Representation and children's lit
Mar. 19th, 2009 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerWe went to the library yesterday, and I picked up a children's book that caught my eye -- Rapunzel's Revenge. It's the fairy tale Rapunzel, retold in a Western (which is to say, American Southwest frontier-ish) setting as a graphic novel for middle-grade readers.
I read it while my kids played on the playground by the library. As I was finishing up, Molly peered over my shoulder. "What's that?" she asked. "It looks good."
"You can have it when I'm done," I said, and when we got home, I tossed it on the couch by her bag of library books.
It's a fun take on Rapunzel. She frees herself (and meets the useless prince coming to not rescue her as she heads away from her prison) and uses her braids kind of like Wonder Woman's lasso. (Well, except I just looked up Wonder Woman and apparently if you're caught by it you have to tell the truth? The braids aren't that powerful. If you're caught by them, you're just immobilized.) Comics, even comics for kids, often have problematic portrayals of women. (Even when the text empowers them, the pictures are frequently oversexualized.) I loved the portrayal of Rapunzel: she's smart, practical, determined, and unquestionably the hero of the story. She does pick up a male love interest (Jack, formerly of the Beanstalk) but he's emphatically a sidekick.
Coming fresh from a lot of LJ discussions of racist tropes, though, and with (gorgeously done, full color) illustrations it was hard to escape the fact that this was something of a "what these people really need is a honky!" story. (There are an absurd number of stories -- including some really good ones, incidentally, that I LOVE -- that involve a white outsider who saves a bunch of people of color.) This is even weirder considering that Rapunzel (who has white skin and red hair) comes face to face with her real mother early in the book, and her mother has brown skin and black or dark brown hair. Maybe we're supposed to figure that Rapunzel's mother just has a deep tan, which Rapunzel doesn't because she's led a sheltered and largely indoor life? It's still kind of odd. Jack, the sidekick and love interest, has brown skin and black hair, so it's not an all-white set of main characters, and the people they save from the villainess are mixed (some white, some brown, some oppressed formerly mine-owning dwarves who are now trying to catch fish with pick axes) but... yeah.
I volunteered in Molly's classroom today, and I noticed as I was leaving that Molly's friend R. was reading the book. Another girl, M., was reading over R.'s shoulder. When I stopped to tell R. to please be sure to give the book back to Molly, not in the basket to send it back to the school library, because it came from the St. Paul library system, yet another girl, A., said "ohhhhh, it came from the St. Paul library? I need to have my mother take me there so I can check it out, too!" All of these girls were instantly drawn in by the visual depiction of the butt-kicking heroine. So much so that I am thinking of buying a copy to donate to the classroom.
But it would be really nice to find some other graphic novels (also appropriate for children! this is a mixed-age classroom of first, second, and third graders) that have protagonists who are not white.
This year, due to how my schedule and the classroom schedule intersect, I've mostly done photocopying and similar stuff, rather than reading with kids, but last year I mostly sat and listened to kids read when I came to volunteer. The kids who read to me were mostly black or biracial. They were reading to me from a set of phonics-oriented easy readers with titles like "Jen's Pet Hen" and "Jet Bed." Every child pictured in those phonics readers is white. (Not all the books have children; many have anthropomorphized animals.) Once kids get a little better at reading, the books available in the classroom offer more diverse portrayals of kids, but the struggling readers are encouraged to use the phonics library, because it helps to solidify certain letter sounds.
One of the many nice things about graphic novels is that they can make fairly complex stories accessible to struggling readers. The teacher agrees with me about this, incidentally -- she has no objection to kids reading comic books. Anything I buy for the classroom needs to have a sturdy cover and high-quality paper, though, or it will just fall apart.
Suggestions? The absolute, overriding priority is that it all needs to be appropriate for six-year-olds. Kissing is fine but no sex. People can punch each other and even die, but no torture, gore, or excessive grimness. Expletives rendered as @*&#! are fine, but no actual swearing.
ETA: Specifically, I am looking for recommendations for graphic novels and comic books (but the collected-into-a-proper-paperback sort, not the magazine-that-will-fall-apart sort).
I read it while my kids played on the playground by the library. As I was finishing up, Molly peered over my shoulder. "What's that?" she asked. "It looks good."
"You can have it when I'm done," I said, and when we got home, I tossed it on the couch by her bag of library books.
It's a fun take on Rapunzel. She frees herself (and meets the useless prince coming to not rescue her as she heads away from her prison) and uses her braids kind of like Wonder Woman's lasso. (Well, except I just looked up Wonder Woman and apparently if you're caught by it you have to tell the truth? The braids aren't that powerful. If you're caught by them, you're just immobilized.) Comics, even comics for kids, often have problematic portrayals of women. (Even when the text empowers them, the pictures are frequently oversexualized.) I loved the portrayal of Rapunzel: she's smart, practical, determined, and unquestionably the hero of the story. She does pick up a male love interest (Jack, formerly of the Beanstalk) but he's emphatically a sidekick.
Coming fresh from a lot of LJ discussions of racist tropes, though, and with (gorgeously done, full color) illustrations it was hard to escape the fact that this was something of a "what these people really need is a honky!" story. (There are an absurd number of stories -- including some really good ones, incidentally, that I LOVE -- that involve a white outsider who saves a bunch of people of color.) This is even weirder considering that Rapunzel (who has white skin and red hair) comes face to face with her real mother early in the book, and her mother has brown skin and black or dark brown hair. Maybe we're supposed to figure that Rapunzel's mother just has a deep tan, which Rapunzel doesn't because she's led a sheltered and largely indoor life? It's still kind of odd. Jack, the sidekick and love interest, has brown skin and black hair, so it's not an all-white set of main characters, and the people they save from the villainess are mixed (some white, some brown, some oppressed formerly mine-owning dwarves who are now trying to catch fish with pick axes) but... yeah.
