Black Brother, Black Brother

Juvenile fiction

    "Of all the kids in the school, the police found it easy to arrest me.  Why was Mrs. Kay scared?  Why did Mr. Waters seem to enjoy my troubles?  Worse, why did Headmaster call the police on me?  Since I've been at Middlefield, the police never came for anyone else."

     Donte, protagonist of Jewell Parker Rhodes' Black Brother, Black Brother, is being arrested on a trumped up charge.  But it's not the first time his new exclusive prep school has felt like a far from safe place.  Nobody there either looks like him or seems to like him.  His older brother, Trey, has been totally accepted.  Could this have anything to do with Trey being the lighter skinned of the two?

     Donte's tormenter in chief is Alan, captain of the fencing team, who uses his minions to torture him.  He's also a rich kid whose family donates millions to the school.  Whose side do you think the administration will take?

     Donte wants to humiliate Alan as he's been humiliated.  What if he can learn fencing and beat him at his own game?

     Rhodes wrote the book to explore racism and colorism in America.  "Skin color should not determine the ease with which one child is more fully embraced by society and the other is subject to racism.  Like Donte and trey, they should be treated equally and one not privileged over the other because of skin color.

     This engaging narrative would be a great way to introduce sports loving kids to these important issues and to the concept of the school to jail pipeline.

On a purrrsonal note, the biggest event of my week was the two day Red Cross blood.  Of course I ran canteen both days.  We had really good numbers of donors.  People were in a really upbeat mood.  I was able to try out an idea some more.  Red Cross blood drives tend to be generic.  I think if each has something special people will get more excited.  In September we gave out little stuffed animals in celebration of my birthday.  This time people wrote holiday messages to the Red Cross nurses and put them on a wall.  The nurses took them home to put up in their office.  The first blood drive next semester I'll bring in materials donors can use to make Valentines Day cards for their friends.  Lisa can even use that as a hook to draw them in.  (Jules)

It's still storming out.  Should I be looking for a bearded dude with a big boat?  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to all who participated in the blood drive.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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