Fashionopolis. The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas

Shopping for clothing is a favourite activity the world over. So it's not surprising it is a three trillion dollar industry which produces about one hundred billion items every year. But as you walk through stores with racks of clothing, have you ever wondered how and where the clothing you buy was made? Do you ever think about who made that garment you just purchased? 

In Fashionopolis, Dana Thomas describes how our clothing today is made by a manufacturing process that has been corrupted by greed causing harm to people and the environment.  The fashion business is constructed like a pyramid with haute couture and bespoke fashion at the top, ready-to-wear clothing that is found in department stores and boutiques (Gucci and Ann Taylor) in the middle, and fast fashion - cheap, trendy clothing found in H&M, Zara, and Joe Fresh (a Canadian retailer).  It is fast fashion that most of us buy and it is the most problematic. 

To understand the modern fashion industry, Thomas begins by going back to the Industrial Revolution in 1771 with Richard Arkwright's opening of the world's first water-powered textile mill near Manchester, England. Arkwright combined two inventions, the carding machine and the cotton jenny to spin cotton into yarn and then made yarn into fabric. The factories employed poor men, women and children for low wages in dangerous working conditions. Shifts were long, the air was filled with cotton fibres and workers lived on factory property in brick houses. The mills were so profitable, that by 1790, Arkwright owned nearly two hundred mills in Great Britain.  At this time, clothing was still hand-sewn.

This factory model was imported to the United States by Francis Cabot Lowell in the early 1800's and it was profitable because Black slaves planted and harvested the cotton. After 1830, the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine meant clothing could now be made faster. Eventually large factories were located in the Eastern United States, in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania where underwear and work clothes were made. In New York, in the late 1800's clothing copied from couture designs in Paris were made by European immigrants who knew how to sew. Eventually, there were so many garment factories, that whole sections of cities became known as the "Garment District". Until 1980, most clothing worn by Americans was made in the United States, but that would change with the coming of free trade.

Thomas then moves on to explore tariffs, protectionism and free trade. In particular, she  focuses on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Those who supported NAFTA believed that without tariffs, good would cost less, and there would be more jobs in the U.S. However, opponents believed that factories would relocated to the country where the cost of production was the cheapest, in this case Mexico. As it turned out, opponents were correct. As the process of globalization continued, manufacturers relocated factories from North America and Europe to Southeast Asia, China, Turkey, India and Pakistan. While the prices of other goods we purchase increased, this was not the case with clothing. In fact, prices dropped, leading consumers to buy more, wear them less and throw them out faster.

From this point on, Thomas goes on to outline the cost of fast fashion to workers in illegal sweatshops in the United States which employ illegal immigrants, as well as workplace abuse in factories in the developing world. She also traces the history of fashion's abuse of workers, the use of slaves and child labor in factories both in the Great Britain and in the United States. 

There is a fascinating chapter, titled Dirty Laundry which explores the making of blue jeans, both the history of jeans, the use of indigo dye and a revealing look into the jeans finishing industry in Vietnam and China. Thomas recounts the history of the Levis Strauss company to show what can happen when a business loses its conscience and becomes focused on profit.

This leads into Part II of the book which focuses on how the fashion industry can be reset, producing clothing in an honest way that doesn't damage the environment or harm workers. Thomas profiles many different people who are trying to do fashion differently such as designers Natalie Chanin and Billy Reid. Chanin and Reid are doing "slow fashion", that is slowing down production of fashion, using locally produced textiles and dye for their designs. In this chapter readers are introduced to many new concepts related to slow fashion such as reshoring which is bringing back the manufacturing that moved to other countries after NAFTA and rightshoring which is the reopening of those abandoned factories that were closed due to NAFTA and installing the newest technology to produce clothing. 

In Part III, Thomas highlights designed Stella McCartney's  efforts to change the fashion industry for the better. Many of McCartney's materials are vegan based, produced and sold in buildings that are environmentally friendly. Fashionopolis also explores the work to recycle fabrics of discarded clothing. Thomas writes that since "...the Industrial Revolution, we have been consuming mass-manufactured products in a linear manner, like a timeline. The product is made; we buy the product, we use the product; we throw away the product. Then we start again....It's a straight line, with a beginning, a middle and end...In a circular system, products are continually recycled. reborn, and reused." To do this we need to figure out how to recycle fashion which is predominantly made from some combination of polyester and cotton. Stacey Flynn states that "we fail to innovate on so many levels because we've been reliant on nineteenth-century equipment' - spinners, looms, sewing machines - 'and the way we think about that equipment is with a twentieth-century mindset - that resources are infinite, that cash is the only thing that matters."

