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Laurie Ann Thompson

Laurie Thompson

Review: Fred Korematsu Speaks Up

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Yes­ter­day, Jan­u­ary 30th, was Fred Kore­mat­su Day of Civ­il Lib­er­ties and the Con­sti­tu­tion. I did­n’t know much about Fred Kore­mat­su’s sto­ry before read­ing this brand new book, Fred Kore­mat­su Speaks Up, writ­ten by Lau­ra Atkins and Stan Yogi, and illus­trat­ed by Yuta­ka Houlette. I’m so thank­ful, now, that I do.
Fred Korematsu Speaks Up cover

Hey­day Books
Middle-grade
Hard­cov­er, 112 pages
ISBN: 978–159714-368–4
Price: $18.00

The book shares the sto­ry of Fred, and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Japan­ese Amer­i­can liv­ing on the West Coast dur­ing World War II, when the Unit­ed States forced immi­grants and cit­i­zens alike into intern­ment camps. Fred resist­ed the order, and was jailed. The ACLU took up his case, which he even­tu­al­ly lost. He lost more than just the case. Many Japan­ese Amer­i­cans turned on him, and he was offi­cial­ly con­sid­ered a con­vict­ed felon. More than 40 years lat­er, the ACLU decid­ed to try his case again after find­ing new doc­u­ments show­ing that the gov­ern­ment had lied in his orig­i­nal case… and this time they won, set­ting an impor­tant prece­dent going for­ward. Fred knew what was hap­pen­ing was wrong and stood up against it. He was a changemaker.
Here’s an excerpt from the main text:

Fred chal­lenged something
he thought was unfair.
He spoke up–
for himself
and for all Japan­ese Americans,
even when no one stood with him.
It was not easy.
But Fred fought
to make the Unit­ed States–
his country–
a fair­er place.
And he won.
We all won.

I love the lyri­cal, spare text of the book. I love the engag­ing lay­out and design fea­tur­ing illus­tra­tions, full-col­or pho­tos, def­i­n­i­tions of terms, and his­tor­i­cal time­lines. There are also side­bars and pull­out box­es that explain con­cepts in greater detail and add con­text. And I espe­cial­ly love the call­out bub­bles that ask read­ers direct ques­tions, such as, “Have you ever been pun­ished for some­thing you did­n’t do?” These make Fred’s sto­ry all the more relat­able and help read­ers make per­son­al con­nec­tions from Fred’s sto­ry to the injus­tices they see all around them every day.
In addi­tion to non­fic­tion text fea­tures such source notes, bib­li­og­ra­phy, pho­to and text cred­its, and an index, the book also includes a fan­tas­tic sec­tion about how read­ers can stand up for social jus­tice them­selves. I’m sure it will encour­age read­ers to pur­sue activism and change­mak­ing for themselves.
The tim­ing for a book like this could­n’t, unfor­tu­nate­ly, be more time­ly and impor­tant, as it comes just days after the exec­u­tive order ban­ning immi­gra­tion from cer­tain countries.
As Fred’s daugh­ter Karen writes in the afterword:

Fred Kore­mat­su’s sto­ry is the reminder of the con­stant dan­ger that the gov­ern­ment will over­reach unless the pub­lic and the courts are vigilant.

I urge you to check this one out for the chil­dren in your life, for your­self, and for our coun­try and ALL of its citizens.

FREE author visits!

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Did you know I am cur­rent­ly offer­ing free 10-minute vir­tu­al Q&A ses­sion via Skype, Google Hang­outs, Face­Time, etc. to any­one who is using one of my books in a class­room, library, or youth group? To book an online vis­it today, please vis­it https://laurieannthompson.youcanbook.me/.
Longer vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tions are also avail­able, at a rate of $150 for up to an hour. For more about vir­tu­al vis­its, includ­ing oth­er authors who are com­fort­able pre­sent­ing in this way, please vis­it Online Author Vis­its.
Either way, vir­tu­al vis­its are a win-win: you don’t have to pay my trav­el expens­es, and I don’t have to waste time traveling!

Celebrate Inclusive Schools Week!

