Fact Friday: The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 by Tim Madigan. Adapted for young people by Hilary Beard

Image: Macmillan Publishers

The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 by Tim Madigan. Adapted for young people by Hilary Beard. 302 p. Henry Holt and Company/ Macmillan Publishers, May, 2021. 9781250787699. (Review of finished copy borrowed from public library.)

Happy Friday TMS Readers! As we head into the Independence Day weekend, take some time to read and reflect on the history of the U.S. and the democracy that the colonists fought to achieve. Read deeply, past the mythology and understand that "We the people" need to work toward a more perfect union every day by becoming informed participants.

Fact Friday features The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 by Tim Madigan. Adapted for young people by Hilary Beard. Back in the beginning of April, Fact Friday featured Unspeakable by Carole Boston Weatherford. This picture book was a gentle introduction to a tragedy that history book writers tended to ignore at best and misrepresent at worst. Teen readers who want to learn more about the Greenwood community and how it thrived during the Jim Crow era will receive cogent and comprehensive information gleaned from a variety of primary sources. Peppered throughout the narrative are personal stories of a variety of residents.

This book was adapted from a book written for adults. Just as Jason Reynolds did when he adapted Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning work for adults, Stamped from the Beginning, Ms. Beard gently but honestly guides teen readers through the complex factors surrounding this tragedy. Make no mistake though, there will be pain. Segregation is painful and dehumanizing. Lynching was a fairly common form of vigilante justice and the violence that rained down on the community of Greenwood was swift and devastating. Back matter includes copious chapter notes, followed by several pages of books and websites for readers/ researchers wanting to read more.

The Burning is an important addition to any library serving young readers. 

Fact Friday: A Somber Centennial: Tulsa Race Massacre

May 31 to June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Like many white Americans, I did not learn of the Tulsa Race Massacre until reference was made to it by Kimberly Jones in this video uploaded last year. I looked it up and was horrified-first that it happened and then because the event was basically erased. 

Image: Lerner Publishing

I reviewed Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre, a picture book aimed at older readers to explain the tragedy here and was privileged to attend several virtual meetings featuring the author. Carole Boston Weatherford and Floyd Cooper did something extraordinary here and this book belongs in all schools. 

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

A short while ago, I got to listen to Brandy Colbert talk about her nonfiction book, Black Birds in the Sky: the Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and that book immediately got added to my next book order for the library. It's due out in October. 

New to me titles I will be adding are:

Image: Macmillan

The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Masacre of 1921, adapted by Hilary Beard from Tim Madigan’s 2001 account for adult readers.

Image: Abrams

Across the Tracks: Remembering the Tulsa Race Massacre and Black Wall Street written by Alverne Ball and illustrated by Stacey Robinson is a nonfiction graphic novel.

Fact Friday: Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford

Image: Lerner Publishing Group

Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. 32 p. Lerner Publishing Group, February, 2021. 9781541581203. (Review of finished copy borrowed from public library.)

Fact Friday features Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. This year (May 31 - June 1) marks the hundredth anniversary of a sad, significant and shameful event in American history that, before last summer, many were probably unaware. Ms. Weatherford begins her blank verse with the words, "Once upon a time" and she uses the repetition effectively to instruct readers about the thriving Black community neighborhood in segregated Tulsa, Oklahoma one hundred years ago. Greenwood, also known as the "Black Wall Street" was home to two movie theaters, several Black newspapers and many Black professionals such as doctors and lawyers. 

While this community enjoyed their prosperity, many in the white community resented it. When a white female elevator operator accused a young Black man of assault, it did not take long for racial tension to erupt in violence. A white mob headed to the jail with the intention of lynching the suspect, but was confronted by Black men intending to protect him. The confrontation resulted in the deaths of two Black men and ten whites. The next day, mobs of white men invaded Greenwood intent on burning the neighborhood to the ground. Three hundred Black residents were killed and more than eight thousand were left homeless as police stood by and did nothing to protect them. The incident was labeled a "race riot" and no investigation was done until seventy-five years later.

Floyd Cooper's erasure illustrations celebrate the thriving community, then somberly stun. Readers learn in the illustrator's note in the back matter that Mr. Cooper has a personal connection to Tulsa - his grandfather escaped the massacre. Ms. Weatherford provides more information in her author's note. Back matter includes black and white photos from the time. 

