The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis, adapted by Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert

Most of our students will tell you they know all about Rosa Parks, but it’s likely that most of Passages’ readers, including adults, could learn a great deal from just a chapter of this author’s research.  This review is of the adapted version in which author Jeanne Theoharis collaborated with acclaimed YA author Brandy Colbert to make a version more accessible to adolescent readers.

At close  to 300 pages, educators may find the simplest way to introduce this title and its content is to whet students’ appetite for more with an excerpt, although it would be a challenge to select just one.  The text begins with Parks’s birth in 1913 and follows the civil rights movement as did Parks’s life and work.  Highly recommended for Humanities and Social Studies educators working with detained youth and readers who enjoyed Hidden Figures.  The Zinn Education Project offers related lesson plans developed by a group of teachers convened by the author here. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Theoharis, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks Adapted for Young People. Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 2021. Print.

Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, A Monumental Man by Tonya Bolden

Author Tonya Bolden, at the end of her book  writes,  “It is my hope that Facing Frederick will inspire readers to take a good long look at, and think more deeply about, a multi-faceted, monumental man.  A man utterly beyond category.”  In this beautifully-written,  compact biography,  Bolden certainly succeeds.

The author’s brilliant research, her synthesis for younger readers,  and the visual record she includes of this most photographed man of his time make Facing Frederick a must-read for all interested in American history.  

Back matter includes a poem about Douglass by Robert Hayden,  a timeline,  a list of sources, author’s acknowledgements, image credits, and an index.  Click here for the Indiannapolis Public Library’s guide to teaching Frederick Douglass.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Ida B. the Queen: The extraordinary life and legacy of Ida B. Wells by Michelle Duster, illustrated by Hannah Giorgis.

Did you know that the FBI kept files on activist Ida B.Wells? 

This intriguing biography by the subject’s great granddaughter offers middle and high school readers an introduction to Ida Wells the activist, journalist, publisher, editor, teacher and probation officer.  The first section links Wells to other African-American activists who were also followed by the FBI.

We then learn about her early life,  see a timeline of African American history, and consider  Wells’ legacy and that of other powerful figures and events of her time.   And finally the author discusses contemporary activists including Stacy Adams,  and the Black Lives Matter movement.  

Backmatter contains hyperlinked sources, image credits, and an index.  Highly recommended for proficient readers eager to know more about Black history.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Duster, Michelle and Hannah Giorgis.  Ida B. the Queen: The extraordinary life and legacy of Ida B. Wells. New York: Atria, 2021

Revolution In Our Time by Kekla Magoon

In this comprehensive non-fiction work for adolescent readers that has the heft of a text book,  author Magoon takes a comprehensive  look at The Black Panther party.   While it will intimidate most student readers at Passages, the graphic design, writing, and back matter are top notch;  this volume is a good choice for instructional use in the classroom.  

Back matter includes information on key people, a timeline, a glossary, recommendations for further reading, source notes, a bibliography, image credits and an index. Included is a comprehensive teaching guide by Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul available  here.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Special thanks to everyone at the National Book Foundation and especially Andy Donnelly for gifting us with a boxful of copies of this informative book.

Magoon, Kekla.  Revolution In Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People.  Somerville: Candlewick Press, 2021.

All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson

In writing this book, I wanted to be as authentic and truthful about my experience as possible.  I wanted my story to be told in totality: the good, the bad, and the things I was too afraid to talk about publicly.  This meant going to places and discussing some subjects that are often kept away from teens for fear of them being “too heavy.”

So begins Johnson as he introduces his memoir manifesto with an author’s note.  As the reader wades in, the heaviness is inevitable, but what Johnson’s first words do not prepare the reader for are the love and joy he conveys in describing his beautiful close knit family and their senses of humor and fierce devotion to one another.  

After his note and introduction, the author breaks his story up into four “acts,” collections of essays relayed in a conversational tone to a young adult audience.  He concludes with an afterword.  Teachers may wish to simply share the Introduction to bring this essential voice of our time into the classroom and allow students to select to read it in full as independent reading.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Johnson, George M.  All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson

Click here for discussion questions from the loft.org.

Ain’t Never Not Been Black by Javon Johnson

 Yes!   Your students will want to read this very of-the-moment book of poems by Dr. Javon Johnson, award-winning slam poet and Director of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  Johnson’s writing couldn’t be more accessible,  more honest, or more powerful.  Dense and tight, there is nothing extraneous here.  Highly recommended for proficient readers ages 14 and up. 