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Schools across the coun­try are observ­ing Inclu­sive Schools Week this week. Accord­ing to the Inclu­sive Schools Net­work:

Inclu­sive Schools Week is an annu­al event spon­sored by the Inclu­sive Schools Net­work (ISN) and Stet­son & Asso­ciates, Inc., which is held each year dur­ing the first full week in Decem­ber. Since its incep­tion in 2001, Inclu­sive Schools Week has cel­e­brat­ed the progress that schools have made in pro­vid­ing a sup­port­ive and qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion to an increas­ing­ly diverse stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing stu­dents who are mar­gin­al­ized due to dis­abil­i­ty, gen­der, socio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus, cul­tur­al her­itage, lan­guage pref­er­ence and oth­er fac­tors. The Week also pro­vides an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty for edu­ca­tors, stu­dents and par­ents to dis­cuss what else needs to be done in order to ensure that their schools con­tin­ue to improve their abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly edu­cate all children.
This year, the Inclu­sive Schools Week’s theme focus­es on the con­cept of being a hero. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting because the def­i­n­i­tion of a hero, a per­son not­ed for coura­geous acts of nobil­i­ty of char­ac­ter, res­onates with all of the stu­dents, par­ents, teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who take coura­geous steps for­ward each day to pro­mote accep­tance for all. The path toward more inclu­sive edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices has been chal­leng­ing, yet reward­ing. This year, we will focus on the steps along this jour­ney and con­sid­er the courage it requires.

Now that’s a mis­sion I can get behind, and I think my book Emmanuel’s Dream, about one of my per­son­al heroes, fits this theme per­fect­ly! Emmanuel is not only a per­son with a dis­abil­i­ty, but he’s ded­i­cat­ed his life to cre­at­ing an inclu­sive school for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties and with­out and his home coun­try of Ghana.
Inclu­sive Schools Net­work has more great ideas and resources for cel­e­brat­ing Inclu­sive Schools Week here.
And Savan­na Flakes has some oth­er great sug­ges­tions for all ages here on Multi­B­riefs: Exclusive.
 

Be a Changemaker update: StudentRND

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CodeDay logoStudentRND logo
I thought some of you might be inter­est­ed in read­ing an update from one of the co-founders of Stu­den­tRND, which was one of the orga­ni­za­tions pro­filed in Be a Change­mak­er: How to Start Some­thing that Mat­ters. Stu­den­tRND is now the force behind Code­Day, which is “a nation­wide event where stu­dent pro­gram­mers, artists, musi­cians, actors, and every­one else can get togeth­er and build apps & games for 24 hours.”

a scene from CodeDay
Kurt Schloss­er inter­viewed Tyler Menezes, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Seat­tle-based non­prof­it and GeekWire’s lat­est Geek of the Week, and I espe­cial­ly loved this ques­tion and answer, which has stuck with me and is rat­tling around in my brain in inter­est­ing ways. Schloss­er asked, “What do you do, and why do you do it?” to which Menezes replies:

I’m the exec­u­tive direc­tor of a tech edu­ca­tion non­prof­it. You don’t get rich or famous work­ing for a non­prof­it, but we can solve prob­lems that fly under-the-radar of pure-prof­it ini­tia­tives. If you asked most tech investors who we were, they wouldn’t know our name, but if you asked a stu­dent from a low-income school in Auburn, Phoenix, or Boca Raton, there’s a decent chance they could tell you a sto­ry about an impact it made on their life. That’s why I do it.

Way to go, Tyler and Stu­den­tRND! Read the full arti­cle here. 

Books can open doors to inclusivity

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Many of us who write books for chil­dren, rec­om­mend books for chil­dren, and teach chil­dren to read books have been won­der­ing late­ly what more we can do to move the world for­ward to have more inclu­siv­i­ty, com­pas­sion, and empa­thy. We’ve been won­der­ing if our efforts real­ly make a dif­fer­ence. We may have been tempt­ed to pull back, to retreat, to avoid the dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions and inter­ac­tions. But some­times push­ing past the dis­com­fort and mak­ing an hon­est con­nec­tion can make all the dif­fer­ence in the world.
I just read a beau­ti­ful arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post writ­ten by fel­low kidlit author and agency-mate Suzanne Nel­son. In the arti­cle, Suzanne writes about a birth­day par­ty that she did­n’t go to because the girl was hear­ing impaired and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with her was awk­ward. She writes about how she still has­n’t been able to for­give her­self for mak­ing that cow­ard­ly deci­sion. And she writes about how we can help oth­ers avoid act­ing similarly:

Every moment we share books, music, con­ver­sa­tion, or meals with peo­ple who might not be com­plete­ly like us, is one moment more that we ben­e­fit and grow as human beings, that we rec­og­nize the beau­ty, flu­id­i­ty, and worth of our dif­fer­ences. And the more we do this as adults, the more our chil­dren rec­og­nize how to inter­act, how to have empa­thy. We all have moments when we are less than kind, less than tol­er­ant, less than the peo­ple we strive to be. With expo­sure, con­tact, and edu­ca­tion, I hope my chil­dren grow up to have few­er of them. Maybe they’ll walk through that door, and maybe they’ll go to that party. 