Discussion

Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear is an eye-opening look into the world of fast fashion, how it all began, and what might be done to change the industry so that it is more sustainable and ethical.

In this young readers edition, Thomas describes how with the Industrial Revolution, the making of clothing moved out of the home and into the factory, becoming fast fashion, and an industry filled with questionable practices. The fashion industry has become a "business obsessed with profits, corrupting the supply chain, from raw materials to labor. That greed has given us offshoring, layoffs, poorly paid and treated workers, shoddy factories, tragedies."

Fashionopolis also features those designers and insiders who are trying to change the industry and its practices, restarting the fashion and textile industries in the United States by sourcing locally, ethically produced textiles and dyes and "slowing" down fashion. Thomas explains new terms such as "false economy" and "right shoring" in an easy-to-understand way and offers readers ways they too can help to change the fashion industry by purchasing fewer new clothes, wearing vintage and secondhand, by washing and repairing the clothing they currently own, as well as learning to sew and knit. There are some new ideas such as renting clothing too.

 

Hopefully, Fashionopolis will encourage young readers think twice before they shop at Ardene, Old Navy or the many other fast fashion outlets. Fashionopolis is persuasive in its presentation, filled with interesting details about how our clothes are made and offers concrete suggestions for a more sustainable, ethical fashion industry, if we all do our part.

 

Book Details:

Fashionopolis: The Secrets Behind The Clothes We Wear by Dana Thomas
New York:  Dial Books For Young Readers       2022
196 pp.

Black Birds In the Sky by Brandy Colbert

In Black Birds In The Sky, Brandy Colbert describes the events leading up to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the aftermath of that tragedy on the Black community and America as a country.

The story begins with the events of May 30, 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Many stores and businesses were closed for the parade scheduled later that morning. However, the shoeshine business that employed nineteen-year-old Dick Rowland was open. Rowland had been born Jimmie Jones. His early life had been difficult, as he and his three sisters were homeless and orphaned. He was eventually taken in by Damie Ford, a divorced black woman. Damie moved to Tulsa to be closer to her family, the Rowlands and to take advantage of the better job prospects in the booming city.

They eventually moved to the Greenwood District, a prosperous Black community that included many different Black professionals. These professionals supported one another and the Black community, with the area becoming so prosperous that it was given the nickname, Black Wall Street. When Jimmie started elementary school, he took on the name of Dick Rowland. Initially a good student, Dick dropped out during high school and began working at a shoe shine business owned by a white man. 

On that May Memorial Day in 1921, Rowland needed to use the bathroom, but because of the Jim Crow laws, he was required to use a "colored" bathroom. However, there was no "colored" washroom in the white shoe shine parlor, so Rowland went to use the bathroom in the Drexel building, something he had done many times previously. When he went to step into the elevator, operated by a young white woman named Sarah Page, it is believed Rowland tripped and grabbed her arm to steady himself. Page screamed in surprise and police were called by a clerk on the first floor who had heard her scream and saw Rowland leaving the building. Very quickly, Rowland became a suspect for attempted rape. This event became the trigger for the what would become one of the most horrific acts of racial violence in America.

 Discussion

Black Birds In The Sky is the heartrending story of the race riot in 1921, that saw hundreds of Black Americans injured or killed and their thriving Black community in the Greenwood District almost completely destroyed, razed by fire and looted.

Brandy Colbert begins by describing the events that were to ignite the Tulsa Race Massacre on September 1, 1921, namely the alleged interaction between Dick Rowland and Sarah Page. From there she goes on to describe the history of the land that would eventually become the state of Oklahoma. Colbert begins with the early Indigenous peoples who lived on the Oklahoma land, the European colonizers who explored and fought over ownership of the lands, and the forced settlement of Indigenous peoples (the Five Tribes which included Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole) from their ancestral lands in the eastern and southern United States onto the lands of Oklahoma and Kansas. This history emphasizes the deceitful manner in which European settlers and the American government dealt with various non-white peoples.

This deceit continued with the land runs in Oklahoma and Kansas. Now settled onto new lands, the Five Tribes were further subjected to traitorous land runs in which Americans and Europeans could simply claim "empty" land as their own. Colbert describes the land runs, which also included the migration of Black people to Oklahoma land and their eventual re-settling into towns. Despite these new areas of the continent not having a history of slavery, racial discrimination and segregation became entrenched.  By the time Oklahoma entered the Union in 1907, Jim Crow laws, which forced the segregation of Blacks, were already being enacted.