I volunteered in Molly's classroom today, and I noticed as I was leaving that Molly's friend R. was reading the book. Another girl, M., was reading over R.'s shoulder. When I stopped to tell R. to please be sure to give the book back to Molly, not in the basket to send it back to the school library, because it came from the St. Paul library system, yet another girl, A., said "ohhhhh, it came from the St. Paul library? I need to have my mother take me there so I can check it out, too!" All of these girls were instantly drawn in by the visual depiction of the butt-kicking heroine. So much so that I am thinking of buying a copy to donate to the classroom.
But it would be really nice to find some other graphic novels (also appropriate for children! this is a mixed-age classroom of first, second, and third graders) that have protagonists who are not white.
This year, due to how my schedule and the classroom schedule intersect, I've mostly done photocopying and similar stuff, rather than reading with kids, but last year I mostly sat and listened to kids read when I came to volunteer. The kids who read to me were mostly black or biracial. They were reading to me from a set of phonics-oriented easy readers with titles like "Jen's Pet Hen" and "Jet Bed." Every child pictured in those phonics readers is white. (Not all the books have children; many have anthropomorphized animals.) Once kids get a little better at reading, the books available in the classroom offer more diverse portrayals of kids, but the struggling readers are encouraged to use the phonics library, because it helps to solidify certain letter sounds.
One of the many nice things about graphic novels is that they can make fairly complex stories accessible to struggling readers. The teacher agrees with me about this, incidentally -- she has no objection to kids reading comic books. Anything I buy for the classroom needs to have a sturdy cover and high-quality paper, though, or it will just fall apart.
Suggestions? The absolute, overriding priority is that it all needs to be appropriate for six-year-olds. Kissing is fine but no sex. People can punch each other and even die, but no torture, gore, or excessive grimness. Expletives rendered as @*&#! are fine, but no actual swearing.
ETA: Specifically, I am looking for recommendations for graphic novels and comic books (but the collected-into-a-proper-paperback sort, not the magazine-that-will-fall-apart sort).
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 07:50 pm (UTC)I know there are easy-reader series out there that aren't all white, because the books DD brings home from her grade 1 classroom for "home reading" are full of kids of all sorts. The one she's got at the moment is from a series called "Sunshine Books" published by Prentice Hall Ginn. Durable, though, they're not (they're teeny little paperbacks, 32pp or so).
You might check out Kids Can Press (http://www.kidscanpress.com/US/GRADES-1-to-3-C2384.aspx?section=2) -- the link is to their Grades 1-3 page for US visitors. Their books are generally of excellent quality and very durable (DD has lots of them). Though a lot of them are actually about animals rather than people (Scaredy Squirrel, Chester the cat, Elliott Moose, Franklin the Turtle, Stanley the dog), now I come to think about it ...
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:27 pm (UTC)And I was going to suggest the English-language translations of the Astérix & Obélix books, which meet all the six-year-old criteria, but it must be said that their portrayal of people other than Europeans is ... not unproblematic. To be fair, the authors are totally equal-opportunity trash-talkers -- pretty much everybody in all the books, of whatever culture, is crazy and/or an idiot at some point, and the Romans of course particularly --but still.
My husband is the comics and graphic novels expert in our family; I'll ask him when he gets home from work what TPBs he would recommend, if any. DD really likes the Growing Up Enchanted series, and I feel safe in recommending them from a "girls get to kick ass" standpoint but must admit they're pretty much all white. Also I am not sure about their availability as TPBs.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:01 pm (UTC)Is there a list somewhere of the titles in chronological order?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:15 pm (UTC)YOTSUBA&! is cute, though more graphic than novel.
The Courtney Crumrin series, which while the main character is pale-skinned and blond is still about being an outsider. Also Polly and the Pirates by the same author has a kick ass girl in it.
My brothers LOVED Bone, but they were definitely older when they read them.
I liked American Born Chinese, but it's older--probably middle grades to HS.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 08:05 pm (UTC)The Rabbi's Cat, written and illustrated by Sfar, may be acceptable for a classroom (it's a little adult at time, but just in terms of like, philosophy not sex, I think, but it's been a couple of months since I read them.), but even if it isn't, *you* should totally read them. I LOVE it. The cat gets the power of speech by eating a parrot, and then totally is a brat. It's really good, not at all white (They're set in Algeria, so there may be lighter skin, but certainly not much of it.) and probably good for both you and Molly, maybe, even if you decide against it for the classroom.
That said, with regards to the Rapunzel story, I should mention that both my mom and dad have very dark hair and tan easily, and me and my youngest brother are red-haired. I suspect that growing up the only redhead in a dark family, while genetically totally possible, is probably very strange, so *I* think a book like that is an excellent book. :) (There are some very very strange old wives tales about why people get red-headed children--I found them recently while looking up an example in a book of someone saying, "Oh, let me do that, we don't want to end up with red-headed twins" when someone tries to pour their own tea. Basically, you'll end up with a red-headed child if you act low-class and common--pour tea someone else made, cut in front of people on the stairs, etc. )
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-20 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-20 02:27 am (UTC)Perhaps you can find some stuff here?
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/540000654.html