The arti­cle remind­ed me of a woman I was friends with in col­lege. I met her when I was work­ing as an assis­tant in the com­put­er lab. She often need­ed help. She was in a motor­ized wheel­chair. She was elder­ly. She had cere­bral pal­sy. She could bare­ly talk. She made the let­ters on the screen so big she could only read a few words at a time. She would type her papers one dif­fi­cult key­stroke at a time, jab­bing at the key­board with a fat pen­cil. She often missed and had to go back and try again, some­times shriek­ing in anger. It was painstak­ing to watch, and yet I admired her deter­mi­na­tion. Were any of the rest of us tak­ing our edu­ca­tion that seri­ous­ly? Would any of the rest of us have will­ing­ly put our­selves through that frus­tra­tion and embar­rass­ment every sin­gle evening and weekend?
Over time, I got to know her bet­ter. I start­ed being able to deci­pher her slurred speech and have mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions with her. Despite the com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers and the gen­er­a­tion gap, we became friends. Some­times when she saw me out­side of the lab she would get so excit­ed that she would smile and laugh, which often result­ed in drool and spit­ting. Peo­ple around us would recoil in dis­gust. I had too, ini­tial­ly, but what’s a lit­tle spit among friends? When I invit­ed my boyfriend, who is now my hus­band, to vis­it me at col­lege, we made plans to go out to din­ner with her. She knew how I felt about him and was joy­ous at meet­ing him, so piz­za and drool were fly­ing every­where, often spray­ing us and our plates. I was wor­ried that he’d be upset with me for putting him through this, but the entire meal he treat­ed her with respect and inter­est. He wait­ed for me to trans­late her speech so he could con­verse with her. After­ward, he said some­thing to the effect of, “What an inter­est­ing, amaz­ing woman. I can see why you like her.” I fell in love with him all over again because of that interaction.
My life has been for­ev­er enriched by know­ing her and oth­ers like her. So, I urge you to read Suzan­ne’s whole arti­cle, here. I urge you to write, rec­om­mend, and teach books that will help chil­dren choose kind­ness and inclu­siv­i­ty and to val­ue all kinds of peo­ple of all abil­i­ties, races, reli­gions, ori­en­ta­tions, iden­ti­ties, etc. And I urge you to take a risk, seek con­nec­tion over com­fort, and make sure you go to that party.
Here are some pos­si­ble books to start with:

Check out the Starbucks Upstanders series

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Starbucks Upstander photo

Starbucks Upstander photo
Have you seen the new orig­i­nal series that Star­bucks is putting out, called Upstanders? It’s real­ly cool! Accord­ing to their web­page:

Upstanders is an orig­i­nal col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, films and pod­casts shar­ing the expe­ri­ences of Upstanders – ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things to cre­ate pos­i­tive change in their com­mu­ni­ties. Pro­duced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chan­drasekaran, the Upstanders series helps inspire us to be bet­ter citizens.

Appar­ent­ly, they–like so many of us–were feel­ing a bit dis­heart­ened by our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate. Their press release says,

In con­trast to the divi­sive­ness and cyn­i­cism cur­rent­ly fuel­ing our nation­al dis­course, Star­bucks today debuted “Upstanders,” its first orig­i­nal con­tent series, which aims to inspire Amer­i­cans to engage in acts of com­pas­sion, cit­i­zen­ship and civil­i­ty. “Upstanders” fea­tures ten sto­ries, each told in writ­ten, video and pod­cast form, about ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things to cre­ate pos­i­tive change in their communities.…
“We’ve asked our­selves what is the role and respon­si­bil­i­ty of a pub­lic com­pa­ny and, as cit­i­zens, how we can cat­alyze hope in a time when we need more opti­mism, empa­thy, com­pas­sion and lead­er­ship,” said Schultz.  “The upstanders fea­tured in this series are inspir­ing indi­vid­u­als whose actions are emblem­at­ic of the Amer­i­can spir­it and what is miss­ing from so much of today’s nation­al dia­logue. We have always been sto­ry­tellers at heart, and more of these sto­ries need to be heard. We are using our scale to share them as broad­ly as possible.”

