Stuff I've been working on

With LB, we've been working on manners and doing our best to model what we want to see from her.  Today she said to me: "After your done with that, could you please get my flower swimmy."  Amazing.  No feral child there.

This week I got an NEH grant. Which is to say, I was the behind-the-scenes person on an NEH grant.  My colleague and friend had the idea and did the bulk of the writing, I did a bit of writing and worked the connections.  Which means, I got an NEH grant (not a huge one).  Every time I think about it I want to laugh manically, because I'm no longer an academic and I got an NEH grant.

I'm out of my cooking slump.  Our fridge looks like healthy eaters live here. 

I made this Cabbage Torta from the NYTimes.  The pastry was excellent, overall very good recipe.

I made this chicken and shallot dish, also from the times.  Pretty good, I might try it again with pork, I wasn't super into the chicken thighs, but the flavor was good. 

I also made Trinidadian doubles, kind of like this recipe, but I do a dough with baking soda rather than yeast.  Delish.

I've also been making granola every weekend, LB is a big help, and eating that in the morning with yogurt.

And my lovely coworker gave me two dozen farm eggs, so we've been eating lots of hard boiled and fried eggs.

That's what's happening around here.

Circle Time

That's right, the learning never stops around here.

LB came home from daycare this week complaining that: "L said I was a monster.  I not a monster.  I told Miss A!"

Presumably L meant something along the lines of "Tag, now you're the monster.  Chase me!" But, I was cracking up imagining a tiny L confronting a tiny LB with the statement "YOU ARE A MONSTER!"

From the Preschool Files

Yesterday LB woke up in a terrible mood.  She cried and fussed and windged like it was her job.  And as she lay prostrate on the stairs, overcome by the idea of putting on her socks, I said to B, "WHY IS SHE SUCH A HUGE CRAB!"  LB increased the volume screaming "I AM NOT A HUGE CRAP, I AM NOT!"  Awkward.  But, at least she wasn't yelling "Fuck you, and fuck her too" [NOTE: B just expressed concern that gentle readers might not realize that those are song lyrics from a song by the artist CeeLo Green.  Not to worry, we are not cursing each other out here at the cozy house, we are simply singing along to inappropriate pop songs.] or any of the other non-daycare-appropriate phases that are spoken, sung, and yelled around here.

The younger set has gotten hip to the fact that LB has two mommies. Her classmate Allen had a little conversation with me that went like this:

A: What's your name?
Me: Mary
A: Does LB have two moms?
Me: Yes, LB has a Mama and a Mommy.
A: Hank has two moms.
Me: Cool.

End scene

End then today from another kid:

J: What's your name?
Me: Mary
J: Does LB have a daddy?
Me: No, she doesn't
J: Why doesn't LB have a daddy or a sister or a brother
Me: Maybe she'll have a brother or sister some day

And from LB after one of our very few playdates:

LB: Why R has a daddy?
Me: Some kids have a daddy, you have a mommy and a mama
LB: ...and a grammy and a grandad and a Jojo (our dog)

Preeclampsia in the News (short version: Juice Plus does NOT cure preeclampsia)

Most people who come to this site through search engines are looking for information about preeclampsia or giving birth on magnesium sulfate, both topics I've written about.  I have a google alert for preeclampsia news, and when I come across interesting or useful information I post it.

Most of the stuff I come across is really depressing, like this facebook thread. I don't think the woman who asked the original question about how to treat her preeclampsia at 27w (with two previous pre-e pregnancies) was wrong to ask this question on the internets.  That's what we do these day, we ask on the internets.  But I do think the crowdsourced advice that she received is scary.  Will it hurt this woman to do the Brewer's diet or give up hotdogs or take magnesium supplements?  No, probably not.  The problem is that our little human minds want so desperately to believe what we want to believe.  It's too easy to take advice based on no scientific evidence and think "I definitely feel better.  I definitely have less swelling.  My head hurts less.  That high BP reading must be a fluke." Which is fine until you wake in a hospital bed after passing out on your bathroom floor.

This thread from the Midwifery Today facebook thread was more useful in terms of offering a diversity of opinions, but worse in the multiple recommendations of Juice Plus (that's a trademarked product name) as a cure for preeclampsia.  Yes, from the "you've got to be kidding me" files, you can both participate in a multi-level marketing scheme AND cure preeclampsia.  In addition to JP, most supplement purveyors seem to have a number of expensive supplements to prevent and cure preeclampsia.

I wish there was a simple and natural cure for preeclampsia.  I'd love to be able to tell every woman who comes to this site desperate and scared that for only $44.50 a month she can buy a cure.  Instead I'm a adding a new rule to my rules for preeclampsia--never trust a health-care provider who seeks to involve you in a multi-level marketing scheme.  

Christopher Robin is white, and some African American children's books that should be classics

Most people trace the beginnings of African America children's literature to the activism and art of the Civil Rights Movement.  Books like The Snowy Day (1962) and Corduroy (1968) brought young black protagonists into the mainstream of American picture books.

However, before the 1960s there was a small and lovely body of African American children's books.  The first of these books came from small Black-owned publishing houses, while later books were published by the big white-owned firms (and written illustrated both by black and by white artists), sometimes with financial subsidies from foundations committed to interracial understanding and to African American education.

The books below present some challenges for present-day readers.  Some have a scene, a theme, or an illustration that would be considered problematic by most teachers and librarians.  Arna Bontemps, Sad-Faced Boy has one in scene in which the African American boys in the story kidnap a little white boy and dress him up in blackface.  I don't mind having it in LB's collection, we'll just talk about it, like we'll talk about blackface in the Little House books, but I can understand why an educator would think it inappropriate for a children's collection.  Rowena, Teena, Tot is a very cute story, but it includes an illustration of a little boy eating a huge leg of chicken and African American women with old-fashioned kerchiefs on their heads-racially stereotypical images that Black librarians weren't entirely comfortable with even in the 1930s.

