Election Learning - Kamala & Presidents!

         It's time, maybe past time, to learn about the presidential election and today, about one of the vice-presidential candidates! 

        I think I can write that Nikki Grimes is prescient. To write the story of Kamala Harris not knowing what was going to happen in this 2020 presidential race is a gift to all of us. I suppose I could have researched and discovered much of this information online, but it is much nicer to read Nikki's story about Kamala in a unique way and to enjoy the beautiful images by illustrator Laura Freeman. 
        Nikki allows a mother to tell about Kamala to her daughter, Eve, a first-grader who has arrived home from school fuming. A boy has told her that girls cannot be President! Her mother shares that he's wrong, that a girl from Oakland hopes to be that President one day. Thus, she begins with Kamala's story, with her name meaning "lotus flower" and a smile that opens wide "like petals fanning across the water's surface." The metaphor itself reveals a life as Nikki expands it, reminding through the mother's voice that you don't see the flower's roots. "They grow deep, deep, deep down."

         Kamala's story travels from her beginnings marching in her stroller with her parents for civil rights, visiting with grandparents who also fought for other's rights in other countries, riding a bus to school during the integration of schools in her elementary years. Nikki fills the story with Kamala's continuing striving for leadership and justice from her Howard University time when she ran for the class representative of the Liberal Arts Council through her time at Hastings College of the Law when she served as President of the Black Law Students Association and hosted a job fair for black law students to have a chance to be hired. 

          Don't miss the rest of her story in Nikki's book! With some setbacks and many wins, Kamala does not stop being the same kind of person we see on the news today, a fighter for truth and justice for all. Freeman's scenes fill the pages with pictures imagined from Nikki's words, groups of people in history, including Kamala there living her life of thoughtful public service. It takes her life all the way to her dropping out of the Presidential race yet Nikki writes: "Kamala Harris is still writing her American story.

           She certainly is!

a look at her Howard University Days, part of which she used to protest
apartheid in South Africa

          Little Eve decides she's going to tell that boy at school "he's a doofus", and relents when her mother says "I thought I taught you better than that." But her fingers are crossed!

          A timeline of major events in Kamala's life is added at the back. It's a beautiful book to share this fall, before the election!

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          Kate Messner has wonderfully managed to create a creative Presidential timeline of ALL the American Presidents, one to forty-five by focusing on four dates: 1789, 1841, 1879, and 1961. She begins with the question for readers. Quick! Name the current President of the United States. No matter when the book is read, there is only one right answer!

Non-Fiction Greats!

Hosted by Alyson Beecher at Kid Lit Frenzy, this is a great place to find terrific non-fiction picture books. Come visit to see what everyone is sharing.

        I was gone all the weekend, and didn’t read many non-fiction books, but the two I want to share are worth a look. These two respected authors have given so many books to savor.

The Scraps Book – written and illustrated by Lois Ehlert

            I’ve had this book for a while, and finally sat down and read all of it, not just looked often at a few pages. I imagine it would be in every classroom that encourages art and playful creativity. Lois Ehlert writes of her childhood beginnings, her parents who encouraged her by providing the materials and teaching her to use them. She took the art table her father built for her to art school!  On one page: “I created lots of art, though not for books right away. But I didn’t worry. Everyone needs time to develop their dreams. An egg in the nest doesn’t become a bird overnight.” Other pages show how she creates pages, where ideas are developed, simple materials available that are used. It’s an inspiring book for all ages.

Love The Library!

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.      Groucho Marx

         It's Monday! What are you Reading? is hosted by Jen and Kellee at TEACH.MENTOR.TEXTS.  Lots of great books here, as well as in another meme hosted by Sheila at BOOK JOURNEYS.

         REMEMBER:  Use the hashtag #IMWAYR to share on twitter!

        I love the library one block from my new home.  I can drop in on my way home from anywhere to discover what's new, along with having books from other libraries sent over within a few days.  We are lucky to have libraries and I'd like to give a big shout 'HURRAH"  for mine!

Starry River of The Sky – Grace Lin

         A beautiful story of a young boy Rendi who has run away from his unhappy home and finds himself working at a small village inn, the small village of  Clear Sky.  He observes that all is not exactly okay there, like the moon is missing.  Rendi keeps saying he will leave as soon as a guest comes so he can sneak a ride on the guest’s cart.  Well, a mysterious guest does come, a storyteller who, throughout the book, relates stories to help all who are there understand what is going on.  Grace Lin weaves/re-tells Chinese folk tales in between telling about the inhabitants of the inn.  The illustrations, also by Lin, are gorgeous.   This would be a terrific read aloud.  

About Poop! A Review

           I visited Teach Mentor Texts this morning and found they were participating in non-fiction picture book Wednesday, a meme hosted by  Kid Lit Frenzy and The Nonfiction Detectives.   I'm not sure I'll always have a non-fiction book to review, but I just finished a wonderful one and wanted to share with everyone.   Please visit Kid Lit Frenzy and The Nonfiction Detectives to see what non-fiction others have to share, too. 

 I’ve long wished to travel to Venice, a most romantic-sounding city, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go there in the 1700’s.  Sarah Albee, writer of Poop Happened! A History of The World From The Bottom Up tells us that Venice’s concert halls, where the music of Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, and Mozart are being played, there were no bathroom facilities at all.  People simply relieved themselves wherever they wanted. She also asks the reader to  Imagine what the concert hall must have smelled like after a three-hour performance.

This book is almost 200 pages of pure, interesting information, yet unfortunately it tells a woeful tale of polluted waterways, homes, rivers, and air—past and present. And it takes hundreds of years and many pages to get to the life-saving discoveries of microbes begun by the work of a Dr. John Snow, carried further by Louis Pasteur, and concluded with the isolation of the cholera microbe by a German Scientist, all this in the late 1800’s.