I love see­ing these kinds of exam­ples of how every­one can choose to Be a Change­mak­er, so the Upstanders pod­cast is now added to my sub­scrip­tion list! Here’s a trail­er to give you an idea what it’s all about:


 
Cat­alyz­ing hope in a time when we need more opti­mism, empa­thy, com­pas­sion and lead­er­ship? Now that’s some­thing I can stand up for. Thanks, Starbucks!
Upstanders image

Introducing… TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: IT’S ALIVE!

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Two Truths and a Lie cover

Squee!! In case you missed it yes­ter­day, Mia Wen­jen over at the awe­some book blog Prag­mat­ic Mom host­ed my next book, Two Truths and a Lie: It’s Alive!, for a cov­er reveal AND a sneak peek at some of what’s inside!
Here’s a tiny look at the cover…Two Truths and a Lie cover
But, be sure to check out her whole fun post for a big­ger ver­sion, plus an exclu­sive sneak peek at the intro­duc­tion, a taste of our side­bars, and a glimpse of our author bios!
Can YOU spot the lies? 🙂
 

Interview: Luke Reynolds on SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL

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A cou­ple of weeks ago I reviewed SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL by Luke Reynolds. As you may recall, I LOVED it! Today, Luke was nice enough to let me inter­view him so I could get a few of my ques­tions answered (and let you get to know him a bit bet­ter, as well!). If you haven’t read my review yet, please go take a quick peek now so you’ll know a bit about what we’re talk­ing about in the inter­view below.
Luke Reynolds headshot
LAT: Wel­come, Luke! Thanks for agree­ing to answer my questions!
LR: LAURIE!!!
LR: You are so kind and thought­ful and what a won­der­ful sur­prise! I real­ly appre­ci­ate it! Indeed, I would be hon­ored and thrilled to have an inter­view on your blog. THANK YOU!!!!! And thank you so much for shar­ing the book: you rock!!!
(Ed. note: See what kind of guy he is? I ask him to do work so I have con­tent to put on my blog, dur­ing the month of Sep­tem­ber when he’s busy set­tling in with a new class of stu­dents as well as run­ning the par­ent­ing gaunt­let him­self, and he thanks me for it, in the sweet­est way pos­si­ble. Plus, he loves excla­ma­tion points as much as I do!!! OK, back to the interview…)
LAT: You say you did­n’t know this stuff in mid­dle school, so… just how old were you when you final­ly fig­ured it all out? (As I said in my review, I did­n’t get it until I was in my 30s. This book could’ve saved me an awful lot of time and trouble!)
LR: I think it was yes­ter­day that I fig­ured it all out! 🙂 Truth­ful­ly, I haven’t fig­ured out all that much, but what I want­ed to do in the book is to remind myself and my stu­dents about what real­ly mat­ters in life. One of the things I say to my 7th grade stu­dents almost every day is that I AM STILL GROWING AND LEARNING, and I always promise them that any­thing I chal­lenge them to do, I try to do too. So, much of the book is from what my own 7th grade stu­dents have shown and taught me in their own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and joy and pain and hope and humor.
LAT: I love that! I AM STILL GROWING AND LEARNING should be tat­tooed onto all of our fore­heads, I think. Maybe we’d final­ly achieve world peace, or at least get a lit­tle clos­er than where we are now.
LAT: Through my school vis­its, I am lucky enough to meet with kids from preschool to high school. I love them all, but mid­dle school­ers are my favorite kids to work with. Yes, there is so much vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and joy and pain and hope and humor all jum­bled togeth­er in them, and they’re try­ing so hard to make sense of it all. I’ve heard teach­ers say mid­dle school­ers are the hard­est to teach, but I sus­pect they may be the most reward­ing, too.
Surviving Middle School cover
LAT: After read­ing SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL, I want to make your book required read­ing for every kid every­where who is about to start mid­dle school (so they don’t make all the dumb mis­takes I did). Then I felt bad, because I have con­flict­ing feel­ings about required read­ing at any age. I imag­ine that you prob­a­bly have sim­i­lar­ly mixed feel­ings. As an author, it prob­a­bly sounds pret­ty good to you! But… as a lan­guage arts teacher, how do you feel about required read­ing of that type?
LR: You are so kind! I am a big believ­er in let­ting kids choose which books they want to read. Even for SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL, I would try to do what I do with oth­er books and students–I’d show them the book and let them read the first few pages, and if it does­n’t res­onate with them, I’d want them to find some­thing else. Any­time we force stu­dents to read only cer­tain kinds of books, I think we turn them off to read­ing in gen­er­al. Not to say that we should­n’t chal­lenge our stu­dents to read a vari­ety of books–but we should always encour­age kids to find books that are absolute­ly IRRESISTIBLE to them–books they love so much they’d want to smoth­er them with ketchup and eat them if they could. I tried my best to make SURVIVING a smoth­ered-in-ketchup kind of book, but if a kid does­n’t think so, I would say to not read it and find some­thing else! 🙂
LAT: OK, then I hope every kid who is about to start mid­dle school any­where wants to smoth­er SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL with ketchup and eat it! 
LAT: Speak­ing of eat­ing… I have a gluten sen­si­tiv­i­ty, so I can’t eat gar­lic bread any­more. I sore­ly miss its but­tery good­ness, which, frankly, made your book a lit­tle hard to swal­low at times (I had to give all of mine to the space gnomes!). What can you rec­om­mend as a gluten-free alter­na­tive to gar­lic bread that I can avoid giv­ing to the space gnomes?
LR: Great ques­tion! Our fam­i­ly is attempt­ing to go most­ly gluten-free, and while at first I was ter­ri­fied of miss­ing out my food­ish soul-mate, I found out about some tru­ly sub­lime gluten-free breads. Rudi’s is a com­pa­ny that makes AMAZING gluten-free gar­lic bread. So even the space gnomes can’t steal the gar­lic bread from those of us who need to or want to live gluten-free! (Here’s the link to Rudi’s Prod­ucts: http://www.rudisbakery.com/)
LAT: Awe­some! Thanks for the recommendation!!
LAT: Final­ly, if you had to con­dense your whole book into one short para­graph, what would you want mid­dle school­ers to know most of all?
LR: One thing: YOU MATTER. Your pres­ence here on this earth and in your school and in your fam­i­ly MATTERS. You belong, even when you feel like you don’t. You have a beau­ti­ful pur­pose, even when you feel like you don’t. Just because you might feel weird or strange or like some­body is con­stant­ly stick­ing pret­zel sticks up your metaphor­i­cal nose, IT WILL GET BETTER. I promise.
LAT: Beau­ti­ful, Luke. I hope they hear your message.
LAT: Thank you again for stop­ping by and shar­ing your thoughts with us today and for doing what you can to make the world a bet­ter place, one mid­dle school­er at a time.
LR: Thanks so much Lau­rie, and huge hugs and much peace your way!
What a great guy, huh? For more great writ­ing from Luke Reynolds, be sure to check out his oth­er books, as well as his blog.