Colbert also describes what it was like to be Black in America during the post-Civil War period. The author discusses the Fifteenth Amendment which allowed Black men to vote and saw the election of Blacks to political office, the failure of Reconstruction,  and the rise of the Klu Klux Klan. The corruption of law enforcement towards the Black community is detailed. This includes the connection of American policing to slave patrols in the pre-Civil War period, and the rise of vigilantism and lynching towards Black men who were almost always assumed to be guilty of assault, rape or murder. 

The attitudes of white people towards Black Americans, even those who fought valiantly for America in World War I, was one of superiority and fear of social change. White Americans believed that Black veterans would demand equality and would use their weapons to obtain it. As a result, white Americans used political and justice systems to re-instate a new kind of slavery, one that denied Blacks their rights even when the Supreme Court ruled in their favour.  

 

Before she recounts the events of the Tulsa Race riot, Colbert explains the history of the Greenwood District, its founders Ottowa W. Gurley and John the Baptist (J.B.) Stradford. "By 1921, Greenwood was home to a Black hospital, a Black public library, two Black schools, two Black newspapers, two theaters, three fraternal organizations, five hotels, eleven boardinghouses, and about a dozen churches." In Deep Greenwood, the commercial district, "...one could find just about anything they needed in Deep Greenwood, with reportedly six hundred businesses within its thirty-five city blocks by 1921." Colbert writes, "...Greenwood was beginning to resemble neighborhoods in big cities like Chicago and New York, with its doctors and attorneys, theaters and restaurants, booming real estate market, and millionaires in the making."

According to Colbert, Greenwood was unique among other Black communities. "While Black people were still being disenfranchised in the Southern states from which many Greenwood residents had migrated, Greenwood was absolutely thriving. The community's focus on businesses that were Black-owned, Black-operated, and patronized primarily by Black people meant that each dollar spent in Greenwood would circulate throughout the businesses and people there around thirty times; the wealth stayed in the community and continued to grow it."  This all made for a great deal of resentment by white Tulsans who believed the Black community had no right to such success and wealth. 

All of these factors came together on May 31, 1921, to create a terrible firestorm of hatred and murder. From this point on, Colbert describes the events of the riot and its aftermath. Not surprisingly, "Black people were blamed for the massacre and punished for crimes they did not commit" while "...no white people were ever imprisoned for the murders and property destruction over the eighteen hours they terrorized Greenwood." What is perhaps even worse, was the erasure of the Tulsa Race Massacre from public discourse and from social memory. It would be fifty years before someone would publish an article on the massacre, bringing the events of the past to light once again. Today Black Tulsans focus on achieving a resolution to this tragedy, something that remains challenging to date.

Colbert's account is detailed, interesting and connects the many facets of American history to show how the groundwork was laid for the massacre and how Americans simply refused to acknowledge the tragedy afterwards, nor accept responsibility for what happened. Black Birds In The Sky is an important book in that regard, because it breaks that barrier of silence, informing a new generation and demonstrating the harm hatred does to people, communities and a nation. The book takes its title from the airplanes that were flown over Greenwood during the riot, firing on groups of Blacks. They appeared to those looking up, like black birds in the sky.

The Afterword explores the parallels between the events of 1918 to 1921 with a pandemic and race riot and the events of 2020 with the U.S. Election, the killings of Black Americans by police, and the Covid pandemic. Colbert notes "...how many harmful elements of US politics and culture have endured despite the progress we have achieved." The back matter contains a detailed Source List and Image Credits as well as an Index.  Black Birds In The Sky is a must read for all teens.

Book Details:

Black Birds In The Sky by Brandy Colbert
New York: Balzer + Bray      2021
216 pp

Fighting For Yes! by Maryann Cocca-Lefler

When Judy Heumann was a little girl, life in a wheelchair meant not being able to do many things. When she was five-years-old her mother attempted to sign her up for kindergarten but the principal refused, saying that Judy was a fire hazard. They then decided to try enrolling her at the Jewish School. The principal told Judy's parents if she learned Hebrew she could attend in September. Despite taking Hebrew classes in the summer, Judy was refused admittance in the fall. 

Judy spent years studying at home with a teacher who would come to their home. However, Judy loved to learn and the teacher was only able to come a few hours each week. In the afternoons, Judy played with her friends in their neighbourhood. They would tell her all about their day at school, going to the gym, the library and music classes. Judy's mother signed her up for activities after school but getting into the buildings for them was difficult. It meant taking her wheelchair up stairs and over bumpy curbs.

When Judy was nine-years-old she was accepted to the Health Conservation 21 class at Public School 219. However, she soon discovered that her class, held in the basement,  was made up of only eight students, all of whom were disabled. Regular students attended class in classrooms upstairs.

