Happy Thanksgiving

Hola a todas y todos,

I’m dropping in to say Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Vamos a Leer and to share a few sources with you for dispelling myths during this holiday season.

• National Geographic has activities for the classroom that highlight the Native American perspective on the arrival of the Pilgrims and the significance of the Thanksgiving holiday.
• In an article Sussex highlights Native American meanings/perspectives of Thanksgiving
• PBS questions the meaning and teaching of Thanksgiving in an Opinion article.
• PBS also provides a list of resources for teaching about Thanksgiving.
• Salon news source describes Thanksgiving as “a day of mourning for Native Americans.
• William Loren Katz with the Zinn Ed Project questions the Eurocentric teaching of Thanksgiving in an article titled “The Politics of Thanksgiving Day”
• Rethinking School’s older article on “Rethinking Thanksgiving Myths and Misgivings” is still relevant several years after its publication
• For specific lesson plans and related materials, we recommend this Google doc of “A Racial Justice Guide to Thanksgiving for Educators and Families.”

We also encourage you to check out our Rethinking Thanksgiving tab on our blog for more posts and resources about Thanksgiving. Stay tuned for more Indigenous Peoples books next week!

 

~ Keira

March 31st | Week in Review

 

¡Hola a todos! Here are a few resources I’m happy to share with you.

– Diego Huerta traveled around Mexico as a photographer, capturing the  Breathtaking Beauty of Mexico’s Indigenous Communities. As Huerta says, “in Oaxaca something very interesting happens: there is a mix of the modern and the traditional, of the indigenous people and the mestizo people, that fight to conserve that indigenous part that they inherited,”

–Check out how you can use Books To Jump-Start Family Conversations on Race. “Combating racism doesn’t just mean changing the hearts and minds of bigots; it requires that passive bystanders become proactively engaged.”

November 11th | Week in Review

Hola a todos! This Week in Review is quite long, but I assure you it is full of resources and knowledge that needs to be shared.

– ColorLines shared a recent snippet from the show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, inviting readers to “Watch John Oliver Break Down How School Resegregation Hurts Students.” “Black and Latino children are more likely to attend school with inexperienced teachers who are then less likely to offer a college prep curriculum… [and are] 6 times as likely to be in poverty schools.”

— Lee & Low’s blog, The Open Book, shared a post on “Books as Bricks: Building a Diverse Classroom Library and Beyond,” which offers a list of recommendations for teachers looking to diversify their class and school libraries.

– The Horn Book published an article on “Decolonizing Nostalgia: When Historical Fiction Betrays Readers of Color” by Sarah Hannah Gómez, in which she writes: “Omitting nonwhites from episodic historical fiction and the everyday history that informs our lives today says that the only contribution by people of color to society is conflict. Deleting them from the continuous line of history is a lie that perpetuates this insidious myth. And middle-grade historical fiction has a long way to go to acknowledge this betrayal to readers and attempt to overcome it.”

— The blog, Reading While White, shared a guest post with one of our favorite authors, Yuyi Morales, who discusses “Day of the Dead, Ghosts, and the Work We Do as Writers and Artists.” Morales offers a beautiful discussion of her personal practices related to Día de los Muertos and the implications of its distortion in the general media and children’s books.

– The Facebook page Raising Race Conscious Children shared the article,
“Telling Poor, Smart Kids That All It Takes Is Hard Work to Be as Successful as Their Wealthy Peers is a Blatant Lie,” which explores how these students face systemic disadvantages even though they work hard.

— Also, Fundación Cuatrogatos recommends the book Corre que te pillo. Juegos y juguetes, which pulls together 27 games and toys that have existed since the early century in Latin America and other regions around the world

–The Zinn Education Project just shared The #NoDAPL syllabus for high school and adults. This resource contextualizes how the current resistance in North Dakota is tied to a “broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus” and features the practices of “Indigenous peoples around the world [who] have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries.” “

— From We Need Diverse Books, we learned of the recent article, “The Case of the Missing Books/ 10 Years of Data,” written by children’s book author and artist Maya Gonzalez to highlight the lack of diversity in children’s literature over the last decade.d. “The graph below shows the children’s books that were missing by POC and Indigenous people in the children’s book industry over the last 10 years.”