Emmanuel’s Dream a WA State Book Award Finalist!

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Washington State Book Awards logoThe Wash­ing­ton Cen­ter for the Book announced the Wash­ing­ton State Book Award final­ists for 2016, and I’m hon­ored to say that Emmanuel’s Dream is among the three final­ists for the Scan­di­uzzi Chil­dren’s Book Award in the Pic­ture Book category!
The Wash­ing­ton Cen­ter for the Book at The Seat­tle Pub­lic Library announces the Wash­ing­ton State Book Awards final­ists in eight cat­e­gories for out­stand­ing books pub­lished by Wash­ing­ton authors in the pre­vi­ous year. This is the 50th year of the pro­gram, for­mer­ly called the Gov­er­nor’s Writ­ers Awards. The book awards are giv­en based on the strength of the pub­li­ca­tions’ lit­er­ary mer­it, their last­ing impor­tance, and their over­all qual­i­ty to an author who was born in Wash­ing­ton state or is a cur­rent res­i­dent and has main­tained res­i­dence here for at least three years.
Win­ners will be announced at the awards cel­e­bra­tion, held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sat­ur­day, Oct. 8, at the Cen­tral Library. The awards pro­gram will fea­ture emcee Frances McCue, an award-win­ning poet and arts admin­is­tra­tor who received the Wash­ing­ton State Book Award for poet­ry in 2011 for “The Bled.” The pro­gram also fea­tures brief read­ings from 2016 win­ning titles. A recep­tion and book sign­ing will fol­low in the Liv­ing Room on Lev­el 3 of the Cen­tral Library. The awards and cel­e­bra­tion are spon­sored by The Seat­tle Pub­lic Library Foundation.
Con­grat­u­la­tions to all of the final­ists, espe­cial­ly to friends Deb­o­rah Under­wood, Martha Brock­en­brough, Kel­ly Jones, and Jes­sixa Bagley!

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