As Judy and her friends were growing up, they were able to go to many places she was not, such as restaurants, public transit or the library. Most buildings had entrances with stairs, and there were no ramps. One place Judy loved was Camp Oakhurst, a summer camp for children with disabilities. There she had the freedom to do many things and she felt included.

When she was fourteen-years-old, Judy attended high school, the first student from her Health Conservation 21 class to do so. Despite having few friends and feeling left out, Judy worked hard and graduated. The principal didn't want Judy to be on stage with the other students, but her father insisted. She was placed at the back, where her wheelchair was hidden. Judy had won a leadership award, but it was given to her at the back of the stage where she couldn't be seen.

Judy attended college, became a teacher and became active in politics after she met other people with disabilities. However, when it came time to obtain her teacher certification, Judy was told she was a danger to students!  Judy had had enough and she decided to sue the New York City Board of Education. She had taken all the required courses and was qualified. This was during the 1960's when the civil rights movement was taking place and Judy's struggle was also seen as an important one. Her suit was to be the beginning of serious challenges that would obtain the right of people with disabilities to participate fully in society and in the workplace.

Discussion

Fighting For Yes chronicles the fight for equality for people with disabilities from the perspective of Judy Heumann. Born in 1947, Judith Ellen Heumann had polio when she was eighteen months old, spending three months in an iron lung. For the next three years she was repeatedly hospitalized. Her parents refused to consider placing her in an institution, as the doctors suggested.

Judith had a strong desire to learn and had to fight to be included in the education system in the United States. As mentioned in Fighting for Yes, when she was not allowed to enroll in the public school just down the street from her home, she was given a teacher from the Board of Education for a total of two and a half hours a week! The only way Judith was able to attend high school was due to the efforts of her parents and other parents of children with disabilities, demanding the Board of Education make some of the high schools in New York City wheelchair accessible, which they did. 

Judith was able to attend university, obtaining her Bachelor's degree in 1969. When she applied to obtain her teaching license, Judith passed the oral and written exams but failed the physical exam because she had had polio. The Board of Education was afraid she would not be able to lead her students to safety in the case of a fire. So her license was denied. When her situation became public through an article and editorial in the New York Times, she received both public and legal support.  After this, Judith decided to sue the New York City Board of Education. She won the case which was heard by the first African- American woman judge, who as Judith described in her Ted Talk, "knew discrimination when she saw it." Judith was hired as a teacher and taught elementary school for three years. In 1975, she received her Masters in Public Health from the University of California at Berkley. 

In 1977,Joseph Califano, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare refused to sign the regulations that were needed to make Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 into law. Section 504 prohibited any entity from receiving public funding if they discriminated against persons with disabilities. Both the Nixon and Ford administrations refused to move ahead with the legislation because of the potential costs to hospitals and government buildings. So Judith, along with many others organized sit-ins across the United States. Califano signed the regulations and 504 became law. 

As the disability rights movement grew there were more protections added: the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. Judith was named Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services from 1993 to 2001. Among other positions she has held, she was appointed by President Obama as Special Advisor on International Disability Rights in 2010, and has been a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation from 2017 to 2019.  

In Fighting For Yes, Judith Heumann demonstrates how one person can make a significant difference, by having the courage to fight for what they believe in. Fear and lack of understanding about disabilities resulted in discrimination that removed the most basic of rights such as attending school, and being able to access basic amenities like libraries, theatres and government buildings. Judith wasn't willing to accept this and became a tireless disabilities rights activist. Fighting For Yes focuses on her determination to get several important pieces of legislation passed, including Section 504. Despite all that she has achieved, Judith knows that there is still much work to be done to make life easier and more accessible for those with disabilities. 

Illustrator Vivien Mildenberger has portrayed Judith's story using gauche and digital media. The back matter contains a Note From Judith Heumann, an Author's Note and an offering of Selected Sources.

 

Judith's TED talk, given in 2016 is highly recommended. Her website is Judith Heumann.

Book Details:

Fighting For Yes! The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heummann by Maryann Cocca-Lefler
New York: Abrams Books For Young Readers         2022

March Book Three by John Lewis

"The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."

In March, Book Three, John Lewis chronicles the efforts of Black Americans to obtain true equality, peace and brotherhood in their country.

His story continues with the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. This church was a headquarters of the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Sunday September 15 was its annual "Youth Day" and hundreds of young people were attending. The bombing killed four young girls: Addie May Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. Dr. King told those at the funeral that they needed to look at "the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers."

