Dia’s Story Cloth: The Hmong People’s Journey of Freedom, by Dia Cha -- Day 71

Dia’s Story Cloth: The Hmong People’s Journey of Freedom is an outstanding documentary look at an individual and a people’s journey when forced by war to leave home and country behind. Author Dia Cha was born in Laos; her family lived in a wood and bamboo house and worked fields of rice and corn in their peaceful Hmong community. When Dia was still a child, guerrilla warfare shattered Laos. After her father left to join the loyalist troops against the communists, her family was forced to move from village to village due to the fighting, sometimes fleeing during the night to avoid bombing. She never learned the fate of her father. In 1975 when Dia was ten and the communist regime took over, she and her mother escaped across the Mekong River with other Hmong, settling in a refugee camp in Thailand. In 1979 they were allowed to emigrate together to America; sadly, many families were divided in the refugee process. Fifteen years old when arriving in America, Dia entered high school despite never having had any schooling, and thirteen years later she earned her master’s degree in anthropology and returned to Thailand to work with Hmong and Lao women in refugee camps. The story of Dia’s early life, paralleling that of many Hmong, is illustrated in this remarkable book through a story cloth – a large hand-embroidered piece, part of a long Hmong tradition of distinctive needlework. Dia’s cloth depicts every part of her journey with her mother, from the rice fields of their Laos home through the warfare dividing and destroying the countryside, to crossing the Mekong to refugee camps, and finally the airplane that carried them to America. It was lovingly stitched by her Aunt Chu and Uncle Nhia Thao Cha and sent to Dia in the early 1990s from Chiang Kham refugee camp in Thailand. A detailed afterword by Joyce Herold, Curator of Ethnology at the Denver Museum of Natural History, explains more about the important role of needlework both in traditional Hmong culture and in American communities as immigrants, in Herold’s words, “daily face choices for change, stability and renewal.” The beautiful textile art of the Hmong (meaning “free people” and pronounced “Mong”) continues to be a valued expression of culture and identity proudly and importantly shared with the wider world as generations take hold here. Herold concludes by saying “Let us all continue to tell our stories.” Ages 6-11.

Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis, by Jabari Asim, illustrated by E. B. Lewis -- Day 70

John Lewis, distinguished U.S. Congressman representing Georgia’s fifth district, has played an important role as a civil rights leader for many, many years. Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis lays the foundation for understanding his faith and his determination to speak out for justice in every context. Jabari Asim’s book begins: “Little John Lewis loved the spring…Spring was just right” for welcoming little chicks to the world. Everyone on John’s family farm in southern Alabama had to work hard, and John loved the responsibility of taking care of the chickens. He was a member of a devout family; Sunday was when his family and friends joined together in celebration and praise. It felt natural to him to share affirming verses with his own flock, spreading his arms just like the preacher, blessing his chickens and exhorting them to keep the peace as they scrabbled over their barnyard breakfast. Young John had the confidence to believe he could share his good words with many beyond his home. “He hoped that his words would stir people’s souls and move them to action.” And indeed they have. An author’s endnote carries the story of Lewis’s childhood forward to his role as a Freedom Rider protesting the segregation of black and white travelers in 1961, as chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee dedicated to working toward equality for all, as a leader in the 1963 March on Washington and standing with demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965. Asim quotes Lewis from his memoir: “I never really saw myself as a leader in the traditional sense of the word. I saw myself as a participator, an activist, a doer.” E. B. Lewis’s illustrations are as full of light and positive energy as young John’s hopes. Ages 5-8.

John Lewis’s March trilogy, winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, provides a deep and complex look at the Civil Rights movement and its sources of strength in the people it encompassed. These graphic-format books, written collaboratively with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, provide readers a vivid account of “what democracy looks like” in the cauldron of social action. Ages 12 to adult.

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance, by Nikki Grimes -- Day 69

Nikki Grimes’s One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance is a very special collection of poetry that acknowledges the artistic energy of the 1920s in Harlem and adds to it in a wondrous way. By pairing poetry of that era with her own poems, Grimes lends a fresh voice to the earlier powerful expression of African American life and culture. Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Clara Ann Thompson, and Langston Hughes are among the poets Grimes includes. In her poems she uses a poetic form called the golden shovel, whereby she takes one line or stanza from a poem she admires and uses each word as an ending word in the lines of her new poem. Each poem is illustrated by full-color artwork by contemporary African American creators: Cozbi Cabrera, R. Gregory Christie, Pat Cummings, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Ebony Glenn, E. B. Lewis, Frank Morrison, Christopher Myers, Brian Pinkney, Sean Qualls, James Ransome, Javaka Steptoe, Shadra Strickland, Elizabeth Zunon, and the author herself. The results are resonant and thought-provoking, as good poetry always is. Ages 10-14.

Nikki Grimes was recently awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, which “honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children."

A Chair for My Mother, by Vera B. Williams -- Day 68

"When we can't get a single other coin into the jar, we are going to take out all the money and go and buy a chair...A wonderful, beautiful, fat, soft armchair." Rosa, her mother and grandmother have lost their furniture and other possessions in a terrible house fire. Neighbors and relatives kindly bring them items they can use but, as it happens, nothing soft to sit on – only hard kitchen chairs. Thus it is with marvelous anticipation they save all her mother’s tips from her work at The Blue Diner, all the coins Grandma saves in grocery store bargains, and anything Rosa can plunk into the jar after she has helped her mother at the diner. The day the chair comes home from the department store is unforgettable; Rosa even gets to sit in it as it is carried upstairs! Despite a lack of extra resources, this little family is very rich in community and in love, the integrity of which is easily felt by readers. Vibrant illustrations burst with color – lush blues, greens, oranges, yellows and pink in riotous patterns – adding to the joyful energy. A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams is a gem of a story, enjoyed countless times by a wide audience since its publication in 1982. Ages 4-8.

Who Was Mark Twain?, by April Jones Prince, illustrated by John O'Brien -- Day 67

Mark Twain is one of America’s best-known writers and a fascinating character. April Jones Prince’s Who Was Mark Twain? is a wonderful introduction to his life and times. This appealing chapter book takes readers from Samuel Langhorn Clemens’s birth in Missouri in 1835 through his rambunctious youth (sometimes skipping school and always looking for an adventure) and his time as a printer’s apprentice and steamboat pilot, to his move west to Nevada Territory captured by “silver fever” and beyond. Discovering that writing suited his abilities better than mining for silver, Sam proceeded to develop his skill as a newspaper editor and columnist with a humorous bent, adopting the pen name “Mark Twain” (the nautical term for measuring depth that he had learned as a Mississippi riverboat pilot). Further travels in the Sandwich Islands and Europe confirmed his appeal as a storyteller, and he gained a strong reputation as a writer and lecturer. Life for Mark Twain held both successes and heartbreak, and he was not immune to the challenges of the times, such as the lingering effects of slavery during Reconstruction and the increasing gap between rich and poor. Marrying into a family that had supported abolition only increased Twain’s astute reflections on society and its inequities. Among numerous other publications, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “created a distinctly American kind of literature — one that turned everyday American English, with its rhythms and flavor, into literature.” His books made people think as well as entertaining them. Prince includes informative descriptions of public life in Twain’s America along with the details of his personal life, which, with energetic illustrations by John O’Brien on every page, blend into a very engaging biography. Ages 8-12.

Who Was Mark Twain? is just one of dozens of factual and entertaining chapter book biographies of presidents, explorers, artists, entertainers, athletes, activists and other notables in the “Who Was…” and “Who Is…” series.