Honouring all races and ethnicities: Cultural competence with diverse youngCanLit

Continuing with the booklists that accompanied my presentation Becoming Culturally Competent with Diverse YoungCanLit at the Ontario Library Association's Superconference in Toronto last week, I hope this third post in a series of seven will help all become culturally competent. (See the first post here for details.)

Today's post will focus on...

A Change of Heart
Written by Alice Walsh
Illustrated by Erin Bennett Banks
Nimbus Publ.
32 pp.
Ages 4-10
2016
African American Lanier Phillips, Newfoundland, racism
Review here

French Toast
Written by Kari-Lynn Winters
Illustrated by François Thisdale
Pajama Press
32 pp.
Ages 6+
2016
Haitian, skin colour, name-calling
Review here

From Lands of the Night
Written by Tololwa Mollel
Illustrated by Darrell McCalla
Red Deer Press
32 pp.
Ages 7+
2014
Tanzania, illness, ancestors, celebration
Review here

Guru Nanak: The first Sikh Guru
Written by Rina Singh
Illustrated by Andrée Pouliot
Groundwood Books
64 pp.
Ages 9+
2011
Sikh faith

Haiti My Country
Written by Haitian schoolchildren
Illustrated by Rogé
Fifth House Publishers
44 pp.
Ages 7-11
2014
Haiti, nature, poetry

An Infidel in Paradise
Written by S. J. Laidlaw
Tundra Books
311 pp.
Ages 12+
2013
Pakistan, religion, intolerance
Review here

Malaika’s Costume
Written by Nadia L. Hohn
Illustrated by Irene Luxbacher
Groundwood Books
32 pp.
Ages 3-7
2016
Trinidad & Tobago, Carnival, absentee mother
Review here

Mingan My Village
Written by Innu schoolchildren
Illustrated by Rogé
Fifth House Publishers
42 pp.,
Ages 7-11
2014
Innu, Mingan Indian Reserve, Quebec

Mission Mumbai: A novel of sacred cows, snakes, and stolen toilets
Written by Mahtab Narsimhan
Scholastic Canada
272 pp.,
Ages 9-12
2016
India, Hinduism, Mumbai
Review here

My Life Before Me
Written by Norah McClintock
Orca Book Publishers
248 pp.
Ages 12+
2015
Historical fiction, racism, murder
Review here

Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey
Written by Margriet Ruurs
Illustrated by Nizar Ali Badr
Orca Book Publishers
28 pp.
All ages
2016
Refugees, Syria, dual-language, Arabic, immigration
Review here

Thunder Over Kandahar
Written by Sharon E. McKay
Annick Press
264 pp.
Ages 12+
2010
Afghanistan, class differences, women, religion

The Tiffin
Written by Mahtab Narsimhan
Dancing Cat Books
190 pp.
Ages 8-13
2011
India, abandonment, child labour
Review here

Tilt Your Head, Rosie the Red
Written by Rosemary McCarney
Illustrated by Yvonne Cathcart
Second Story Press
24 pp.
Ages 4-7
2015
Hijabs, compassion, support
Review here

Violet
Written by Tania Duprey Stehlik
Illustrated by Vanja Vuleta Jovanovic
Second Story Press
23 pp.
Ages 5-8
2010
Prejudice, tolerance, self-acceptance, colour

When the Rain Comes
Written by Alma Fullerton
Illustrated by Kim La Fave
Pajama Press
32 pp.
Ages 4-8
2016
Sri Lanka, monsoons, rice-planting, oxen, floods
Review here

Download the complete booklist here

French Toast

by Kari-Lynn Winters

Illustrated by François Thisdale

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-006-2

32 pp.

Ages 6+

November 2016

Although National French Toast is celebrated on November 28, I thought that reviewing this inspirational picture book on that day would trivialize its significant message.  And since my family enjoys French toast, the food, on Christmas morning, I opted to celebrate the book’s publication closer to that celebration, one similarly wrapped in inclusivity, culture, love and family.

While out for a walk with her grandmother, Nan-ma, Phoebe is called “French Toast” by kids from school.  Obviously humiliated, the little girl clarifies to the blind woman that she is called that because the colour of her skin is “Like tea, after you’ve added the milk.” (pg. 10) But Nan-ma sees that as “Warm and good” which gets Phoebe wondering since the label doesn’t usually make her feel good, just as “I don’t feel good when strangers at the mall comment on my ringlets or ask me about my accent.” (pg. 11)  This begins a discussion about the colour of Phoebe’s mother’s skin, usually identified as white, but which Phoebe recognizes more like stirred peach yogurt, filled with sweetness and goodness.  She sees her father as warm banana bread and her Nan-ma like maple syrup, and then others as cinnamon honey and toasted coconut. Meanwhile, as they walk, a girl from school engages Phoebe, surprising her by calling her by name. Finally Phoebe takes to heart the guidance she has taken and likewise given, flavouring her life, her family and herself with optimism.

From French Toast 

by Kari-Lynn Winters 

illus. by François Thisdale

French Toast starts out as less about the food and more about labelling but Kari-Lynn Winters, with illustrator François Thisdale (most recently awarded the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award), turns the story around to be about the goodness of food and relationships that nourish us.  Kari-Lynn Winters, who can do fun and whimsical (e.g., Good Pirate, Pajama Press, 2016) as well as serious and meaningful (e.g., Gift Days, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2012), impresses with her splendid foray into understanding and acceptance of skin colour, diversity and multiculturalism (Phoebe’s family is Haitian) and one that warms the heart and fills the belly with virtue and affection.