Diane Nash had a plan to have thousands of young people to peacefully demonstrate Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, cutting off roads, trains, airports, the government and shutting down everything. The goals were to force segregationist Governor George Wallace out of office and obtain the right to vote for every adult in Alabama. Dr. King did not agree with this plan but Lewis and Nash felt that SNCC had to do something. They decided to target the city of Selma in Dallas County, where sixty-three protestors had been arrested. 

Lewis, who was chairman of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) believed they needed to focus on "One Man, One Vote" because Blacks faced enormous odds attempting to register to vote. Protests in front of the Dallas County Courthouse saw many arrests, including John Lewis.

On October 7, 1963, SNCC mobilized dozens of people lined up outside in the hot sun to register to vote. Major Joe Smelley in charge of the state troopers and Jim Clarke, the mean and violent sheriff of Dallas County, refused to allow anyone to leave the line and return for bathroom and water breaks. Despite this, people stayed in line, while only twelve Blacks were allowed to register. 

Lewis became involved in the Freedom Vote, an event conceived and organized by Bob Moses, a Harvard graduate and Al Lowenstein, a white activist and former dean at Stanford University. Freedom Vote was a staged "mock election" with Black candidates, in which Black men and women could participate. The goal was to give them a sense of what it was like to participate in the electoral process.

Freedom Vote placed ballot boxes all across Mississippi, in churches, barber shops, grocery stores and beauty parlors. Then in November, 1963, John F. Kennedy Jr. was assassinated. Lewis and others wondered what it would mean for the civil rights movement, which Kennedy and his brother Robert had come to support.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president; he was committed to passing a civil rights bill even though he had voted against racial equality in the past. But he wanted civil rights groups including SNCC to stop their protests. They did not.

In the final meeting of 1963, Lewis and the SNCC executive decided to work to obtain the right for all citizens of Mississippi to vote in the election year of 1964. At the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Lewis and others reminded reporters that anyone interfering in any way "with the right of a Negro to vote in Mississippi commits a crime against the Federal government" per Title 18, Section 594 of the United States Code. 

They also announced that working with other civil rights groups, they planned to place one thousand summer workers in Mississippi, teaching in Freedom Schools and staffing community centers. These would register up to four hundred thousand Negroes on mock polling lists and would also do voter registration. Lewis told reporters they would challenge the right of white Mississippians to chose congressional representatives if none of the Black candidates were elected. They also intended to challenge the Democratic Convention in August over full recognition, the Federal Government on the illegal intimidation/arrests during voter registration. Freedom Summer was going to be about real votes. 

They also created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge Mississippi's "segregation-based Democratic party" and its white-only delegation for their seats at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, N.J. This would be done by following proper procedures at all levels.

In late June, three Freedom Summer volunteers went missing in Neshoba County.  They were Mickey Schwerner, Andy Goodman and James Chaney, a Black Mississippian. Their burned out station wagon was pulled from Bogue Chitto Creek without their bodies. The FBI and Navy were called in to search for them.  Meanwhile the violence continued throughout Mississippi with shootings and harassment of Blacks by whites. 

On July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act became law but Lewis and SNCC were determined to test if the law would be enforced. After the discovery of the bodies of the three missing Freedom Summer volunteers in August of 1964, Lewis and others became more determined than ever to see Black Americans register to vote.

The summer of 1964 proved to be a crucial one with the State Convention of the MFDP to elect delegates to send to Atlantic City, the Republican Convention in Daly City, CA which saw Barry Goldwater elected as the presidential nominee, and the events that rocked the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, including the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer.

In 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer lost her job, was arrested and beaten for trying to register to vote. She became a part of the SNCC in Mississippi after this. At the Democratic convention, Hamer recounted her attempt to register to vote, in front of of cameras from all the major networks, along with many others including Dr. King. Furious, President Johnson attempted to pre-empt her testimony but this backfired on him. Lewis also describes the struggles of the MFDP at the convention, his eye-opening trip to Africa with Harry Belafonte and his meeting with Malcom X in Kenya, internal struggles within the SNCC including gender equality as more women joined the civil rights movement, Dr. King's Nobel Peace Prize, and the assassination of Malcom X in New York. 

But the fruit of all of Lewis and other activists' unrelenting efforts to obtain the vote for Black Americans culminated in the marches in Alabama, from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Those marches,  known as Bloody Sunday and Turnaround Tuesday, were met with violent opposition by  Mayor Jim Clark and police as well as George Wallace, governor of Alabama. The ensuing violence, broadcast on national networks, seared the conscience of the nation. The actions in Selma led to President Johnson signing into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed the many discriminatory practices occurring the mostly the southern states. The Voting Rights Act enforced the rights given in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment enacted almost one hundred years earlier, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For John Lewis it was the end of one long journey and the beginning of yet another.