– Lee & Low Books just released Rainbow Weaver/Tejedora del arcoíris. The story is about a Mayan young girl named Ixchel and her quest to create a beautiful weaving from unusual materials.

— Lastly, Teaching Tolerance shared What We’re Reading This Week: November 4, a list of resources for critical and conscientious teaching in middle and high school classrooms.

Abrazos,
Alin Badillo

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Image: Street Art. Reprinted from Flickr user ARNAUD_Z_VOYAGE under CC©.

Abolish Columbus Day

Saludos todos! As many parts of the country recently celebrated Columbus Day, and we are quickly approaching Thanksgiving, we wanted to take the time to draw attention to a new educational campaign, Abolish Columbus Day, created by the Zinn Education Project (a project of Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools). Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools are both excellent resources for educators interested in multicultural teaching, diverse literature and social justice, and we’ve featured their resources many times here on the blog. This initiative aims at rethinking Columbus Day and the way in which our history remembers the genocide and continued colonial practices against the indigenous peoples in the United States and Latin America.

October 14th | Week in Review

¡Hola a todos! Here is the latest Week in Review:

– Our friends at Lee & Low Books posted on their blog an Alternative History Book List. The list is part of acknowledging Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, for which, they write, “we are offering a series of blog posts that look at pieces of history that have been hidden, silenced, altered, or swept under the rug.”

— Teaching Tolerance shared on their Facebook page The Problem with Columbus ‘Discovering’ America. “The idea of a holiday to celebrate the people who lived in the Americas before Christopher Columbus ever set foot there got its start in the 1970s.”

– Teaching for Change recommended on their Facebook page the new children’s book “Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds.” By Jorge Terl Argueta and illustrated by Alfonso Ruano. The book “describes the challenges of leaving one’s homeland and the journey north.”

–Also, Lee & Low Books shared  a piece by one of our favorite authors, Guadalupe García McCall, in which she discusses reasons why some History is Not on Text Books.

–Thanks to our friends at the Tulane University’s Stone Center, we discovered Google’s latest Arts and Culture initiative: the Latino Heritage and Cultures project, which offers a wide range of resources, “from ancient artifacts to contemporary street art, [to] explore the depth and diversity of Latino cultures.”

– Lastly, Rethinking Schools shares 9 Teaching Resources that Tell The Truth About Columbus. “States and cities are increasingly recognizing Indigenous Peoples, but appropriate and readily available lesson plans have fallen behind the trend.”

Abrazos,
Alin

p.s. We’re sending this out just a bit ahead of time, as UNM is on Fall Break today and tomorrow! Enjoy the autumn weather!!

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Image: Illustration, Somos como las nubes / We are like the clouds  by Jorge Argueta and Alfonso Ruano.

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¡Mira, Look!: Light Foot/ Pies Lijeros

Saludos todos and welcome to our first October book review!

As in the past several years, we’re using the month of October to reflect on the many ways in which death is honored, acknowledged, and remembered in different Latin American countries. Our monthly focus is prompted in part by the upcoming Día de los Muertos, but also more broadly by the seasonal shift into autumn – a time of transition and change.

Last year we used this opportunity to feature books that discussed Día de los Muertos celebrations and cautionary legends such as those about La Llorona. This year, however, we have decided to expand these themes to focus more loosely on death as a general concept — the experience of love and loss, the process of grief and healing, and, particularly, the ways in which educators can help students through these tough moments. This month our books will feature protagonists who experience grief, and identify books that explore the concept of death in different cultures. This last theme is the focus of today’s book, Light Foot/ Pies ligeros.

September 30th | Week in Review

¡Hola a todos! The month has passed by very fast. As we end September, think about the accomplishments and hard work people have done in just this one month to advocate for diverse literature and how much work still remains.

– Blood Orange Press has begun a campaign to publish books where “people of color and Native communities can tell their own story.” If you want to support them, their project is titled #ReadInColor.