Johnson, Javon.  Ain’t Never Not Been Black.  Button Poetry, 2020. ebook.

Click here and scroll down to the third lesson for a compare and contrast lesson plan utilizing Johnson’s “Cuz He’s Black” poem and King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson with Artwork by R. Gregory Christie

No Crystal Stair tells the inspiring story of businessman, bookseller, and activist Lewis Michaux who started the first black bookstore in the country and was the Harlem haunt of Malcolm X.  Told through many voices and perspectives, and thoroughly researched, the book is accessible and compelling for readers interested in history. Highly recommended for interdisciplinary co-teaching and middle and high school book clubs.  Includes research notes, family tree, source notes, bibliography, index, and suggestions for further reading.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Hidden Figures Younger Readers’ Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly

In this younger readers’ edition of her popular adult non-fiction title, researcher and writer Shetterly makes the fruits of her seven-years research available to anyone who has not yet developed the vocabulary and stamina to consume her original text. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race is rendered accessible in this version to anyone able to read and understand English text on a fourth-grade reading level. Wider margins, double-spaced text, and simplified language make the 198-page book a natural pick for students who are able to comprehend non-fiction narrative but not yet ready to tackle the original title intended for sophisticate readers. Many readers will already be familiar with the story of several African-American omen who bravely contributed their talents to NASA and eventually send the US into space for the first time while confronting horrendous racism and sexism at work. Back matter includes an index, a glossary, suggested further reading, and source notes as well as a timeline, lending itself well to instruction on previewing texts as well as providing a wealth of support for less-experienced readers. Highly recommended for book clubs, interdisciplinary reading initiatives, and independent readers reading at upper-elementary levels and beyond. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber 
Shetterly, Margot Lee.  Hidden Figures Young Readers Edition: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.  New York: Harper, 2016. Print.

Programming Spotlight: Pre-theater and Post-Theater Visits from the New Victory Theater

Stepping during a pre-theater visit on 11/6/17.

A gallery walk during a post-theater visit on 11/13/17.

On November 8th we teachers and our administrators took all of our students at Passages Academy--Belmont to the New Victory Theater to see Step Afrika’s The Migration: Reflections On Jacob Lawrence.  The performance blended step, jazz, and African choreography with jazz, African, and gospel music to bring panels from Jacob Lawrence’s essential Migration Series to life for a young audience.  When I asked students what they thought of the show one student, D., responded by telling me the next time I take her to a dance performance, it needs to be longer.  Presumably so that she may enjoy it all the more.

We weren’t able to take pictures inside the theater, but here are a couple of moments we captured of the New Victory’s excellent pre-theater and post-theater workshops provided by teaching artists Chad Beckim and Janet Onyenucheya.  Pre-theater workshops  included step dancing exercises which helped students identify what they would see and appreciate the depth of performers skill and preparation.  Post-theater workshops invited students to engage with Lawrence’s artwork and recreate poses from selected panels, and think about how it feels to experience the poses of the figures from the paintings.  Click here for more photos and more about the interdisciplinary collaboration--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Billie: A Memoir by Billie King

Growing up is always hard, but for Billie it was especially difficult. At the age of 10, she already has to protect her mother from her abusive father and learn the ugly truth about her always distant sister, Nia. One day Billie, her mom, and sister finally decide to leave it all behind and move to a new neighborhood, but that's when the real problems begin. Their new neighborhood is slowly changing from a decent place to live to a crack-infested ghetto and Billie's mom starts to spiral out of control. She's barely home and the days that she is home, she spends in her room sleeping, caring very little for Billie and Nia. This is Billie King’s story as she tries to find her way through life and grow up in the middle of a dysfunctional family, riddled with both physical and sexual abuse, drugs and poverty. Billie: A Memoir is a rough read; there are some detailed graphic scenes which make this book more suitable for mature high school readers. Students who enjoyed reading Random Family and Tweak should pick this one up. --Claudio Leon

King, Billie. Billie: A Memoir. Beverly Hills: PRK Publishing, 2014. Print.

Guest Post: The Sounds of My Village by Ishmael Beah

Ishmael Beah by Sarah Stacke.  Image from www.themoth.org

Best known for his experiences as a child soldier in the memoir A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah’s pre-war childhood in a rural village of Sierra Leone deserves as much attention. This story is an audio recording of Beah’s performance for The Moth, a group which organizes live storytelling events worldwide. In recounting his upbringing, Beah pays homage to his community and its traditions.