Discussion

March Book Three is the conclusion to John Lewis's outstanding graphic novel trilogy about his work in the civil rights movement.

In this final book, Lewis focuses on the determination of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other groups to obtain true equality and participation in American society. They could only achieve this if if they had to right to vote, something that was guaranteed to Black men at least, in 1870. However, the southern states in particular, devised every method to deny this right to Black Americans. 

The Civil Rights Bill had given Black Americans the rights of citizens and Black men were allowed to vote. In fact, Black men not only voted but they ran for office, with twenty-two serving in Congress over a decade. The 15th Amendment banned the restriction of voting rights based on race, colour or having previously been a slave but it also allowed individual states to decide the qualifications for obtaining that privilege. White Americans still controlled policy in the south and they began to enact many different types of qualifications that restricted Blacks from being able to register to vote. Some jurisdictions required literacy tests, or poll taxes.

These restrictions allowed White Americans to effectively control voter registration and eliminate Black Americans from participating in the democratic process. With no say in government, it was impossible to move forward on equality. This would remain the case for almost one hundred years until the civil rights movement in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's. In the end, the Voting Rights Act dramatically increased voter registration and voting turnout in elections among Black and minority communities.

Lewis is frank about the violence he and many others experienced at the hands of  politicians, law enforcement, armed forces and the general public. Peaceful protests were met with brutality and cruelty for black men, women and children, and for any who joined them including people of other races and faiths.  Graphic artist Nate Powell realistically portrays all of this, capturing the violence, some of which resulted in the murders of activists and Black citizens who were part of the protests. The panels showing the deaths of the missing Freedom volunteers and the march from Selma to Montgomery are especially well done. They capture the grief and sense of loss, the determination and courage Lewis and others experienced.

The struggle for equality and the right to vote is juxtaposed with the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first Black president and Lewis's attendance at the inauguration. It is meant to show how far America has come in the last fifty years when a Black American becoming president would have been unthinkable. Nevertheless, the struggle for true equality in America is an ongoing one.

The March trilogy should be required reading for all high school students in both the United States and Canada. To learn the lessons of acceptance, tolerance, equality and learning that all of us are brothers and sisters, we must study the past and learn from it. March allows us to do just that.

John Lewis passed away at the age of 80, in 2020. He was the last surviving member of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders that included Martin Luther King Jr. and James Farmer.

Book Details:

March Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions          2016

246 pp.

Lion Lights: My Invention That Made Peace With Lions by Richard Turere and Shelly Pollock

When Richard Tuere was a nine-year-old boy guarding his father's cows, his biggest fear was the lions lurking in the nearby grass, waiting to grab an animal. Richard's family's farm bordered the south side of Nairobi National Park in Kenya. This meant many different wild animals including lions were roaming nearby. Their cows were valuable to Richard's family because they provided meat, milk and hides. But to the lion, a cow was a source of easy food!

Richard and his family are Maasai, a people who once wandered throughout Kenya's vast plains with their cows and goats. They travelled across the plains, following the wet and dry seasons. Now however, they live in small villages called manyattas. Their animals still need good grass and water, so during the dry season, they have to herd them further away from the manyatta. But this also meant risking an attack by lions.

At night Richard made sure the family's cows were inside their boma, an area fenced with thorny acacia branches. Although these branches kept the cattle in, they did not prevent the lions from attacking. 

Richard and other Maasai herders tried different ways to keep the lions at bay but nothing seemed to work. Richard tried a scarecrow, conservationists tried chain link fences, and the government tried payments to farmers for their lost cattle. But still the lions kept killing cattle and the Maasai kept killing lions.

The lions were an important part of Kenya's tourist industry: people came from all over the world to see them. So a solution needed to be found.

Richard loved to tinker with electronics, taking apart televisions and radios. Then one morning, when he was eleven-years-old, he found his father's bull dead inside their boma. This only made Richard more determined to find a solution to the lion problem.

His clue came one night when he noticed that whenever he walked around the boma with a flashlight the lions stayed away. Maybe he could use this discovery plus his skill with electronics to keep the lions away.

Discussion

Lion Lights tells the remarkable story of  a young Kenyan inventor, Richard Turere who designed "lion lights" to keep lions from preying on his father's cattle.

 Richard grew up on a farm bordering the southern, unfenced area of Nairobi National Park. The lack of fencing meant that zebra, wildebeest and other wildlife freely roamed out of the park onto nearby farms. They were followed by the lions who fed off these animals. However, lions, and to a lesser extent cheetahs found cattle to be much easier prey. Cattle are very important to the Maasai, as they are the currency in their culture. Their wealth is in their cattle.

