Black History Month - The story of a brilliant African American inventor

One of the things I love about reviewing nonfiction children's literature is that I learn a lot. When I started reviewing titles for Black History Month I got to 'meet' so many wonderful men and women of African descent who stories are inspiring. I saw how many of these stories never ended up in history books, and I like to do my part to set the record straight in my own small way. African Americans, and other people of African descent around the world, have made enormous contributions to society, and we need to learn about their achievements about the honor them. 

Today you are going to meet an African American inventor who created many useful things in his productive life. One of these inventions, in particular, saved lives. 

To the Rescue: Garrett Morgan Underground 

Monica Kulling

Illustrated by David Parkins

Non-Fiction Picture Book

For ages 5 to 7

Tundra Books, 2017, 978-1-101-91882-1

Garrett Morgan was the seventh child of former slaves who lived in Kentucky and worked as sharecroppers. It was a hard life, and when it was time for Garrett to leave school so that he could get a job, the fourteen year old decided to travel north to Cleveland, Ohio, to see if he could find a job that was less unremitting. 

   Garrett started out sweeping floors in a clothing factory but he did not keep that job for long. When he noticed that the sewing machine belts were always breaking he invented a belt that was stronger, and thus he earned him his employer’s gratitude and a new job as a sewing machine repairman. 

   This new job served Garrett well and by the time he was twenty-one he owned his own sewing machine shop, and a house. He and his wife, Mary Anne, then opened a tailoring shop as well. 

  Garrett had a gift for inventing. Quite by accident he created a hair product that straightened curly hair. This invention led to him creating a new business, the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company. The success of his cream and other hair products gave Garrett the financial freedom to spend more of his time inventing.

   When Garrett saw a need he set about trying to create a product that would take care of that need. He saw that firefighters required some kind of device that would help them rescue people from smoke-filled buildings, and so he invented the Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. 

   Though his invention worked well, Garrett could not get the local fire departments interested in the hood, because Garrett was African-American. Then a disaster struck the city which changed Garrett’s life forever.

   All too often black inventors and innovators are not given credit for their creations. In this book Monica Kulling tells the story of an inventor whose inventions literally saved lives. Her engaging writing brings Garrett Morgan to life for young readers, and David Parkins’ ink and watercolor illustrations takes children back to a time when everyday life was a lot more dangerous than it is now.

The Bookish Calendar for March - Books for March birthdays, holidays, and special days

 

Dear Bookish Friends,

Here is the Bookish Calendar for March. I'm bringing it to you today so that you have plenty of time to plan for days that interest you and the children in your lives. Many of the birthdays and special days on the calendar link to review pages for books that are associated with those birthdays and special days. For example, March third is the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, and I have reviewed several books about this remarkable inventor. If you click his name on the March Bookish Calendar you will be taken to the page where these reviews can be found. 

March is Women's History Month

March is National Craft Month (USA)

March 2nd is National Read Across America Day

March 3rd is World Wildlife Day You can find many books suitable for this day here.

March 3rd is World Book Day (UK and Ireland)

March 8th is International Women's Day

March 19th is International Read to Me Day

Match 20th is the Spring Equinox

March 20th is World Storytelling Day

March 20th is International Day of Happiness

March 21st is World Poetry Day

March 21st is International Day of Forests

March 22nd is World Water Day

March 23 is National Puppy Day (USA)

March 25 National Tolkien Reading Day (USA)

March 26th is Make up your own holiday day (USA)

March 27th is World Theatre Day

March 28th Earth Hour

Book Hoarding? What's that?

Dragon: Do humans hoard things? 

Human: Sometimes, I guess. Do you have a big pile of treasure somewhere? 

Dragon: Absolutely not! Those gold hoarding dragons really give us a bad name! 

Human: So what do you hoard? 

Dragon: Books, of course

Human: But you're a fire dragon. 

Dragon: I know! I find these poor abandoned books, but I can't even read them because I'll burn them

The human runs off and grabs an armful of books, before coming back to sit by the dragon.

Human: "Chapter One. The Mole had been working hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and splashes of whitewash over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above, below, and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”

Newsletters from Groundwood Books for Educators, Librarians, and Parents

My friends at Groundwood Books, a marvelous publishing house based in Canada, have a new program that I'd like to tell you about. The Groundwood Newsletters are designed to provide educators, librarians, and parents with strategies, tips and information to accompany fiction and non-fiction Groundwood books. 