When he was nine, Beah’s grandmother told him that “each person’s mind is their own personal library, and as life breathes its moments before you, those moments become memories, and those memories become narratives [...] that you put on a shelf in your own personal library.”  Inspired by her words to create his own rich narrative, Beah inscribes the rhythms of his village in his mind: the morning cry of the birds, the evening communal meal, and the elders’ nightly stories. With tenderness and humor, Beah narrates how his life, once anchored by the warmth of tradition, is torn apart by the unending impact of war. He draws attention to how each victim’s death is the loss of a storyteller and intimates that war does not just destroy the individual but wipes out the collective memory of a culture. War creates a past without storytellers, a tradition without practitioners, and survivors without access to the narratives they need to understand their place in civilization. This story provides an engaging introduction to Beah’s memoir and implants the idea that a young adult’s life is rich enough to compose a personal library.

While this story, suitable for students ages 9 and up, is easily accessible to English speakers, Beah’s dialect may require additional support and scaffolding to aid students in their understanding.

You can access “The Sounds of My Village” here on The Moth’s website. --Esther Kau

Esther Kau currently teaches middle school English in New Jersey. Her current roster of books include Garth Greenwall’s What Belongs to You, her daughter’s favorite, Ben Clanton’s Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea, and her son’s favorite, Steve Light’s Cars Go.

This is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe

The down-to-earth star of Precious strikes a conversational tone and shares her life story so far.  Growing up in Harlem in a family drawn together by necessity instead of romance, Sidibe articulates her maturing perspective, now suffused with humor, regarding the challenges of her unique experience of her parents’ green card marriage, childhood visits to family in West Africa, unstable housing, school struggles, fame, and elective surgery. Older teen readers looking for a new memoir may well enjoy Gabourey Sidibe’s recently published volume.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Sidibe, Gabourey.  This is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare.  New York:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

Black History in its Own Words by Ron Wimberly

Angela Davis, Saul Williams, Laverne Cox.  Dave Chappelle, Spike Lee, Arturo Schomburg.  Shirley Chisholm.  Serena Williams.  Cheryl Dunye.  Ice T.  Katherine Johnson.  Jimi Hendrix.

bell hooks.

Each of these luminaries, along with twenty-six others, some more famous, some less, are featured in this handsome volume which takes a less-is-more approach, text-wise, and combines with a slick handmade aesthetic to make a book that is hard not to pick up and virtually unputdownable until it is over, too soon for this reader who would like to see at least five hundred more additions.  

Each two-page spread features a grey scale portrait of its subject, and includes a short quote within its brightly colored frame.  The adjacent page provides one or two simple and usually intriguing statements describing the subject and usually cites the source of the quote.  Intended for older teens, this title will be sure to engage many who profess they do not like to read.  Perfect for teachers and librarians seeking an entry point to discuss the citing of sources. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Wimberly, Ron.  Black History in its Own Words.  Portland: Image Comics, 2017.  Print.

Programming Spotlight: X: Or Betty Shabazz v. The Nation at the New Victory Theater

All four photos X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation, by Marcus Gardley, directed by Ian Belknap
The Acting Company

Photo Credit: T Charles Erickson

On Friday, March 24th, a small group of teachers at Belmont accompanied our placement students to Manhattan's New Victory Theater to see Marcus Gardley's X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation.  Teaching artists Chad Beckim and Janet Oneyenuchea returned to Belmont on Monday to debrief with our students, some of whom spoke at length in response to the discussion questions the teaching artists posed.  It was wonderful to see them draw out the synthesis that had taken place in many attendees' minds since the start of the unit back in February as they reflected on their learning experiences.

We are grateful to everyone at the New Victory Theater for their steadfast support of our students' learning and unwavering encouragement to New York City's detained youth, and to Literacy for Incarcerated Teens (LIT) for the funding to purchase such a large block of tickets so that all placement students and their chaperones could share this special theater-going experience together.  Thank you!--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Two powerful essays couched in the form of two  letters, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is likely to be as gripping for incarcerated and detained young men of African descent born in America today as it was when it was originally published in 1963.  Baldwin’s brilliant sentences, precise language, masterful rhetoric, and deeply felt honesty shine like a multi-faceted gem in the 106 pages of this short volume.  For sophisticated readers who have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley or Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow who are burning to read more and understand more but are not willing to tackle another long text (i.e. Dyson’s Making Malcolm or Manning’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention), give them this.  This text would make an excellent compare and contrast pairing with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Click here for the DPLA teaching guide to exploring The Fire Next Time in a classroom context.