These books were created in a world where the vast majority of books featuring Black children were viciously racist.  Black child characters were almost always stupid, cowardly, supersticious, subservient, and ugly.  Against that backdrop, the books below are beautiful and life affirming

Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, Popo and Fifina (1932).  Aren't these illustrations beautiful!  I'm not sure all editions have these illustration.  Bontemps and Hughes often complained about getting stuck with illustrators who did not know how to draw beautiful black children.

Arna Bontemps, Sad-Faced Boy (1937).  Three boys from the rural south runaway to Harlem.  I love this book, it is such a fun story.

Arna Bontemps, Sad-Faced Boy (1937).  Bontemps (and Hughes) were always short of money, and kept a little bit coming in with their juvenile titles.

Fannie Blumberg, Rowena, Teena, and Tot and the Runaway Turkey (1936).  I love some of the illustrations in this book, although as I said above, some are racist by today's standards.

Eva Knox Evans, Araminta's Goat (1938)  Evans also wrote the Jerome Anthony series.  These are just nice fun books.  If I remember correctly Evans was a teacher and wanted to provide books about the everyday lives of Black children, similar to the existing books for white children.

Ellen Tarry, Hezekiah Horton (1942).  A story about a car-crazy boy in Harlem.

Marguerite de Angeli, Bright April, 1946.  Most of the other books included in the post take place in all-African American communities.  Bright April is one of the first books for kids that shows interracial friendship and racial prejudice.

In the 1930s, when these books began to be published, Black educators (and white fellow-travelers) were concerned that Black children would learn to hate books if they continually saw negative representations of Black people in books (if books lied to them).  (In his New York Times piece, Walter Dean Myers shares his own experience of hating books that didn't represent his experience.) They also worried that Black children were being denied a cultural heritage-finding a history in which they were either absent or slaves.  Despite the statistically sad state of African American children's books, Black children can find some books in which they are represented in positive ways.  But despite the fact that a lot has changed in 100 years, Black children are still being denied a literary heritage of their own. 

Racial Rabbits and Other Problems in Multicultural Kid's Lit

[Following up on my previous post here, with more obscure questions.] In 1959, Alabama sought to ban The Rabbits' Wedding from public libraries because of it's celebration of interracial (rabbit) marriages.  True story.  Here's a little more about the librarian who sought to keep the book on the shelves.

Even in 1959, the effort to ban The Rabbits' Wedding was supported only by the harder edges of the  segregationist fringe.  But the incident raises an interesting question, do animals in children's literature have race?  Or maybe the question is, do child readers perceive animals to have race?

Of course in naturalistic portrayals of animals in animal habitats, race as a human construction is irrelevant.  Then there are books like the Arthur series in which some of the highly anthropomorphized characters have distinct racial/ethnic/religious identities.  These identities are signaled primarily through a limited set of distinctive cultural practices, so the reader knows that the Brain is African American because he celebrates Kwanza and Francine is Jewish because she celebrates Hanukkah and attends a bar mitzvah.

But what is Arthur's race?  Like most of the characters in the series, aside from the very white Buster, most of the characters are some shade of brown.  Does that make Arthur a character of color?  Do characters that don't signal cultural practices or language associated with a particular race or ethnicity leave child readers a space to ascribe or not ascribe a race to the character as they see fit.  Or does Arthur  represent a normative whiteness-a race that need not speak its name?  Or maybe Arthur just represents normative middle-classness without representing any particular race.

Who creates the race of anthropomorphized animals?  Maybe an animals race is in the creator (author and/or illustrator) or maybe it's in the reader-like those people so offended by and a black rabbit and a white rabbit joined in Holy matrimony. 

I'd love to know what young readers think.   B may have gently suggested that they would think I was a little bit crazy. 

More on some African American children's books that should be classics here.

In the News: Multicultural Children's Lit

Today's New York Times brought two editorial about the dearth of children's books about people of color,  "Where are the People of Color in Children's Books" and  "The Apartheid of Children's Literature." The authors have different approaches to the topic, but both agree that lack of representation of children of color presents problems for those who aren't represented in books and for those who never encounter people different from themselves in books.

We live in a small New England city that is now a majority minority city.  For LB, that diversity is normal in her everyday life, but I've realized that diversity isn't as normal for her in books.  Aside from Dora, Black and Brown characters are unusual enough that she will point them them out and ask if they are related to one of the Black or Brown kids she knows in real life.  At three LB has internalized the idea that white people are the norm in books and people of color are the exception.

Apparently it's not just us, the Times states that only 93 of 3200 children's books published in 2013 were about African Americans, city a study by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at Madison.  You can find the study here.

I've always thought our book collection was pretty diverse, but it's about to get EVEN MORE DIVERSE.  It should not be so hard to find kids books featuring people of color, and it's frustrating how quickly the books that do get published go out of print, but their are some good options out there.  Below are some books that we already have and others that I am ordering now.

This was my favorite new book of 2013.  It's a family story from the 3rd Great Migration with lovely illustrations.

I think these Lola books are super cute, and address issues of interest to LB (we met a support dog named Fletcher at the library this weekend and got to read with him).

 Rachel Isadora does a lot of nice books.  I particularly like this one:

I Can Do It Too! is a very compelling message for LB these days.

There are quite a few Civil Rights Era-related kids books out there.  The book about Claudette Colvin in one of my favorites, but too old for LB, so I'm taking a chance and ordering this book.

More to come about some of the multicultural kids books that should still be in print.  And if anyone has suggestions for other books, I'd love to hear them.