It is my great pleasure to do the Diversity in MG Lit posts each month on the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors blog. In October I highlighted a half dozen new Latinx titles. I wanted to highlight two more of particular interest both of which use poetry.
THEY CALL ME GÜERO by David Bowles is a collection of poems which together form a loose narrative about a boy living in South Texas and occupying the physical but also social and emotional space that spans the US-Mexico border. The poems are short and ring clear with emotional and physical details that will strike a chord with any reader. There are many words in Spanish but none that would be a barrier to a reader who knows only English. The glossary in the back is more a courtesy than a necessity. Teachers will be delighted to find many poetic forms and devices used throughout which make it ideal for using in school. I also found it notable in that it doesn’t shy away from the main character’s spiritual practice. A gem from Cinco Puntos Press
My favorite verse novel in quite a while is JAZZ OWLS: A NOVEL OF THE ZOOT SUIT RIOTS by Young People’s Poet Laureate, Margarita Engle. She takes on an episode in our national history that should be far better known–a racially targeted riot between soon to deploy WWII sailors in Los Angeles and the Hispanic community there. Engle’s spare language and vivid descriptions bring to life a time when the military was still racially segregated, a time when interracial marriage was not legal in California–only 75 years ago. This would be such a great book to discuss in a classroom or book club. The references and afterward make it clear that, as vicious as the racial attacks on Mexican-American’s were, justice was done in the end. The military did integrate and freedom to marry a person of another race did become legal. Still it’s chilling to see how easily the sailors of the 1940s found it to scape goat the Mexican community and how reluctant local law enforcement was to arrest servicemen on the eve of deployment. The art by Rudy Guitierrez strikes just the right tone. This is a gem of a book which I hope will find its way into many a high school history class.
What a treat to spend the weekend with Oregon’s school librarians. And then hearing keynote speakers R. Gregory Christie and Mitali Perkins was just the icing on the cake.
I do a lot of school visits. It’s one of the best parts of my life as an author. A school that is well prepared for my visit and eagerly anticipating a day in celebration of literature, goes a long way to making the work satisfying for me and profitable for students. Sometimes there are even lovely extra touches—a welcome sign hand made by students, a warm cup of tea, the principal who gave me her parking spot because it was snowing—all kind and much appreciated.
For many the real draw in writing for kids is that it sidesteps the literary celebrity culture which can be so toxic in the adult writing world. So even though the adulation was kindly meant it often makes the author on the receiving end more anxious than flattered. As an added bonus, when an author’s human frailties—fairly or unfairly—become a subject of social media, you will not have the shock of their fall from grace because you never excluded them from the human community by putting them on a pedestal in the first place.