After continuing attacks, Richard, at the age of eleven, discovered that lions were frightened of someone walking around the boma with a flashlight. He decided to develop a system of flashing lights set up around the perimeter of the boma. Initially, these were LED lights set up to flash using the light indicator from a vehicle, powered by a battery. This worked, reducing lions attacks almost immediately. He called this invention, Lion Lights.

In 2011, Paula Kambuhu, director of the Kenyan Land Conservation Trust and chairperson of the Nairobi National Park and her colleagues learned about Richard's unique invention during their field work that year. He had devised his Lion Lights without having had any prior training in electronics. Impressed, Kambuhu was able to help him obtain a scholarship to one of Kenya's top schools, Brookhouse International School. 

In 2013, Richard was invited to give a talk at the TED 2013 Conference in California. He was able to patent his invention, but not soon enough to receive money for what he had devised. Now twenty-two years old Richard is a graduate of The African Leadership University located in Kigali, Rwanda.

You can listen to Richard's TED Talk here. You can learn more about Richard's work through his website, lion-lights.org

Lion Lights offers young readers Richard Turere's remarkable story, highlighting is determination and creativity in spite of enormous odds. His story is one that demonstrates how one person can make a huge difference in the lives of many. Perhaps the more important message is that Richard also showed that sustainable solutions can be found to human-wildlife conflict.

Accompanying Richard's account are the realistic illustrations by artist Sonia Possentini. Lion Lights also includes a detailed note, About The Maasai, a list of Maasai words, and where to find more information on subjects relevant to this story. There is also a short biography of Richard Turere at the very back.

Book Details:

Lion Lights: My Invention That Made Peace With Lions by Richard Turere and Shelly Pollock
Thomaston, Maine: Tilbury House Publishers      2022

The Turtle of Michigan by Naomi Shihab Nye

In The Turtle of Michigan, Shihab Nye continues the story she began in the first novel about Aref and his parents who are moving to America to study.

The story picks up where The Turtle of Oman left off, with Aref and his mother boarding a plane, on their way to America. Aref's father left a week prior, for Ann Arbor, Michigan, to set up their apartment. After a week of refusing to pack his suitcase and being unhappy about leaving his friends and all that is familiar in Oman, Aref is excited to be flying.

The long plane journey, from Muscat to Paris, to New York City and then to Detroit, Michigan is uneventful but tiring. The reunion with his father is tearful but happy. However, their arrival at their apartment is marred by a small disaster. Aref's other trips over a yellow parking divider and breaks her wrist. They are helped by their friendly neighbours, Mr and Mrs. Finnegan, an older Irish couple. At the hospital, Aref's mother has her wrist placed in a brace and is told to return to have a plate put in. 

When Aref finally does get to see his new home, an apartment, he likes it but finds it smaller than their "real house" back  home. In his room he has a terrarium that he hopes to use for a Michigan turtle.

After his mother's surgery, Aref settles into help his father with the chores and shopping. While waiting for his own school year to start, Aref accompanies his parents to their lectures at the University of Michigan. One day Aref and his father went to Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School to fill out papers for him to enroll at the school. While there Aref notices the poster about the Arts Camp and decides to join. For Aref it is the beginning of a new adventure that sees him make new friends and have new adventures. There is the good food at an Italian restaurant, their neighbour Hugh and his guide dog Honeybun, the Michigan turtles Aref and his father find on a fall hike, his first snowfall and his first Christmas. But the biggest and best surprise is about to happen, one that will make Aref very happy.

Discussion

The Turtle of Michigan is another gentle, positive story by poet and writer Naomi Shihab Nye. In this novel, eight-year-old Aref with the help of his parents, a kindly neighbour named Hugh and his teachers quickly adjusts to life in America. Although he misses Oman and his beloved Sidi, Aref learns to find places, people and things to love about his new life in America.

Shihab Nye chronicles Aref's journey in a very gentle, affirming style.  Before schools starts, Aref wonders if he will find friends. "Would he find new friends and walk with other people soon? Would he belong? Would he still feel like himself? Or would he keep feeling a little lost, like those birds in the air port terminal?" It is Aref's father who helps him to settle in by taking him to explore shops and going on hikes near their home.  Aref's parents' openness to new people, and new cultures  helps him to adapt quickly. This leads Aref to bravely decide to attend art camp even though he doesn't feel he's a good artist. But Aref does make new friends at the art camp. The result is that, Aref finds that their apartment complex feels like home. "Home happened fast" he notes.