Each newsletter is centered on a single topic, theme or genre with a list of recommended titles that will encourage young readers to explore and engage with the theme. The series will include lots of great resources such as reading, writing, arts and media responses; a spotlight feature on a Groundwood author/illustrator; a curated book list with brief annotations; and additional links to the Groundwood website for more book information and/or teacher guides. They are written specifically for teachers by a well-known academic and children’s lit specialist.  The series of five newsletters will be distributed once a month but late subscribers will have access to any of the newsletters already delivered.

The theme for the January Newsletter was Exploring Acceptance, Belonging, and Community through Picture Books. The Groundwood picture book titles featured in the newsletter focused on such matters as race and ethnicity, gender identity, the immigrant experience and bullying. When listening to these

books being read aloud, or when reading these books independently, students can be inspired to

confront intolerance and foster a sense of inclusion. In this way, the titles encourage students to

think about acceptance, belonging and community. 

You can sign up for the newsletters HERE
 

The 2021 Caldecott Award Winning Picture Book - Watercress

When I was six years old my parents and I, along with my aunt, some friends, and our pets, left the only home I had ever known. A civil war had been raging in the country where I was born and we had no choice but to leave. We left behind our house, most of what we owned, many of our friends, and the graves of loved ones who had been killed in the conflict. Even now, all these years later, the clouds of my refugee and immigrant memories still drift across my sky once in a while. 

The book I am reviewing today won the prestigious Caldecott Award on January the twenty-fourth of this year. It is a powerful and beautifully illustrated story about a child whose parents had to leave their homeland when their lives there became unbearable. She feels no connection with her parents' homeland, and she does not know their story until the day when the past reaches into the present. 

Watercress

Andrea Wang

Illustrated by Jason Chin

Picture Book

For ages 5 and up

Holiday House, 2021, 978-0823446247

One day an old, faded car containing a girl and her family is driving down a dirt road that is lined with rows of corn. Between the edge of the road and the corn fields there is a ditch full of water. The mother has “eyes as sharp as the tip of a dragon’s claw,” and she sees something in the ditch. She calls out and her husband slams on the brakes. 

   Wild watercress is growing in the ditch and soon the girl, her brother, and their parents are in the ditch. With rolled up trousers and bare feet they walk through the cold water, mud squishing between their toes, cutting the watercress. When a car drives by the girl hides her face, ashamed of what they are doing. American people would never gather watercress in a ditch, but the girl’s parents were born in China, and for them being able to collect watercress to eat connects them to their homeland and their past.

   Back at home the girl refuses to eat the watercress that her mother serves with dinner. As far as she is concerned eating free food is just as shameful as wearing hand-me-down clothes, and taking furniture that other people have thrown away on the side of the road. 

   Then the girl’s mother brings out a photograph to show her daughter. It is portrait of the mother with her parents and her little brother. She begins to tell the story of her family, a story that is threaded with pained and loss.

   All over there world people leave their homelands to start new lives elsewhere, driven away by war, famine, persecution, or a natural disaster. This story is based on an event that took place in the author’s life. When she was a child her Chinese immigrant parents collected watercress from a roadside ditch, and their behavior only reinforced for her that she was different. Being different can be hard for children, and they often fervently wish that they could be like everyone else and fit in.

   With great sensitivity and gentle touches of emotion, the author tells a story that is dear to her heart. It is a story that will resonate with anyone who has felt as if they don’t belong, and it is also a tender tribute to all those families who have had to start over in a new place or foreign land. 

   Jason Chin’s art perfectly complements Andrea’s lyrical text. His watercolors bring together the traditions of western and Chinese art, beautifully connecting the past with the present. 

The new television series of Around the World in Eighty Days

 This February the BBC and Masterpiece released a new television series that is loosely based on the story in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. The story has been changed a fair bit, but I have to say that it is very entertaining, and is beautifully made. I am enjoying the series a great deal, accepting that this is an adaptation of Jules Verne's tale. If you are a purist and only watch films that are faithful to the books that inspired them, then this series will probably not suit you. 

Did anyone try to go around the world in eighty days?

 

In Jules Vern's book, Around the World in Eighty Days, the heroes in the story are men. The book was first published in French in 1872, and at this time adventure stories did not have female heroes; it simply wasn't done. 

The story caused quite a stir, and I would have thought that many gentleman adventurers would have tried to duplicate the journey taken in the book. I cannot find a record anywhere of a single man doing so. Not a one. Really, did none of the gentleman adventurers of the time read books? Did none of them have even a soupcon of imagination or derring-do? 

Apparently not. It wasn't until 1889 when someone took on the challenge. A woman called Nellie Bly undertook to travel around the world in eighty days for her newspaper, the New York World. She managed to do the journey within seventy-two days, and she met Jules Verne in Amiens in France. Her book Around the World in Seventy-Two Days became a best seller. Who was this remarkable woman?