Unspeakable is a must-read, must-discuss book for anyone, adult or young adult wishing to deeply understand American history warts and all. It's a book that will prompt uncomfortable questions and necessary, but uncomfortable conversations in classrooms and around dinner tables. Lerner has provided a helpful twelve-page teaching guide on their website.

ETA: I had the opportunity to tune into a webinar hosted by Frugal Book Store featuring an interview of and reading by the author. 

Fact Friday and E-Arc Review: The Cat I Never Named: a true story of love, war and survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess.

Image: Bloomsbury

The Cat I Never Named: a true story of love, war and survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. 352 p. BloomsburyYA/ Bloomsbury, September 8, 2020. 9781547604555. (Review of e-arc courtesy of publisher.)

Fact Friday features an astounding memoir, The Cat I Never Named: a true story of love, war and survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. The author was sixteen-years-old when war broke out in Bosnia in 1992. She lived in the multicultural city of Bihac but tension between the various ethnic groups was always high. She and her family were non-practicing Muslims and faced racial abuse every day. One night, all the Serbs in the city left and the Muslims that remained learned the city was surrounded by the Serbian Army. The author was a top student at a math and science high school with dreams of attending university. Her education was derailed and survival became her goal. 

The immediacy of Dr. Sabic-El-Rayess' writing make this memoir a gripping read. I read this arc electronically (something I detest doing.) and could not tear my eyes away. I needed to read through tears more than once and often needed to remind myself to breathe. Even though this war occurred nearly thirty years ago, the root cause - ethnic hatred - is still the cause of unrest and conflict globally. The vivid descriptions of war, the constant threat of rape and abduction and the struggle for survival make this title more suitable to a YA audience. 

The Cat I Never Named will publish on September 8 and is not to be missed.

Teen Tuesday: Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang

Image: DC Comics

Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang with art by Gurihiru240 p. DC, May, 2020. 9781779504210. (Review of finished purchased copy.)

Teen Tuesday features Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang with art by Gurihiru. Mr. Yang brings a radio show from the 1940s to vivid life in this graphic novel. The Lee family has moved from Chinatown to Metropolis so that Dr. Lee can start a new job with the Health Department. The Lee children, Tommy and Roberta set about trying to make new friends. Tommy is outgoing and willing to let overt and covert ethnic slurs slip. Roberta, though shy and awkward, feels the need to call out these micro-aggressions. Tommy's an ace pitcher and is asked to join the local baseball team by Jimmy Olsen, who coaches the rec center team when he's not working as a cub reporter for The Daily Planet. The team's pitcher is not at all happy about this change. He and his mother live with his uncle, who is head of the local Klan of the Fiery Kross and they are not at all happy about the Lees move to Metropolis. And then there's Superman, who is fighting crime in Metropolis but also wondering about his own identity and where he fits in. 

The art, energetic and expressive, moves the story along briskly. Eleven pages of author notes and historical photos provide historical context in the back matter. Fans of the superhero and the graphic novel format will not want to miss this!

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: Blended by Sharon Draper

Blended by Sharon Draper. Unabridged downloadable audiobook. 5 hours. Narrated by the author. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2018. 9781508258780. (Review of e-audio downloaded from public library. Own hc.) 

Middle Grade Monday features Blended by Sharon Draper. Eleven year old Isabella is a piano prodigy. She loves her piano and is preparing for a concert. What she doesn't love is her parents divorce. It hasn't helped their arguing. She splits her time evenly between her black father's expensive home and her white mother's more modest home. Each have a partner and when they both decide to marry on the same day, fireworks erupt. 

Isabella's first-person narration is often humorous and always spot-on. She yearns to fit in but doesn't know where. She loves both her parents and their partners. But she can't stand that she doesn't look like she belongs with either of them and she especially doesn't like the prying questions.

One can bet that a new Draper book will tackle tough issues head-on. Blended has a few and they are done well. Her father is the one in the large house. Her mom is solidly working class. She plays on a Casio portable piano at her mom's house; but she loves that as much as the more expensive piano at her dad's. The near tragedy at the end of the story is appropriately middle grade yet still hammers home the scariness of racial profiling.

