Final Project

For my final project I am working on spending time researching American Indian novels. I am excited because I contacted Debbie Reese to ask her to help me locate some exceptional young adult novels and she e-mailed me back three suggestions and I was able to track down all three novels. I have spent some time thinking about novels that I have read that had the theme of American Indians in them and more often than not they were like the My Heart is on the Ground Dear America book that we looked at in class. While I'm on this topic, I was a little bit surprised to then see a Dear America book listed as a good example of Hawaiian culture in one of our coursepack readings for this week. Is this an example of differing opinions or is quality control vastly different in the Dear America series?

While I was exploring Debbie Reese's blog she had a link to a blog "How to write a historical young adult novel with an Indian theme (for fun and profit)" While it was a very humorous list, it was sad to realize it was funny mostly because nearly everything she said was true. Some of the things on her list:
Name your characters in the traditional Indian way, using the formula that has been followed for decades: an adjective or participle followed by a noun.

In one of my other classes my group just finished reading Sing Down the Moon which was a Newberry Honor book. In it there are names like Bright Morning which clearly follows the formula.

Another requirement for writing a novel:
Never, ever have your Indian characters use contractions. Indians did not do that.

We saw this come up over and over in My Heart is on the Ground

For the full text of this blog post http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2008/02/beverly-slapins-how-to-write-historical.html

I definately recommend you check it out.

I'm so glad that I will have some examples of really good novels about Native Americans to share with you at the end of the class. Hopefully after this project I can find novels to use in my own classroom that won't make me cringe when I hear some of the things that were on the list that I linked to above.

Spanish italics

When I was reading through Becoming Naomi Leon and then some of the other books that we read in class I wondered why everytime a Spanish word was used it had to be in italics. This seems to go against the idea of using a Spanish word just because the author felt it was the only word that really fit there. Italics are generally designed to call attention to something. Why an author feels the need to draw attention to words that are not English made me think. Doesn't the attention create an environment of English and not English, of us and "the other". Perhaps I'm reading into it negatively. Instead of creating a dividing environment maybe the author just wanted the reader to celebrate the differences.

Maybe even more realistically, that's what the publisher asked for so they could market it as a more multicultural book. Parents might pick up a book with Spanish words in it thinking it will be great for their kids to learn a few new words. Like I talked about in class though, I am not sure if Spanish words can really be integrated into a book like the author wants and be a prominent vocabulary lesson at the same time. You will just end up with redundancy which might frustrate bilingual readers. I tried to look up this issue online but wasn't able to uncover anything specifically.

Overall, I just find it hard to believe that an author/publisher really wants to make a sentence flow smoothly with both English and Spanish words if every single Spanish word is differentiated by the use of italics to draw attention to its use. I will try to continue looking to see if I can find any information on this use.

Addition: I found this Q & A online talking about this issue

Dear Mexican: Why are words in Spanish in your column in italics? I feel that including Spanish and Spanglish slang in articles should be read in a natural, conversational way and not be treated specially. When I read these italicized words, I feel I should make quote signs with my fingers and read them in a more American accent. Maybe that's just the way I read them, but wouldn't it be more worthy to integrate those words into the American language? Either way, it's something that bugs me in general, not really aimed at your article.
Putting the "Fun" in "Fundamentalist Grammar"
Dear Wab: Although the Mexican treats American immigration law the same way his countrymen regard the U.S. soccer team, he must grovel to the caudillos that are his copy editors, all of whom would deport me if I didn't italicize Spanish words. It's an arcane rule devised long ago by gabachos who figured gabacho readers were too pendejos to know when a word was foreign. I agree that America should integrate more Spanish words than those found on menus and place names — that's why I use so many of them. Although some Chicano authors don't italicize Spanish or Spanglish words as a political statement against God-knows-what, I like slanting palabras — it's a constant reminder for gabachos to get with the programa.

Al Capone

I was reflecting on our previous discussion of Al Capone and of literature featuring disablities (for lack of a better term) in general. It really seems to me like it is the forgotten area of multicultural literature. I tried to reflect on my own reading as a student in elementary school and while I can recall reading books about people of various races, I cannot ever remember reading any sort of book that had people in it with disabilities. In fact, the only book I can remember at all had a main character that was blind, but that was a book I bought and read on my own outside of school. In high school, students that had severe physical or emotional learning disabilities were really kept separate from the rest of the students. They rode a separate bus and had their own classroom. This complete separation is really not beneficial to anyone. Students initial curiosity can lead eventually to discrimination. That is why it seems so important to include books featuring characters like this in them. In Al Capone the sister was not the main character, but it captured her life in a way that did not make her awkward or weird. The important part of the book was the relationship between two siblings. It is important for students to see that all people have qualities that make them unique and we should embrace that instead of being afraid of it.