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864. Her family owned a lucrative mill in
Cochran, Pennsylvania. At the age of six, Bly lost her father. Unable to maintain the land or their house, the family moved. Her mother also remarried but later divorced due to abuse. While attending Indiana Teacher’s College, Elizabeth added an “e” to her last name becoming Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. Due to the family’s financial crisis she was unable to finish her education. No longer in school, Bly focused on helping her mother run a boardinghouse. One day an upset Bly decided to pen an open letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Her short but important piece pointed out the paper’s negative representation of women. The editor not only read Bly’s response, he printed her rebuttal, and offered Bly a job as columnist. As a newspaper writer, she took the pen name Nellie Bly. Although Bly was a popular columnist, she was often asked to write pieces that only addressed women.

Wanting to write pieces that addressed both men and women, Bly began looking for a paper that would allow her to write more serious work. In 1886, she moved to New York City. As a woman, Bly found it extremely hard for her to find work. In 1887, Nellie Bly stormed into the office of the New York World, one of the leading newspapers in the country. She expressed interest in writing a story on the immigrant experience in the United States. Although, the editor declined her story, he challenged Bly to investigate one of New York’s most notorious mental hospitals. Bly not only accepted the challenge, she decided to feign mental illness to gain admission and expose how patients were treated. With this courageous and bold act Bly cemented her legacy as one of the foremost female journalists in history. 

Nellie wearing her travel outfit. 

After pretending to be mentally ill for ten days, the New York World published Bly’s articles about her time in the insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island in a six-part series. Ten Days in a Mad-House quickly made Bly one of the most famous journalists in the United States. Furthermore, her hands-on approach to stories developed into a practice now called investigative journalism. Bly’s successful career reached new heights when she decided to travel around the world after reading the popular book Around the World in 80 Days. Her trip only took seventy-two days, which was a world record. Bly would only hold it for a few months.

In 1895, Bly married millionaire Robert Seamen and retired from journalism. Bly’s husband died in 1903 leaving her in control of a massive manufacturing company. In business, her curiosity and independent spirit flourished. Bly went on to patent several inventions related to oil manufacturing, many of which are still used today. In her later years Bly returned to journalism, covering the woman suffrage movement and World War I. While still working as a writer Bly died from pneumonia on January 27, 1922.

I have reviewed several books for young readers about Nellie Bly, which you can find in the TTLG library. 

A BBC Radio Theatre Production of Around the World in Eighty Days

When I was growing up my parents used to listen to the BBC World Service throughout the day. They were journalists and at that time the BBC provided the most up to date news from around the world. I grew heartily sick of the introduction music for the news programs, and heartily sick of listening to the news every five minutes, or so it seemed to me. Being the child of not one but two journalists had its disadvantages. 

In addition to the news, the BBC had many other programs, and one of the things I enjoyed the most were their radio theater productions. These programs were more than just audiobooks; the story was told using multiple voice actors, background sounds, and music. I listened to many stories this way, including A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Wind in the Willows, and Around the World in Eighty Days. You can still find these recordings online, and today I bring you the excellent BBC production of Around the World in Eighty Days. Please click on the image above to get to the recording. You can listen to the program on any device that can access YouTube. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Jules Verne, the author of Around the world in Eighty Days.

 

Jules Verne was a 19th-century French author who is famed for such revolutionary science-fiction novels such as 'Around the World in Eighty Days' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.'
   Jules Verne hit his stride as a writer after meeting Pierre-Jules Hetzel, a publisher who nurtured many of the works that would comprise the author's Voyages Extraordinaires. Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction," Verne wrote books about a variety of innovations and technological advancements years before they were practical realities. Although he died in 1905, his works continued to be published well after his death, and he became the second most translated author in the world.
   Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France, a busy maritime port city. There, Verne was exposed to vessels departing and arriving, sparking his imagination for travel and adventure. While attending boarding school, he began to write short stories and poetry. Afterward, his father, a lawyer, sent his oldest son to Paris to study law.

   While he tended to his studies, Verne found himself attracted to literature and the theater. He began frequenting Paris' famed literary salons, and befriended a group of artists and writers that included Alexandre Dumas and his son. After earning his law degree in 1849, Verne remained in Paris to indulge his artistic leanings. 

   Verne continued to write despite pressure from his father to resume his law career, and the tension came to a head in 1852, when Verne refused his father's offer to open a law practice in Nantes. The aspiring writer instead took a meager-paying job as secretary of the Théâtre-Lyrique.