Baldwin, James.  The Fire Next Time.  New York: Vintage International, 1991.  Print.

Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary by Walter Dean Myers

The story begins with a black man bleeding and being pulled from a police car with his hands cuffed behind his back on 123rd street in Harlem.  The year is 1957 and Myers draws the reader in immediately by describing the local community’s reaction and the emergence of the “formation of black men.  They were all dressed neatly with short haircuts, their arms folded before them.  Some wore dark glasses, many wore suits.  None of them were smiling. (3)”  Myers weaves a compelling narrative starting with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam’s strategy for confronting police brutality in the late fifties and early sixties and then going back to the childhood and teen years of the child who would go on to courageously lead his followers, influence thinkers and activists around the world, and change the course of history in less than 200 pages.  Photographs of the subject and artifacts are sprinkled throughout.  Backmatter includes an index, photo credits, a bibliography, and a chronology which represents a double timeline; the left column of each page displays big events in American history beginning with the stock market crash in 1929, and the right column shows events in Malcolm’s life, beginning with his birth in 1925 and ending with three assassins’ sentencing in 1966.  A rich and timely work of narrative non-fiction. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Myers, Walter Dean.  Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary.  New York: Scholastic, 1993. Print.

Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly by Walter Dean Myers and Illustrated by Leonard Jenkins

There is much to love in this picture book biography featuring a condensed narrative which could easily interest a twelve or thirteen year old reader who is not yet familiar with the story of Malcolm X.  This text offers gorgeous, mature, full-color illustrations and emphasizes quotations from the subject on almost every page.  Malcolm’s words are woven into the narrative and set off from Myers’ text in bold block quotes.  This volume also features an unusual timeline as its only backmatter; unusual in that it covers the subject’s 39 years in twelve points and each point is accompanied by one or more quotes from Malcolm X. For example, the 1946 the text reads, “Malcolm is arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison.”  The accompanying quote reads, “ ‘I had gotten to the point where I was walking on my own coffin.  It’s a law of the rackets that every criminal expects to get caught.’” A helpful resource for scaffolding more sophisticated biographies of Malcolm X for tweens. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Myers, Walter Dean.  Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly.  New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Print.

brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

This Newberry Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winning memoir is the story of author Jacqueline Woodson’s own childhood, growing up in South Carolina and Brooklyn in the 1960s and 70s.  Told in free verse, close attention is paid to both the minute details and character-shaping events that make up a childhood.  The Civil Rights Movement lays the backdrop for Woodson’s tale of how family, religion, and school shaped her idea of home and sense of personal identity.  Highly recommended for middle grade fans of free verse and realistic fiction.  --Anne Lotito-Schuh

Programming Spotlight: Fly at the New Victory Theater

Last week, students in the Lutheran group attended a performance of Fly at the New Victory Theater.  The play dramatizes the story of the Tuskegee Airmen and cleverly includes a dance griot, a role filled by the extraordinary Omar Edwards.  New Victory Teaching Artists Chad Beckim and Janet Onyenucheya, remarkable artists in their own right, visited the following day to debrief with the students, who turned out to be full of questions about stagecraft, military service, and world politics.  Many thanks to Literacy for Incarcerated Teens for crucial funding that made this trip possible, and The New Victory Theater for providing us with access to this extremely worthwhile show.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

photo credit: The New Victory Theater

Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West by Lillian Schlissel

During an informal survey I conducted this week within our school library, I learned that 100% of the students I currently serve did not know that 25% of American cowboys in the 19th century were of African descent.  Black Frontiers provides the visual evidence that students desired to substantiate this claim.  Chapters on homesteaders and mountain men were of less interest, so I strongly suggest introducing this text with the aforementioned historical photographs or with the chapter on Nat Love, also known as Deadwood Dick, on page 31.  The brief chapter ends with a photograph of Love after he changed lifestyles and career paths to become a Pullman porter in 1890, which can also spark conversations about the development of the railways, the socio-economic opportunities at that time, and career choices.  This book, along with Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice will have students wondering how truth is uncovered when history is investigated and written.  --Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Click here for PBS’ middle school & high school lesson plans on African Americans in the West which is rich with additional resource suggestions.

Schlissel, Lillian.  Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West.  New York:  Aladdin Paperbacks, 2000.  Print.