Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulson Books) $16.99 Sometimes we pick up a book because we know the voice will be poetry. That’s always the case with novels written by Jacqueline Woodson. Through poetic snapshots in Brown Girl…
Category: Out of the Mainstream: Gender, Ethnicity, and Disability
COLORS OF THE WIND by J.L.Powers
COLORS OF THE WIND is a picture-book biography with startling paintings that open your eyes and a true story about an Olympic champion runner and award-winning artist who is blind: George Mendoza. The author of this book, J.L. Powers, tells…
Tigers, Sunsets, and Tangerine Dresses
Honestly, the trailer for Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino might do the book more justice than anything I can say about it. I picked up a copy of this delightful picture book from Groundwood Books at…
A Child on Her Own: Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Sugar
A poet and author of fiction for adults, Jewell Parker Rhodes turned to writing for children with the highly acclaimed Ninth Ward, the story of an 11-year-old girl whose ailing grandmother—and her grandmother’s stories—help her to survive Hurricane Katrina in…
The Transcriber by Kristen Witucki
In the short novel The Transcriber by Kristen Witucki, published by Gemma Media, the protagonist Louis makes short work of society’s understanding of disability as he analyzes the way the world treats his blind sister Emily. The book is an…
Fleeing Genocide: A Review of The Weaver’s Scar
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, which claimed the lives of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The massacre revealed the helplessness of international organizations and spurred the establishment of the International Criminal…
Wings For a Flower offers wings to the Free Wheelchair Mission
Ellen Gaffney’s picture book WINGS FOR A FLOWER tells a story of disability and freedom. I have a friend so close he is like my brother. He has never walked and from the time he was a toddler he got…
An Undocumented Immigrant Looking for Hope: The Secret Side of Empty
As happened at the turn of the previous century, the new century has seen a massive migration of people from one country to another. Escaping oppression and war, the effects of climate change, or the lack of economic opportunity, the…
WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA HIT HOME
WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA HIT HOME Gail Langer Karwoski, illustrations by Julia Marshall Good news update! WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA HIT HOME was selected as a Notable Book for Older Readers by the Sydney Taylor Awards, the Association of Jewish Libraries. What…
CHILDREN OF THE TIPI
Children of the Tipi: Life in the Buffalo Days Edited by Michael Oren Fitzgerald Children of the Tipi is a treasure. The book shares both images and words that accomplish so well what Michael Fitzgerald describes in his Editor’s…