As narrator of her own work, she's able. I'm sure she did a great read aloud when she was an LA teacher. This felt like that - a read aloud and not a performance. Isabella is eleven. There are some narrators out there that sound eleven. This makes for a better audiobook. That said, she didn't decimate her work, which is what some authors do.

Between that gorgeous cover and the fact that it's a new Draper, Blended will not sit on your shelf.

Teen Tuesday: Jazz Owls: a novel of the Zoot Suit riots by Margarita Engle

Jazz Owls: a novel of the Zoot Suit riots by Margarita Engle. Illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez. 179 p. Atheneum/ Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, May, 2018. 9781534409439. (Review from finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

Teen Tuesday features Jazz Owls: a novel of the Zoot Suit riots. This novel in verse is told from multiple points of view and dramatizes a little known (at least to me) event in 1943. Young sailors heading off to war spend their last nights on leave dancing with Jazz Owls, young,  mostly Mexican American women who work long hours in the local cannery under harsh conditions; but who contribute to the was effort by entertaining the troops through the U.S.O. at night. The girls are accompanied by male relatives for protection. These men often wore baggy suits known as Zoot suits. This fashion statement, much like certain fashion statements of today, was used as an excuse for police to start targeting the men, especially after a murder. Then, the sailors began a rampage. It was ugly. It was racially motivated. And, sadly, seemed all too familiar.

I can always count on Engle to educate me by writing about historical events that did not make it into mainstream history books. While I was aware of the cannery workers' dangerous conditions and brave efforts to unionize; I had no knowledge of the riots.

The primary characters are siblings, Lorena, Marisela and Ray. Their brother, Nicolás is off fighting overseas. Lorena longs to save enough money to attend secretarial school, Marisela loves to dance and Ray longs to be old enough to go and fight. Other voices show different points of view from sailors to policemen to reporters (who are not, shall we say, objective) to Manolito, a musician from Cuba who falls in love with Marisela.

A lot happens in this brief, fast-paced novel. Readers will fly through the pages needing to find resolution. Hopefully, they will turn back to the beginning and reread to savor the language and the ink illustrations.

Jazz Owls is an important addition to any library.

Teen Tuesday: Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Dear Martin by Nic Stone. 224 p. Random House Children's Books, October, 2017. 9781101939499. (Borrowed from public library.)

Like Starr in that other auspicious debut, Justyce McAllister straddles two worlds, only he boards at his tony prep school and doesn't have the intact family and extensive extended family support that Starr had. He's a top student with his eyes on an Ivy league education; but he begins to question all that when he is arrested as a suspected carjacker when all he was trying to do was help his drunk ex-girlfriend get home safely. Luckily for him, his friends and their parents have his back and charges are soon dropped, but the experience causes him to question everything and everyone. He tries to sort through his feelings by writing letters to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Interspersed between his letters and the narration of events are bits of dialogue.

Stone packs a lot into this relatively short book. There will be tears and anger. While some characters receive short shrift (I for one, wanted to know more about his tough-love mother), readers, both reluctant and avid alike, will tear through this and have much to think on. I have a student who discovered Jason Reynolds' book Ghost at the end of his seventh grade year. He came back to eighth grade wanting Patina, then read every one of Reynolds' books before moving on to Kekla Magoon's How It Went Down and Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give. He devoured Dear Martin as well.

I read this one with my ears. While narrator, Dion Graham turned in his usual stellar performance, the lists and sections of dialogue are more difficult to convey. Either way, Dear Martin is a must-read and must purchase for high school and public libraries.

Waiting on Wednesday (arc review): Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. 224 p. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, April 17, 2018. 9780316262286.

The cover on the right is the cover on my arc. The cover on the left looks to be the finished cover. I think both covers are powerful but the red one does pack a wallop.

I'll put this out there right now - no library collection is complete if it is missing any of Ms. Rhodes' books. She is a masterful middle grade writer whose superpower is making tough subjects accessible to tender young readers. 

Twelve-year-old Jerome is the narrator of this timely yet heartbreaking tale. We meet him as he realizes he is dead and views his own dead body bleeding onto the playground dirt. A white police officer has mistaken his toy gun for a real gun and fatally shot him. 

