Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, by Gary Schmidt -- Day 64

Author Gary Schmidt’s novel Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy is based on a true episode in Maine history. Schmidt’s searingly poignant story is woven around strong, memorable characters. Arriving in Phippsburg, thirteen-year-old Turner Buckminster feels alienated as the son of the town’s new minister. He was a baseball star back home but doesn’t understand the strange way the game is played up here, and he has no friends. Fortunately, he soon meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a lively, clever girl who introduces Turner to the tide pools and byways of her coastal home. Lizzie is the first African American Tucker has met, and he learns that Lizzie’s home community on the island just off the coast was established by former slaves. Turner’s world is just opening up when he and Lizzie learn that the town elders, with the support of Reverend Turner, plan to remove the island population to make room for a moneymaking tourist venue. Both Turner and Lizzie are swept up in difficult, ultimately disastrous events; Turner grows strong in his sure-footed opposition to the town’s actions but is unable to stop them. The town destroys the homes and gravesites on Malaga Island (an event that actually took place in 1912, a little-known act of racism in New England history), and Turner’s efforts are too late to save his friend Lizzie. This is a powerful story of friendship, of discovering one’s moral compass and of the destructive intransigence of prejudice. Ages 10 up.

Heather Has Two Mommies, by Lesléa Newman, illustrated by Laura Cornell -- Day 63

First published in 1989, Heather Has Two Mommies has become a contemporary classic, a much-appreciated book about a little girl who has two of everything – two arms, two legs, two eyes, two pets, and two mommies. On her first day of school her moms say she can bring two special things with her, and Heather chooses her blue blanket for napping and her favorite red cup for snack time. After play time and nap time when the children sit in a circle and share what their mommies and daddies do, teacher Ms. Molly suggests they all draw pictures of their families. Juan, Miriam, Joshua, Stacy, Emily… everyone enthusiastically draws his or her family. Guess what. All of their families are different in some way – a mommy and a stepfather, a mom and a dad, two dads, a grandma and a puppy, one sister, two brothers… The conclusion is: each family is special, and what matters is that the people in it love one another. When Heather’s mommies pick her up at school, they give her two kisses, ending a happy day. Author Lesléa Newman created an enduringly affirming story; Laura Cornell’s illustrations for this recent edition are equally warm-hearted and vibrant. Ages 3-7 years.

Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans During World War II, by Martin W. Sandler -- Day 62

In Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans During World War II, author Martin W. Sandler opens wide an informative and extremely moving window to a very troubling period in United States history. Soon after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. government issued orders that thousands upon thousands of Japanese Americans be evacuated from their homes and businesses and held in temporary assembly centers first and then in remote detention centers, mostly on the West Coast. They were held under the suspicion that, due simply to their Japanese heritage, they could not be trusted. There was strong debate at the highest levels regarding this action. The FBI, when assigned to identify any Japanese disloyal to the U.S., testified that “as a group, [they] posed no threat to the nation’s security.” Director Herbert Hoover wrote to the U.S. Attorney General that sentiments for removal were based “primarily upon public and political pressure rather than factual data.” President Roosevelt’s advisers cautioned him that “interning Japanese Americans was both unconstitutional and unnecessary.” Nonetheless, both Issei (Japanese born in Japan) and Nisei (their children born in the United States and thus citizens) were required to leave their homes, possessions and businesses with extreme haste. Families and individuals who had worked hard to establish good lives as professionals, merchants and farmers were understandably bewildered by this action. Interned Japanese conducted themselves with dignity despite having no idea exactly why and for how long they would be held. In a supreme irony, other Japanese Americans joined our armed forces as an indication of their loyalty to the United States; in fact, just when members of the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team (all of Japanese descent) were liberating prisoners at Dachau in Germany, their relatives in the United States were being detained. As the war was ending in 1945, detainees were “handed twenty-five dollars and a train ticket home,” but the effects of imprisonment remained. Sandler provides revealing, authoritative details about all aspects of the internment of Japanese Americans – their lives in the camps, the long-term effect on their personal lives and dignity, the silence on the subject of this period of history in our culture and education for decades, and the eventual acknowledgement of and redress by our government of these enormous wrongs, a process beginning in 1976 and resulting in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. A telling paragraph near the end of Sandler’s book quotes a press release issued by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) the day after the September 11 bombings: “We urge citizens not to release their anger on innocent American citizens simply because of their ethnic origin, in this case Americans of Arab ancestry. While we deplore yesterday’s acts, we must also protect the rights of citizens. Let us not make the same mistakes as a nation that were made in the hysteria of WWII following the attack at Pearl Harbor.” The impact of this story is profound for any reader, particularly when realizing we face similar challenges to constitutional and human rights today. Ages 12 to adult.

The Turtle of Oman, by Naomi Shihab Nye -- Day 61

Understandably, Aref Al-Amri is having a hard time leaving his home in the Middle East – in Muscat, Oman, a place he loves. His friends are there, his cat, his rock collection, the desert dunes, and the best fresh apricots in the world… Most of all, he will miss his grandfather Sidi. But his parents are leaving for graduate school in Ann Arbor, Michigan; the time has come to pack his suitcase. When his mother asks Sidi to help reluctant Aref pack, his wise grandfather decides to take him on some adventures instead – camping beneath the thousand stars of the desert, sleeping on Sidi’s rooftop, fishing in the Gulf of Oman, visiting the sea turtles’ nesting ground. The bond between grandfather and grandson is gentle and palpable. They take time together to celebrate both the profound and ordinary aspects of what Aref will leave behind, easing his anxiety about moving from one home, and one culture, to another. Sidi slips a rock from each destination into Aref’s suitcase, as a quiet well wishing. The Turtle of Oman is an insightful glimpse at anticipating a move to a new culture under the best of circumstances; readers may also wonder what it might be like to leave under duress. Ages 8-12.

Born of a Palestinian father and an American mother, writer Naomi Shihab Nye knows well what a mix of cultures means to an individual and a family. She has chronicled, in poetry and prose, her experience of being Arab American and the range of feelings inherent in looking deeply at the connective threads and the chasms of one’s heritage. 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, her anthology of poems published in 2002 not long after the September 11 tragedies, is a riveting tapestry of life – food, home, landscape, memory, relationship, loss – in the Middle East and in America. Ages 12 up.