   In 1856, Verne met and fell in love with Honorine de Viane, a young widow with two daughters. They married in 1857, and, realizing he needed a stronger financial foundation, Verne began working as a stockbroker. However, he refused to abandon his writing career, and that year he also published his first book, The 1857 Salon.

   In 1859, Verne and his wife embarked on the first of approximately 20 trips to the British Isles. The journey made a strong impression on Verne, inspiring him to pen Backwards to Britain, although the novel wouldn't be published until well after his death. In 1861, the couple's only child, Michel Jean Pierre Verne, was born.

   Verne's literary career had failed to gain traction to that point, but his luck would change with his introduction to editor and publisher Hetzel in 1862. Verne was working on a novel that imbued a heavy dose of scientific research into an adventure narrative, and in Hetzel he found a champion for his developing style. In 1863, Hertzel published Five Weeks in a Balloon, the first of a series of adventure novels by Verne that would comprise his Voyages Extraordinaires. Verne subsequently signed a contract in which he would submit new works every year to the publisher, most of which would be serialized in Hetzel's Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation. 

   In 1864, Hetzel published The Adventures of Captain Hatteras and Journey to the Center of the Earth. In 1865 Verne was back in print with From the Earth to the Moon and In Search of the Castaways.

   Inspired by his love of travel and adventure, Verne soon bought a ship, and he and his wife spent a good deal of time sailing the seas. Verne's own adventures sailing to various ports, from the British Isles to the Mediterranean, provided plentiful fodder for his short stories and novels. In 1867, Hetzel published Verne's Illustrated Geography of France and Her Colonies, and that year Verne also traveled with his brother to the United States. He only stayed a week — managing a trip up the Hudson River to Albany, then on to Niagara Falls — but his visit to America made a lasting impact and was reflected in later works.

   In 1869 and 1870, Hetzel published Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Around the Moon, and Discovery of the Earth. By this point, Verne's works were being translated into English, and he could comfortably live on his writing.

   Beginning in late 1872, the serialized version of Verne's famed Around the World in Eighty Days first appeared in print. The story of Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout takes readers on an adventurous global tour at a time when travel was becoming easier and alluring. In the century plus since its original debut, the work has been adapted for the theater, radio, television and film, including the classic 1956 version starring David Niven. A new serialized television series of the story was recently made, and I'm enjoying watching it. 

   In all, Verne authored more than 60 books (most notably the 54 novels comprising the Voyages Extraordinaires), as well as dozens of plays, short stories and librettos. He conjured hundreds of memorable characters and imagined countless innovations years before their time, including the submarine, space travel, terrestrial flight and deep-sea exploration.

   His works of imagination, and the innovations and inventions contained within, have appeared in countless forms, from motion pictures to the stage, to television. Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction," Verne is the second most translated writer of all time (behind Agatha Christie), and his musings on scientific endeavors have sparked the imaginations of writers, scientists and inventors for over a century.

Let us dare to enter a world full of Wonder

 

In 1993 I started writing a children’s book, and in an effort to better educate myself about the craft I attended a Society for Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators conference in New York City. One of the speakers, a renowned children’s book author, impressed on her audience that one of the most important things that an author must do is to “read, read, read.” I read. Many of the books that I ‘studied’ were ones that I had not read as a child and these included, The Rescuers, Miss Hickory, Stuart Little, The Same Stuff as Stars, and many more. Others were books that I knew well, but had not read in years.

All this reading caused me to catch the Children’s Literature Bug, and as a result I became a children’s book reviewer. In the late 1990s I created Through the Looking Glass Children’s Book Reviews (TTLG), an online journal that showcased children’s books of all kinds. To date the online library contains 9,621 reviews. My goal was to help adults to find captivating books for the children in their lives that would encourage the children to become lifelong readers and learners.

In the fall of 2021 I decided that I would shift this focus a bit. I will continue to review books that I hope will capture the interest of young readers. Perhaps one of the books I review will turn them into bibliophiles; one can hope. In addition, I will be reviewing and exploring children's literature that will appeal to adult readers.

Over the years I have learned that children’s literature has a lot to offer adults. The language one finds in children’s books can be so rich and so exquisite that at times it can quite take your breath away. Themes are explored in ways that force adult readers to re-examine their own beliefs and perceptions. Simple truths that we have forgotten are suddenly brought to the fore, and when we look at the world we start to see things in a new light. Here is an article that I think beautifully explores why adults should read children's literature.

I believe that adults need children’s literature more than ever, to counter the struggles and darkness that often overlays our lives. I invite you to set aside your “I am too old for this” ideas and give yourself permission to read children’s literature.