Like his father who is a biologist, Aref is interested in animals such as bats and turtles. When he first arrives at his family's new apartment in Ann Arbor, he sees that his father has placed a terrarium in his bedroom.  At first Aref is anxious to find a turtle for his terrarium. In October when Aref and his parents go on a hike to the Nichols Arboretum, they spot many turtles happily swimming in the water. There are baby turtles and larger turtles. Aref's mother suggests they just take a small turtle and bring it home for his terrarium. This horrifies Aref who cannot imagine separating the turtles. When Aref considers the situation, he tells his friend Robin that "It would be very bad to live in a glass tank." Eventually he decides to use his terrarium for growing a herb garden.

Shihab Nye incorporates many different issues into her story, briefly exploring each. The character Hugh, a neighbour who is blind and has a support dog, is portrayed in a way that demonstrates his disability doesn't preventing him from enjoying a rich and varied life. He cooks a gourmet dinner for Aref's family and a mutual neighbour's family. He recently traveled to Arizona to help his sister who is also visually impaired. Shihab Nye broaches the topic of a blended family by having Aref's friend, Robin tell him about his father and step-father. The issue of bullying is also explored when Aref decides to join the anti-bullying club at school run by first-graders (a rather strange way to run an anti-bullying club).

The Turtle of Michigan is a well-written sequel to the first novel, offering a positive immigration experience and encouraging young readers who might be faced with adjusting to a new culture to consider not what they have lost culturally, but what they might gain both from new friendships.

Book Details:

The Turtle of Michigan by Naomi Shihab Nye
New York: Greenwillow Books      2022

322 pp.

Blue. A History Of The Color As Deep As The Sea And As Wide As The Sky by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Blue explores the history of the colour blue asking where the colour came from and describing how the colour we know today came to be.

The earliest known record of the colour blue comes from the gorgeous rock, lapis lazuli, a deep blue metamorphic rock. It was mined in Afghanistan as early as 4500 B.C. Lapis lazuli was used in jewelry. 

It was Queen Cleopatra VII who was known for wearing a bluish mixture around her eyes, made with a mixture of lapis lazuli and other ingredients.

However, through the centuries dyers and merchants continued to look for easier and cheaper methods of creating the colour blue. One myth holds that a dog on the seashore snatched up a snail which turned his mouth a purple-blue. This turned out to be very labour intensive and just difficult to produce. 

As a result the colour blue was considered a holy colour, only to be used for special items such as the the blue drapes in King Solomon's temple or the colouring of the robe of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

Eventually, people discovered other, easier ways to produce the colour blue. One such person was the scientist Adolf von Baeyer who would be awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize for creating a chemical blue. 

Discussion

Blue is a fascinating account of history of the  colour blue, written for children but equally interesting for readers of all ages.  Brew-Hammond takes readers through the earliest known beginning with the Ancient Egyptians to the present day. It's a history most people do not know about what is arguably everyone's favourite colour!

The history of the colour blue is filled with many fascinating facts, including some that this picture book doesn't touch on. For example, the Greeks and Romans did not have a word to describe the colour blue and the colour was not found in their descriptions of rainbows. However, we know they used the colour in clothing and paintings because of archeological evidence. We also know the Ancient Egyptians used the colour blue as Brew-Hammond describes in her picture book, but we also know that they loved the gem, turquoise and that they created blue by mixing silica, lime, copper and alkali.

In the Middle Ages, blue became the colour of the nobility mainly because it was expensive to produce. During this time period, it extracted from the leaves of the woad plant, Isatis tinctoria. This meant that artists during the Renaissance used the pigment for important subjects in their paintings such as the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Eventually other shades of blue were developed such as ultramarine and indigo, to be used in porcelain and clothing. Ultramarine was developed from lapis lazuli while the indigo colour came from the indigo plant, Indigo fera. Today's denim, a fabric dyed with indigo, evolved from the original fabric produced in Genoa, Italy in the 17th century, copied in Nimes, France and eventually used by Levi Strauss in the United States in 1873.

Brew-Hammond's informative text, which covers some other interesting facts about blue, not mentioned here, is accompanied by the lush, vibrant illustrations of painter/illustrator/art educator, David Minter. The artist created the illustrations using "layers of acrylic wash on heavy watercolor paper."

The back matter includes an Author's Note about the colour blue, A Few Blue Facts and a list of Selected Sources.

Book Details:

Blue. A History Of The Color As Deep As The Sea and As Wide As The Sky by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond  
New York: Alfred A. Knopf        2022