From French Toast

 by Kari-Lynn Winters 

illus. by François Thisdale

Kari-Lynn Winter’s story could only have been paired with the artistry of François Thisdale who illustrated the memorable The Stamp Collector (Jennifer Lanthier, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2012) and That Squeak (Carolyn Beck, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2015). François Thisdale, whose artwork is a magical blend of drawing and painting with digital imagery, balances the reality of Phoebe and her grandmother’s relationship and emotional situations with a dream-like landscape. His colours and textures fuse so many elements that the book becomes more art than merely a child’s picture book. And then there are the images of glorious food that cultivate nourishment for the soul, inspiring Phoebe and her grandmother, and anyone who reads the book, to see family and skin colour from a fresh perspective.

French toast may not be part of your holiday buffet but French Toast should definitely be on everyone’s bookshelf and story-telling list for the holidays and every day of the year when acceptance is vital i.e., always.  It feeds the spirit and bakes up multiple servings of compassion and open-mindedness, helpings we should all scoop out enthusiastically.

From French Toast

by Kari-Lynn Winters 

illus. by François Thisdale

A Big Dose of Lucky

by Marthe Jocelyn

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0668-9

249 pp.

Ages 12+

October 2015

"You may discover that going backward–discovering your past–will be the best route to the next chapter in your life." (pg. 31) 

This is what Malou, 16, is told as she and the other Seven girls in Orca’s Secrets books are released from the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls after a fire destroys it and they are given the barest of clues to their heritage.  Malou has never dreamed of having parents who might be monarchs or celebrities; she has only wanted an ordinary family that did things together.  The baby bracelet from St. Joseph's Hospital in Parry Sound with the name "Baby Fox" is her only clue to that family.  Though reluctant to leave, Malou heads by bus to Parry Sound, via Toronto, impressed by the diversity of people–her own skin colour had made her an anomaly in town where she was routinely identified as “the dark one or the little darkie or the colored girl” (pg.1)–and the newness of everything from pink popcorn to lemon meringue pie and grilled cheese.

In Parry Sound, Malou gets a bed at the local women's hostel and a job as a cleaner at the hospital, surprising considering her well-known untidiness at the Home, but "All it takes to be a cleaner? Don't be white." (pg. 70)  By way of a young orderly, Frankie, who shows an interest in her, Malou locates the stored records at the hospital and specifically the one for Sherry Fox who gave birth in 1948.  Along with an address, Malou finds a list of seven names which includes Sherry Fox's on the doctor's stationery and identified as A. B. cases.  Though her encounter with Sherry Fox, an Anishnaabe on the local reserve, reveals the bracelet was not Malou's but that belonging to, and taken from, Sherry's son Jimmy at birth, Malou makes an important connection with Jimmy and his classmate Pete and Pete's twin sister, Lucy, whose mother's name also appears on the list.

So begins a hunt by Malou and her new friends to locate the women whose names are on the list and find their connection.  A significant breakthrough comes from Pete's noting the physical similarity between Malou and a girl, Abby, who works summers at the marina.  And, with that, Malou and the other sixteen-year-olds are led to discover a program of artificial insemination at the hospital that involved an Jamaican intern named Andy Bannerman and probably others.  But this still does not reveal who Malou's mother may be.  Secrets long hidden may be being uncovered but it's only Sherry Fox's recollection of her own hospital visit that leads Malou to a mother she had long assumed dead.

The plotting by which Malou finds her mother is not as simple as that baby bracelet initially suggests, and for that I am thankful.  I should have given Marthe Jocelyn far greater credit, having read enough of her other books, including her young adult titles like How It Happened on Peach Hill (2007), Would You (2008), Folly (2010) and What We Hide (2014), to know the depth of her writing and the complexity of her storylines.  That plot is intense but secondary for me compared to Malou's experiences to become part of a world outside of the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls. Having  lived within the sheltered confines of the Home, Malou had little understanding, except via Joe the cook's small television, to glimpse the world of racial discrimination and the civil rights movement and multiculturalism, and her few experiences in town did little to expose her to all that world entailed.  Her discovery of the world and the freedoms that come with her departure from the Home are as much an eye-opener for the reader as they are for Malou.  She learns many things, none less than the price one must pay for freedom.

Freedom is harder than I expected.  Not the freedom part, but the making-decisions part.  Having a choice. (pg. 121)

All the girls in the Secrets series define themselves at the onset as orphans of the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls.  But ultimately, Malou learns “I’m not an orphan.  Not even half.” (pg. 249) and that she is very fortunate–there's A Big Dose of Lucky–having a family that is far more inclusive than ever imagined, except by Marthe Jocelyn.


SH...H...H...
Other books in the Secrets series are:

• Innocent by Eric Walters 
• My Life Before Me by Norah McClintock (Reviewed here)
• Shattered Glass by Teresa Toten (Reviewed here)
• Small Bones by Vicki Grant (Reviewed here)
• Stones on a Grave by Kathy Kacer
• The Unquiet Past by Kelley Armstrong