Brave
Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel,
illustrated by Melissa Sweet
How
do you teach children about labor history? If they remember anything about
Labor Day, it is that it’s a day off. Yet the day actually celebrates people
like Clara Lemlich, a young Jewish factory worker in the early 1900s.
At first the book seems to be a typical tale about an immigrant
family. But it isn’t. Here’s how Markel begins:
A steamship pulls into the harbor, carrying hundreds of immigrants—and a surprise for New York City. [page turn] The surprise is dirt poor, just five feet tall, and hardly speaks a word of English. Her name is Clara Lemlich. This girl’s got grit, and she’s going to prove it. Look out, New York!
Clara’s
father can’t find work, but she does, as a worker in the garment industry.
Markel does a good job showing us how hard the girls were expected to work. And we get things like this: “There are two filthy toilets, one sink, and three towels for
three hundred girls to share.”
The
illustrator also does a good job with this material. After scenes of Clara’s
family arriving in New York, we come to a page looking down at the garment workers from the top:
rows and rows of girls sitting at sewing machines sewing, looking more like a
geometric pattern than people. Sweet works mostly in blues and yellows with
touches of red. She softens her palette to subtly invoke the sepia
look of old photographs. Sweet uses mixed media for her backgrounds on some pages:
fabric with stitches and bias tape.
We follow Clara as she learns the rules of working in the garment industry: The girls lose half a day’s pay for being a few minutes late,
can be fired for a pricking their fingers and getting blood
on the fabric twice, and are locked into the factory from morning to night.
Clara
wants to protest the terrible working conditions, especially after male union
workers encourage her. She urges the other girls to strike, and finally they
do. Clara is beaten, and she is arrested 17 times, but she keeps going.
The
book just gets better from there. This is a story of power from the people who together make the wheels of society turn. It is all the more effective because it’s about
a young immigrant girl who refuses to back down. Well told, well
illustrated—Brave Girl is a story kids really should hear. In a day when unions
are sometimes thought of as a problem, it’s good to be reminded that things
like an 8-hour day and a five-day work week came about because of the efforts
of ordinary people like Clara Lemlich.
Note:
An author’s note gives additional information about the garment industry and labor strikes in other cities.
Brick
by Brick by Charles R. Smith Jr., illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Did
you know that some of the workers who built the first White House were slaves?
This book is their story. The slaves were rented out by their masters for the
project.
Black
hands,
white
hands,
free
hands,
slave
hands.
Slave
hands dig,
saw,
and
break stone,
laying
the foundation
for
the president’s house.
Rented
as property,
slave
hands labor
as
diggers of stone,
sawyers,
and
bricklayers.
Smith
describes these events poetically, in simple, strong language like the sound of
hammers striking stone. The lines rhyme occasionally for emphasis, but
not throughout:
Slave
hands saw
twelve
hours a day,
but
slave owners take
slave
hands’ pay.
Floyd
Cooper’s illustrations are done mostly in shades of brown, with a blue sky
every so often that makes me think of hope. Sometimes the faces in children’s
book illustration are simple or cute, but not in Brick by Brick. Cooper depicts
these faces, mostly slaves but a few masters, with a kind of softened realism
and with great feeling and character. I’m not sure how the illustrations were
done—perhaps with watercolor washes and then colored pencil on textured paper.
This is a very lovely book, and one filled with understated yet powerful
emotions.
We
read that in time, the slaves learned skills that qualified them to be paid one
shilling a day. They saved the money towards buying their freedom:
Slave
hands count shillings
with
worn fingertips
and
purchase freedom
earned
brick by brick.
By the time you reach the last page, you know something important: The
president’s home is beautiful, but it is not as beautiful as the promise of
freedom.
Note:
Brick by Brick includes an author’s note that explains why slaves were used to
build the first White House. Also, the illustration on the left shows the construction project from a different perspective. It is not from the book.
Nelson
Mandela, words and pictures by Kadir Nelson
Right
now the talk is all about Nelson’s recently released I Have a Dream, a
wonderful book about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech. But I’m holding
an ARC of his next picture book in my hands: Nelson Mandela. The front
cover is simply a portrait of Mandela, no title. You can find the title on
the back cover.
Where
I Have a Dream captures a moment in time, Nelson Mandela is very much a
biography. Most pages have about a paragraph of text, though a few have more. The book would make a good read-aloud for about 3rd-5th graders.
We
begin with a boy named Rolihlahla. Already he is being changed by the world
around him:
Rolihlahla played barefooted on the grassy hills of Qunu. He fought boys with sticks and shot birds with slingshots. The smartest Madiba child of thirteen, he was the only one chosen for school. His new teacher would not say his Xhosa name. She called him Nelson instead.
The first spread is done almost entirely in silhouette, with the boys and the hill
they are playing on shown in black. The sun has just barely risen over the hill behind them, and a small slice of
green plain and blue mountain is seen off to the left. A few houses sit on the plain.
It’s a stunning image, and something of a departure from Kadir’s expected human
figures. The wide-angle painting makes a poignant introduction to the next spread, where
we read that 9-year-old Nelson is being sent miles away to live with a powerful chief after his father’s
death. The image is a close-up of two people in profile, with Nelson’s mother on the left and a young Nelson on the right.
She holds his unhappy face, staring into his eyes.
In
his new life, Nelson listens to stories told by the elders of old Africa. We
read that he grew up and attended school in Johannesburg, “where Africans were
poor and powerless.” Nelson became a lawyer and began to help his people.
The
story continues, showing the experience of apartheid and Nelson’s activism and
long imprisonment. “His children grew up. Relatives passed away. South Africa
began to fall apart… Nelson snuck a message to the people: ‘I will return.’”
And
he did return. At last Nelson was free. Apartheid ended, and Nelson Mandela
became the first black president of South Africa.
Kadir
Nelson’s storytelling is clear and powerful. His illustrations capture the
souls of his subjects, especially Nelson Mandela. Many of the pages in the
book are quite dark in tone, but the last two spreads are bright with color and
sunshine, lifting like a song. A striking book that you can read and
treasure.
An
author’s note gives additional information about Mandela and apartheid in South
Africa.
It’s
been said that children in our day lack real heroes, reduced to looking up to
pouting pop stars, millionaire athletes, and fictional superheroes. Give them
these three books and others like them. Give them heroes.
Note:
Thanks to HarperCollins for sending me review copies.
Brick by Brick will be out in December. Nelson Mandela and Brave Girl will be
out in January.