— Our Facebook friends Latinos in Kid Lit just shared the cover reveal of The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra. The release date is March 7, 2017. Keep your eye out for this book that’s expected to “crack up kids and grown-ups.”

–Our friends at Lee & Low Book celebrated their 25^th anniversary this year, so we would like to congratulate them for encouraging diversity in kids literature.

— Congratulations to Sandra Cisneros and Rudolfo Anaya for receiving a National Medal from President Obama for their contribution to Latino Literature. Check out the rest of NBC News’s list of all the Latinos Who Were Honored With National Medals for Diverse Art, Humanities.

– Lastly, in Facebook, Rethinking Schools encourages us to find out more about the Zinn Education Project- Teaching A People’s History. “Zinn’s work offers an alternative perspective that students need in order to think more critically about key issues in history,” expressed commenter William Thomas.

 

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Image: Esperanza. Reprinted from Flickr user JoelleW under CC ©.

WWW: International Women’s Day and Women Today!

¡Feliz viernes a todos!

Thank you for joining me today! Somehow this week escaped me and so I don’t have such a long post for you. I did, however, manage to find this video from The Guardian that showcases some important women from all over the world who are making a difference in the lives of the people around them hoy en día.

We think this video ties in the themes of activism and important women in history, and could be used in class with older groups to discuss changes students wish they could see in their own worlds.  Join me again next week for a longer post on women’s rights in South America, Berta Cáceres, and the Zika Virus!

With warmest wishes,

Charla

¡Mira Look!: One Peace: True Stories of Young Activists and Our Rights: How Kids are Changing the World

 “Children are sweet and beautiful, but we want to show adults that the role of the child must be elevated; there are acute crises in countries when children have to make up part of the solution. You say children are the future. But we are the present, a present which we all have to build together.”

– Farlis Calle, child activist and co-founder of the Colombian Children’s Movement for Peace

 Saludos, everyone! This week we will be tying up our January theme of civil rights with two incredible books by author and illustrator Janet Wilson. Each nonfiction book focuses on real life child activists from around the world, portraying them in an interesting medley of biographical information, inspiring quotes, photographs and poetry. These books are at once informative and inspiring, exposing children to a wide range of formats and styles of writing, from creative anecdotes, poetry, proverbs and metaphors, to statistical facts, historical accounts, and journalistic documentation. They also take readers on a tour of the world, with at least one profile representing each continent. While upholding values of justice, equality, and compassion, these books support the voices of child activists, empowering young readers along the way.

One of the wonderful things about these books is how rich each profile description is. Educators who are looking to focus on one specific region could easily create an entire lesson plan based on one profile. Given that we focus on Latin American content here at Vamos a Leer, this review emphasizes the Latin American children in these books, but they are only one piece of these books’ larger mosaic of information on the overarching themes of human rights and the rights of the child around the world.

¡Mira, Look!: The First Tortilla

¡Saludos, todos! This week I will be reviewing The First Tortilla, written by Rudolfo Anaya, illustrated by Amy Córdova, and translated into Spanish by Enrique R. Lamadrid (one of our professors here at UNM!). This book review will conclude our November-themed books, as next week we turn our attention to our December discussions on winter celebrations. For now, though, we are focusing on this lovely, bilingual retelling of a Mexican legend, keeping in tune with our themes of food and family, as well as indigenous traditions. This story, with stunning illustrations and an endearing female protagonist, depicts the harvest season amongst a small, Aztec tribe. Readers will revel in the old legend, while learning of the need to respect nature and its resources. For those of you avid blog-readers, this review will surely remind you of some of our previous reviews on other works by Rudolfo Anaya, and his retellings of old myths and legends.

Best suited for ages 9-13, Anaya’s work tells the fictional tale of how a young girl’s courage saves her village from a terrible drought, and introduces corn to the peoples of Mesoamerica. Ultimately, the discovery of corn also leads to the creation of “the first tortilla“. The old legend, as well as Anaya’s rendition, reminds readers and listeners of the importance in giving thanks, and appreciating the land and the sustenance that it provides.