Jerome isn't even allowed to play with guns but his new friend, Carlos gave it to him to play with. He witnesses his family's grief and his father's anger and wants to comfort them. He realizes, with a start that his grandmother is aware of his presence but unable to see him. No one can see him until he crosses paths with the daughter of his shooter. Why is it she can see him when no one he cares about can? Jerome isn't alone in this limbo, he is soon joined by another victim of a racial killing - Emmett Till.

As Jerome tries to navigate this new reality, he confronts hard truths and feels myriad emotions from sadness to anger. Through Jerome, thoughtful readers might come to reflect on their own biases as well as society's and work toward overcoming them.

Teen Tuesday (audiobook review): All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Unabridged audiobook on six compact discs; 6.5 hours. Read by Keith Nobbs and Guy Lockard. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015. 9781442398689. (Review from recording borrowed from public library)

This compelling dual narrative won the pair a Coretta Scott King Author Honor. Rashad and Quinn attend the same high school. Rashad is a good student, fantastic artist and a member of the junior ROTC. Quinn is a basketball star looking forward to getting scouted by a top college. When Rashad stops by a local bodega on the way to a party, all he wants is a bag of chips. But when he and a white woman accidentally trip over each other, the store owner assumes Rashad is shoplifting and the policeman who happens to be in the store rushes in and rushes to judgment. Not only that, he beats Rashad mercilessly. Quinn and his best friend witness this and Quinn is stunned by the brutality of the arrest. Complicating things is the fact that the cop is his friend's brother and has always been a hero and mentor to Quinn. Then, a video taken by another witness is released and everyone in town is taking sides. The topic of this thought-provoking, beautifully written novel is timely and worthy of discussion.

This is one of the few books that I booktalked without reading. It went out almost immediately and has been steadily checked out via word-of-mouth among my students.

The audio performances were outstanding. Nobbs is a new-to-me narrator, I thought his portrayal of Quinn, all laid-back and mostly confident, rang true. Guy Lockard is my newest voice crush. He hits it out of the park again in this one. Rashad springs to vivid life in his hands. 

Audiobook Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Unabridged audiobook on 10 compact discs; 11.75 hours. Read by Bahni Turpin. Harper Audio, February, 2017. 9781470827137. (Review from audiobook borrowed from public library. Print copy purchased.)

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter lives in Garden Heights but attends a private school about 45 minutes away. Her father is an ex-gangbanger and ex-con but owns a grocery store in the neighborhood. Her mother is a nurse who works in a neighborhood clinic. They are committed to the neighborhood, but after Starr witnesses the murder of her best friend, Natasha in a drive-by shooting at age ten, her parents made the decision to remove their three children from the public school. Their family is not perfect, but is intact and striving. 

Starr talks about straddling two worlds with her two personas; her private school persona and her neighborhood one. She also has a white boyfriend, which her daddy doesn't know about. Her private school friends and boyfriend have never been to Garden Heights. This delicate balance is disrupted when Starr reluctantly attends a neighborhood party. She's catching up with Khalil, a childhood friend and former crush, when gunshots ring out. Khalil grabs her hand and the two flee in his car.  When they are pulled over, Starr recalls the rules her daddy drilled into her. But Khalil questions the officer. Starr focuses on the badge number - 115 and is terrified, especially when Khalil is dragged out of the car by an increasingly agitated 115. When Khalil ducks back into the car to check on Starr, 115 shoots him in the back. Three times. 

This remarkable debut sucked me into Starr's world immediately and I was sorry to leave it. The setting is so vividly evoked and while a specific city was never mentioned, it could be anywhere. All the characters are so memorable! Even minor characters are so fully fleshed out that I feel I could recognize them. While tragedy is never far away, there are hilarious moments that provide respite. I listened to 4/5 (8 of 10 discs) of it and finished the book reading with my eyes. If you have never experienced a performance by Bahni Turpin, this is a great place to start. She has a remarkable range of voices, which added depth to an already deep and important book. 

