburg’s childhood in Puerto Rico, where he constantly asked why the history of black people had been left out of all the history books. Answering him, framed, date-stamped panels, appearing primarily on the right sides of the double-page spreads throughout, capture the stories of important historical black figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Paul Cuffee. The poem “Whitewash” will surprise some readers; Schomburg objected to the common practice of omitting from biographies the African heritage of prominent individuals such as naturalist and ornithologist John James Audubon, French writer Alexandre Dumas, Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, and German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Alongside these, Schomburg’s personal and professional life unfolds in unframed images. Schomburg worked as a mail clerk with Banker’s Trust; his book-collecting and library building resulted from his life’s passion, not his vocation. All of the book’s details paint Schomburg as an admirable, flawed, likable, passionate man whose lasting legacy, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, opens its doors to all who would learn more about the people its founder knew had been left out of the written record. A must-read for a deeper understanding of a well-connected genius who enriched the cultural road map for African-Americans and books about them.”

Citations:

Kirkus Reviews, (2016, June 28). Lift your light a little higher. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/heather-henson/lift-your-light-a-little-higher/

Kirkus Reviews, (2017, May 24). Schomburg: the man who built a library. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/carole-boston-weatherford/schomburg/

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. (2018). The Life of Sally Hemings. Retrieved from https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/

Winter, J. and Widener, T. (2016). My name is James Madison Hemmings. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books.

Zarnowski, M. and Turkel, S. (2013). How nonfiction reveals the nature of science. Children’s Literature in Education 44(4), 295-310.