Picture book
If political leader and activist Stacey Abrams and I had been kids at the same time and place we would have been chums. I loved this sharing of an incident from her childhood that helped shape the person she is today.
Stacey was a lover of words from the beginning. Sometimes she felt that they understood her better than the peers who teased her about being quiet or awkward.
One day Stacey's teacher invited her to be in a spelling bee. She'd nominated her and a boy named Jake, a mean kid who bullied her friends. Sometimes she also was his target.
"She wished she had used her clever words to help Suki or Zivko or herself by speaking up.
Perhaps at the spelling bee she would be braver. At the spelling bee, she would not be silent."
If this was fiction you know how that would have played out. But this real life story is more complex and interesting. It's a great book to share with the younger people in your life.
At the end of of her Author's Note Stacey shares this memory:
"Like Jake, some kids picked on me and others who were different. Over the years, I learned how to use my words to do good, even when I am most afraid. I constantly strive to speak up, especially when it makes me nervous. And if I am doing my very best, I make room for those who haven't discovered their superpowers. Yet."
On a purrrsonal note, as regular blog readers know, I'm a big time book and library geek. I was back in the day. While my peers were hanging out with Dick, Jane, and Sally watching Spot jump, jump, jump I was navigating the card catalog. I would have loved to have a friend who shared my passion for reading.
I did stick up for kids who were bullied such as immigrants. Only in my childhood they usually weren't people of color. This was before all people of a certain pigmentation banded together under the homogenized term "white". In my childhood in my part of Massachusetts I remember it as being Eastern Europeans. We had a Polish community of recent arrivals. When a newly arrived kid from that group showed up their classmates picked on them over stuff like their long names, their clothes, and the food they carried in for lunch. Not me! I was always the one who volunteered to be the friend to show them around and the one who showed up on the playground when the bullies threw down. (Jules)
At night I go back and forth between my people. Eugene watches stories on a big ass TV. Jules reads stories in books. They both need my snuggling. I don't know how people in catless homes survive. (Tobago).
A great big shout out goes out to all word lovers.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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