The Hate U Give has received a remarkable six starred reviews and has spent quite a number of weeks on the NYT best seller list. (Should "best seller list" be capitalized?) The book was on my tbr pile for quite awhile. I would get to it eventually, but what made me move it up on the pile was an eighth grader. One day toward the end of the school year, I got a inter-classroom phone call from the eighth grade science teacher who asked if I was busy/ had a class. I was not, so she told me that she had a student dying to talk to me about a book and could she come up? Absolutely! The library is on the second floor and the science classroom is on the first. She must've run from the classroom because she arrived in seconds, panting and attempting to tell me why I HAD to read this book once she learned that I had not yet read it. I take student recommendations very seriously and intended to crack the book open sooner rather than later, when I heard that Bahni Turpin was the narrator for the audio. I ordered it through Inter-Library Loan (ILL) and waited and waited. The audiobook was worth the wait and while the performance was incredible, I HAD to find out how it ended and couldn't sit through the last two discs to find out. I was so glad I had the book to finish reading it without needing to drive somewhere. 

The Hate U Give lives up to the hype. It is, if not the most, one of the most important books of 2017. It is intense and timely and wholly influential. I expect it will be life-changing to all teen readers who discover it and I expect to do my part to get it into as many hands as possible. 

Non-Fiction Monday: Tiny Stitches: the life of medical pioneer Vivien Thomas by Gwendolyn Hooks

Tiny Stitches: the life of medical pioneer Vivien Thomas by Gwendolyn Hooks. Illustrated by Colin Bootman. unpgd. Lee & Low Books, May, 2016. 9781620141564. (Review from purchased copy)

This is the story of Vivien Thomas who wanted to become a doctor. So he worked hard alongside of his father, who was a master carpenter and saved his money. But he lost it all in the stock market crash of 1929. While jobs were scarce for carpenters during the Great Depression, Vivien learned about a job opening at Vanderbilt Medical School. He hoped that by taking it, he could keep his dreams of becoming a doctor alive. 

He interviewed with Dr. Alfred Blalock. Dr. Blalock wanted someone to help him with his research into treatment for patients in shock. Blalock was impressed with Vivien and offered him the job. Blalock taught Vivien how to conduct experiments and write up lab reports. Another doctor loaned him medical texts. Vivien was such a quick study that it wasn't long before he was conducting his own experiments. 

He learned to suture seamlessly. He also learned that his job description was that of janitor and that white men with the same duties were earning more than he. He informed Dr. Blalock that he would no longer work for him unless he was paid comparably. 

When Doctor Blalock left Vanderbilt to join Johns Hopkins, Vivien knew it would not be long before he was fired by Vanderbilt so he moved to Baltimore but could not find housing. It turned out that Johns Hopkins was more segregated that Vanderbilt but Vivien persevered. 

In 1943, a pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Helen Taussig, approached Dr. Blalock about finding a way to cure the tiniest cardiac patients, the "blue babies." These were babies who were born with a congenital heart defect known as Tetrology of Fallot, or four defects that prevented blood from being properly oxygenated.

After months of experimenting, Vivien realized that the solution might be a "procedure he and Dr. Blalock perfected at Vanderbilt for a different problem." One stumbling block to trying this surgery was that the needles were too long for the tiny infants' hearts and blood vessels. Vivien needed to make the needles small enough to use on a newborn. He tried his new needles out on animals and found a way to anastomose arteries using them. In November of 1944, Dr. Taussig had a baby girl who needed surgery or she would die. 

On the morning of the surgery, Dr. Blalock insisted that Vivien remain in the operating room to help guide him through the surgery. The baby survived thanks to Vivien's help but Dr. Blalock got all the credit and press. Dr. Blalock became world famous and Vivien was never credited for his research until 1971. In 1976, he was given an honorary doctorate and appointed to the faculty as instructor. 

Talk about injustice! What tenacity and perseverance on the part of Vivien Thomas! This is an important addition to any school, public or classroom or STEM library. The mostly double-page watercolor illustrations are fantastic. They convey Vivien Thomas' dignity and intelligence. Two pages of backmatter provides more information about Tetrology of Fallot and Vivien Thomas, followed by a glossary of medical terms and source notes. 

Truly a first-purchase with cross-curricular uses.

ETA: I almost forgot! The eighth grade social studies teacher has a unit on African-American inventors. I asked him if Vivien Thomas was on the list of possible inventors to research. He was not; but after hearing my synopsis of the story, the teacher wants to add him.