Children's books for the 4th of July 🇺🇸 🎇

Notes from the Reading Nook: June 22

Well, after 10 hours and two separate trips to the emergency room on Sunday, we learned my 4yo has Lyme disease. I work on all issues of this newsletter weeks and weeks in advance so they are 98% done by the day I intend to send them, with the exception of final edits and in-the-moment commentary, which is a good thing because right now I am just dog paddling and doing the best I can. (We caught it early and she started treatment immediately — I am immensely grateful for both of these things, among others.)

Isn’t it strange how the hard parts of life seem to happen all at once? While my daughter and I were passing through the waiting room at the hospital, we ran into my mother and grandmother, who were there on their own ER business; I am traveling for work tomorrow for the first time since Before; I am ostensibly getting ready to leave for a week of vacation with two small children on Saturday. I need new tires on my car sooner rather than later; there are 21 (21?!) baby snails growing in our fish tank (provenance unknown); people seem to be jumping into post-pandemic life with a fervor to return to our toxic, too-busy ways that alarms me (and which I want no part of); I haven’t swept the kitchen floor in so long I made an actual path through the detritus this morning when I was setting down breakfast dishes on the table. I’m not complaining — these are “problems,” and the ones that are real are of the first-world variety to be sure — just wondering, do the good parts of life stack up on top of each other like this? And would we notice if they did?

There’s a paragraph in Annie Dillard’s (justifiably) famous, excellent essay, “Living Like Weasels,” where she writes about “choosing the given:”

The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

I’m not saying I would choose for my kid to be sick (much less have Lyme), I’m not saying I’m glad for any of these things that feel stacked up and heavy right now: but I think there is something there, in choosing the given, about not fighting it. We do live in choice, we are not weasels; I have control over how I approach what’s happening, what thoughts I think, what kind of attitude I have. There is solace — and strength — in “noticing everything, remembering nothing,” in surrender and letting go, and though I don’t know if I’ll ever get there fully, if I can ever inhabit that space like a wild animal can and does, I choose the given. This is where I am right now, and I will not make it worse by resisting.

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What we’re reading

• George’s Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl

• Splash, Anna Hibiscus! by Atinuke

• She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! by Kathryn Lasky (this one has sparked a ton of conversation)

• Alligator Baby by Robert Munsch

• Tiny Feet Between the Mountains by Hanna Cha

• The Wind’s Garden by Bethany Roberts (I reviewed this in issue No. 2)

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Mini issue! 4th of July

In the (admittedly long) list of Things Other People Enjoy That I Definitely Do Not, the Fourth of July is pretty high up there (see also: running, cheesecake, outdoor temperatures that exceed 75 degrees). It has always felt, for no reason, like a melancholy holiday to me. Plus, I find myself a reluctant patriot these past few years — reconciling, it feels like constantly, the history of America I was taught in school and E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G else that actually occurred, a struggle that outrages and conflicts me and leaves me with a sense of dissonance, and even despair. This is a side effect of knowing more than I did in the past, more than I ever have before. It’s possible to love one’s country and have deeply mixed feelings about it at the same time — in the parlance of the ye olde Facebook, “it’s complicated” — and that’s where I find myself these days.

Despite all that, I recognize it is a holiday that people enjoy — it has that wonderful “height of summer” feel for many — and since I do believe in connecting reading to everything and connecting everything to reading, as I mentioned in the March issue of (How) Can we read? — here, for you, is a mini issue on the Fourth of July:

• This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie, illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen (the original was published in 2008, an updated version in 2020 -- they are the same book)

• Pie is for Sharing by Stephanie Parsley Ledyward (I reviewed this in my special edition on summer a few weeks ago) 

• A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution by Betsy Maestro

• Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus

• Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama

• The Flag We Love by Pam Muñoz Ryan

• The Star-Spangled Banner by Peter Spier (even though Francis Scott Keyes wrote the song during the War of 1812, I think this can still be readily used for the Fourth of July, especially since the likelihood of hearing it during festivities is high)

• My Fourth of July by Jerry Spinelli

• The Journey of the One and Only Declaration of Independence by Judith St. George

• Red, White, and Boom! by Lee Wardlow

• How to Bake an American Pie by Karma Wilson 

• Apple Pie Fourth of July by Janet S. Wong

I strongly caution you against some of the most beautiful and terrible books often mentioned (and shared with fervent praise by various folks on Instagram and other places online) for the Fourth of July: George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; Benjamin Franklin; and The Star-Spangled Banner, all by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire. They are well-written and on the whole, well-done — and they contain some really racist imagery (depictions of both African Americans and Native Americans). I will freely admit that at one time I owned some of these books, having snatched them up the moment I saw them at library sales without actually paging through them then and there, and I am eternally grateful I read them myself before sharing them with my children. Some problematic content is worth reading and discussing, absolutely — I do not shy away from hard conversations — but some is not. Stories (and images!) matter, including the story of our country — how we tell it, whose stories we tell and whose we don’t (intentionally or not). We have choices. There are plenty of good books about our Founding Fathers and early American history out there. The racism in these is too egregious to get past.

If you’d like to view some of these images as well as read excellent analyses of the racism therein and why it matters that we choose other books, I recommend “Revised! Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire’s ABRAHAM LINCOLN” by Debbie Reese of American Indians in Children’s Literature, as well as “When ‘Really Good’ Books Hurt” (about George Washington) by Amber O’Neal Johnston of Heritage Mom. “When ‘Really Good’ Books Hurt” should be required reading for everyone, regardless of your interest in (or lack thereof) the D’Aulaire’s books — it’s that powerful. (Both Reese’s and Johnston’s blogs and resources are outstanding and well worth digging into.)

While we’re in the adjacent neighborhood of this topic: a few weeks ago when I sent out a survey about this newsletter, one of you mentioned that you’d like to “hear more about my philosophy on diverse reads and how this informs how I approach books featuring other races/ethnicities/cultures with my kids.” I’m learning all the time about how I can be a better ally in the world, and part of that, for me, is how I can do that via this newsletter — which is to say, there is probably more forthcoming from me on this topic yet this year. But in the meantime, I’ll direct you to the various times I’ve shared my philosophy on diverse reads here already:

• I wrote about why I believe providing our children with diverse and inclusive books is not just important but crucial (with a special emphasis on representation of Black children, families, bodies, history, and culture) in June 2020, in issue No. 2

• After reading a fantastic book, Lessons from Turtle Island: Native Curriculum in Early Childhood Classrooms by Guy W. Jones and Sally Moomaw, I assessed our home library for books that contained racism against Native Americans and wrote about the outcome, first in Ten Titles on Tuesday: 2/16/21, then again in Ten Titles on Tuesday: 2/23/21. My comments and subsequent decisions about Little House on the Prairie remain the most controversial thing I’ve written here, which is fine — I stand by them. (As part of my process, I mentioned researching Westward expansion books and resources — you can see what I came up with here.)

It’s also worth pointing out that since I wrote the above, I’ve realized that using the word “diverse” to mean “non-white” centers whiteness, so I’m changing that — I’ll be using the word “inclusive” instead (except when using more specific inclusive language would be a better descriptor of a book, character, author/illustrator, etc). I welcome feedback about language (or anything else) so if there is an area in which you think I can improve, please let me know.

As I said, the issues above are not the extent of my philosophy, and I am not finished writing and sharing my thoughts here. This is an ongoing learning process and conversation, and I am as committed as ever to inclusive representation in this newsletter.

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Check yourselves, your children, and your pets for ticks every day, people. And be gentle with your sweet selves.

Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah