Blog Tour: Dancing with Daddy by Anitra Rowe Schulte, illustrated by Ziyue Chen

 

Dancing with Daddy written by Anitra Rowe Schulte,

illustrated by Ziyue Chen

Two Lions/Amazon, 2021, 40 pages

It's her first father-daughter dance and Elsie is just so excited, but first things first - picking out the perfect party dress to wear. Elsie is sure the red polka dot dress that matches daddy's soccer jersey is just right for dancing along and paired with the matching pretty red polka dot bow for her hair. 

Hopefully, the snow that began to fall just as Elsie and her mother left the store will stop in time for the dance. At home Elsie's sisters Daphne and Rosalie are just as excited about her dress and the dance as she is. By the next morning, though, there is even more snow but happily Elsie's mom says the dance is still a go. The three sisters spend the day practicing their dance moves for later that night.

Finally, it's time to go. Elsie's mom helps her get dressed and fixes her hair and off Elsie, Daphne, and Rosalie go with daddy to the dance. And what a dance it is - just like Elsie had dreamed it would be, except better. 

Dancing with Daddy could be the story of any young girl going to her first dance, and it is, but with one exception - Elsie has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (WHS) and must use a wheelchair to get around, a tablet using Pragmatic Organization Dynamic Display (PODD) to communicate, and usually is fed using a plastic tube to push food into her stomach, although she can taste some blended food like applesauce and pudding. 

And even though she is in a wheelchair, after her father reads the story of the nutcracker to her, Elsie still dreams about dancing and doing pirouettes.

Anitra Rowe Schulte was inspired to write Dancing with Daddy by her own daughter who has WHS. And she has worked Elsie's disability into this story so seamlessly, showing readers that Elsie is part of a supportive Asian American family and telling her story in language that makes it easy for young readers to understand Elsie's disability. 

The illustrations are colorful and delightful and Ziyue Chen relies on facial expressions to indicate Elsie's feelings and moods, while Schulte relies on change to color of the text to red for Elsie's thoughts. 

Dancing with Daddy shows readers how one family has embraced a child's disability and that it isn't a reason for kids to miss out on many of life's pleasures. This is also a wonderful example of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's windows and mirrors theory, in which some children will see their lives and experiences reflected back at them, while other will learn about those who are different from themselves. However, I would recommend reading the Author's Note at the beginning of the story to really understand Elsie and her life. Schulte provides a very accessible explanation of what WHS is. 

This book is recommended for readers age 6+

This book was gratefully received from Barbara Fisch at Blue Slip Media

Meet the Author:

Anitra Rowe Schulte has worked as a journalist for The Kansas City Star and the Sun-Times News Group, as a staff writer for Chicago Public Schools, and as a publicist. She is the mother of three beautiful girls, one of whom has Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome and is the inspiration for Elsie in this book. She lives in the Chicago area, and this is her first picture book. Learn more about her at www.anitraroweschulte.com and follow her at @anitraschulte on Twitter.

Meet the Artist: 

Ziyue Chen is the Deaf illustrator of a number of children’s books, including Mela and the Elephant by Dow Phumiruk, How Women Won the Vote by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and Rocket-Bye Baby: A Spaceflight Lullaby by Danna Smith. She lives with her loved ones in Singapore. Find out more at www.ziyuechen.com or follow her @ziyuechen on Instagram.

What the critics are saying:

★“Refreshingly, Elsie’s disability is seamlessly presented as simply another aspect of family life…As she swings and sways in her father’s arms, her forehead against his, their love is palpable; Chen’s illustrations fairly glow with affection…A heartwarming portrayal of a family embracing disability.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[Anitra] Rowe Schulte uses accessible, rhythmic language…conveying Elsie’s thoughts in pink- and red-colored text. Light-filled digital illustrations by [Ziyue] Chen make use of differing angles and dynamic shots, emphasizing the love the family has for one another.” —Publishers Weekly

“This sweet story is a great addition to any diverse and inclusive library.” —TODAY

MMGM: Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte

 

Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte

Scholastic, 2020, 288 pages

It's 1805 and Mary Lambert, 11 is living in a thriving if somewhat isolated town called Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard with her parents. Many of the people on the island are born deaf, as is Mary and her father, and the islanders have developed their own sign language that everyone uses on a regular basis whether or not they are deaf. It feels like a safe, protective community to Mary and she freely moves about that part of the island. 

Into this close knit community comes a scientist named Andrew Noble to study the people and to try to determine why there are so many deaf people. Noble doesn't have much respect for the deaf and treats them as though they were intellectually impaired, never speaking to them even though they are able to lip read (of course, Noble never made the slightest effort to learn their sign language). 

What Noble really wants is a living "specimen" to take back to Boston to study. One day he finds Mary alone on the beach and violently kidnaps her. After a horrible five day journey, the two of them reach Boston, and Mary discovers that away from Martha's Vineyard, deaf people are treated quite harshly and are considered to be dimwitted. Noble is quite abusive to Mary, but she is determined to escape and return home. Eventually, after some terrible adventures in Boston, Mary is rescued by a mysterious sailor. 

This is a riveting work of historical fiction based on a true story and the deaf community on Martha's Island is something I had never heard of before. Some of the issues and attitudes around disabilities did feel a little modern to me, but it didn't make the story feel forced, nor did it diminish the story's basic message. It also doesn't mean that these issues and attitudes weren't relevant or thought about 200 years ago. There is a parallel though less developed story about the early white settlers, including Mary's great grandfather, who colonized the island taking the land away from the Wampanoag and how their descendants are continuing to take more and more land from the Native Americans on Martha's Vineyard.   

A few years ago, I read a book by Ann Clare LeZotte called T4, a novel written in free verse about the Nazis' unthinkable Aktion 4 policy of euthanizing disable people. So. I was a little surprised to find myself somewhat reluctant to read this novel at first, even though it was only the cover that turned me off to it (I know, never judge a book by its cover, but sadly, we do). Then, as a Second Round judge, I read Show Me a Sign for the 2020 Middle Grade Fiction Cybils award at the beginning of 2021, and while it turned out that I liked it very much, in fact, I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting, I never wrote about it here on Randomly Reading. So when I read that the sequel, Set Me Free, is due out September 21, 2021, I decided to reread Show Me a Sign and it proved to be every bit as engrossing and exciting as the first time I read it. 

I wish there had been a teacher's guide available from Scholastic for this novel because there is so much that could be unpacked and explored in it. Luckily, there are lots of other resources on the internet and in the library for anyone who wants to know more. 

This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Be sure to check out the other Marvelous Middle Grade Monday offerings, 

now being carried on by Greg at Always in the Middle

Roll with It by Jamie Sumner

Elly Cowan wasn't particularly happy when her mother moved her from Nashville, Tennessee to Eufaula, Oklahoma over the Christmas holiday to help her Mema care for her grandfather, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Elly is confined to a wheelchair because of Cerebral Palsy and really doesn't want to go through the whole "new kid in school in a wheelchair" thing again. Plus they will be staying with Mema and Grandpa in their trailer, a small space for a wheelchair that requires her mother's help every time Elly needs to use the bathroom, which is more than embarrassing now that she's 12-years-old.

Elly has dreams of becoming a baker someday, and finds comfort in creating delicious cookies, cakes, and pies whenever the world becomes too much for her, including her overly protective mom and her absent father. So the one advantage to being in Eufaula is that now Elly can participate in the Bake-Off for the best pie held by Mema's church every year along with their fish fry and silent auction. And there's a $100 prize for the winner.

But first, Elly has to adjust to life in a trailer and a new school. And the first person she meets couldn't be more different. Coralee is a friendly, free-spirited girl with big blond hair who is on the beauty pageant circuit and she immediately invites Elly over to the trailer she lives in with her grandparents. a pit bull, and some cockatoos.

The next friend Elly makes is Bert Aikers, son of the grocery store owner. Her Grandpa had driven his car into the store, which is the event that brought Elly and her mother to Eufaula in the first place. It has been arranged that Mrs. Cowan would drive Elly, Coralee, and Bert, who also lives in the trailer park, to and from school each day.

Despite the other kids in school ignoring the three friends because they are trailer park kids, Elly finds she is enjoying living in Eufaula, realizing how lonely she had been in Nashville with no friends and just having the company of an overprotective aid all day long.

But as time goes by, and the decision is made for Grandpa and Mema to move into an assisted living condo, it looks like Elly and her mom will be heading back to Nashville. Well, not if Elly, Bert, and Coralee have any say in that decision. Besides, there is still the Bake-Off to win. Can they persuade Mrs. Cowan to stay in Eufaula?

There are just so many things I like about this book. To begin with, it isn't about a girl learning to live with CP. Elly has already accepted the fact that she has CP and will be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Instead, it's about a girl who happens to have CP dealing with many of the same issues any middle grader faces - being a new kid, making new friends, being snubbed by the other kids, but also being with people you like and who accept each other for who they are, doing the things you enjoy and that provide a great deal of satisfaction, and fighting to gain some amount to independence in your life. And over the course of the novel, Elly discovers just who she is and what her strengths and weaknesses are and then she rolls with it.

Elly is a great character. Even though she accepts the hand the life has dealt her, it doesn't mean she can't have some bad, frustrating, or disappointing days. Baking has become her coping mechanism and when she needs to, she will hole up in the kitchen and experiment. And while dealing with limitations and frustrations because of cerebral palsy may have matured her in some ways and made her self-involved in the past, now having friends and family around helps her mature more and to see others as individuals facing their own hurdles.

Sumner portrays the relationship between Elly and her mother so realistically, and it's not so different from most mother daughter relationships. After all, twelve is an age when kids want to be more independent and Elly is not different. Of course, her mother's fears can cause her to be little overly protective. I really enjoyed watching their relationship change and grow over the course of the novel.

Roll with It is a funny, sad, poignant novel and a book that all middle grade readers can benefit from reading.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was gratefully received from Atheneum

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

This review of The War That Saved My Life was originally published on The Children's War in 2015. On October 11, 2017, the sequel The War I Finally Won will be available. I highly recommend both.

Born with a severely clubbed foot, Ada Smith, 10, has been kept imprisoned and abused by her Mam in a one room flat her whole life.  Mam sees her foot as a mark of shame and humiliation, and so Ada never learned to walk, scooting around on her bum as she waits on Mam and younger brother Jamie, 6.  Then one day, Ada decides to learn to walk, keeping at it despite all the pain and blood.

In 1939, when war comes to England, Ada is told that Jamie will be evacuated to the safety of the countryside, and she will remain in the flat - bombs or no.  But Mam doesn't know Ada's secret and when evacuation day arrives, she and Jamie take off for the train station together.  Eventually arriving at a small countryside village, all the children are selected by residents except Ada and Jamie, who are taken to the home of Susan Smith (no relation) and left in her care.

But Susan is depressed, mourning the death of her friend (though clearly more than friend), Becky.  The two women had lived there together for years and Susan had inherited the property.  The last thing she wanted now were two children to take care of.  And yet, she does.  She feeds Ada and Jamie, buys them new clothes and shoes to replace the dirty, raggy things they arrived in, and allows them to find their own way through a certain amount of benign neglect.

And Susan has a pony named Butter that Ada determines to learn how to ride and care for.  Soon, she is riding all over the village and surrounding area.  Susan has also taken Ada to a doctor about her foot, and she has been given crutches to help her walk.  But when Jamie begins school, Ada refuses to go not wanting to admit she can't read or do simple math.  Eventually Susan, who has a degree in math, figures it out and offers to teach her at home - an offer not very welcomed by Ada.  But why not?

Ada and Susan are two people carrying around a lot of physical and emotional baggage, thrown together by a war they don't really feel connected to and which at first doesn't feel quite as real as the personal war they are waging with themselves.  But gradually, they forge a relationship with each other and begin to feel like a family.  And then Mam shows up and takes the Ada and Jamie back to London, despite the bombing and Ada is forced to scoot around on her bum once again.

Now that they have seen another side of life, is it over for Ada, Jamie and even Susan?

What a powerful story The War That Saved My Life is.  It is everything that makes historical fiction so wonderfully satisfying.  There is lots of historical detail about London and the countryside in those early war days, including the rescue of British soldiers from Dunkirk (Susan's house is on coastal Kent, the closest point in England to Dunkirk). 

I thought that Susan and Ada were drawn well, with lots of depth to their personalities, but not Jamie so much.  He really felt like just a secondary character, mostly there for contrast and to move the story along in a believable way.  The shame Mam felt over Ada's foot is quite palpable, but also seemed to empower her with the ability to abuse her daughter, making her plain scary, though a rather one dimensional character at the same time.

One of the things I found interesting is that in the beginning Ada, the child, is such a strong, determined character, while Susan, the adult, was kind of weak and irresolute.  And yet, they have things to teach each other.  And to her credit, Bradley doesn't actually come out and directly let the reader know that Susan and Becky were partners, but its clearly there.

If your young readers loved Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian, they are sure to love The War That Saved My Life.  If they haven't discovered Good Night, Mr. Tom yet, perhaps it's time to introduce them to both of these fine books.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an ARC received from the publisher

Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson, illustrated by Sean Qualls

When Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah was born in Ghana, West Africa, to his mother, he was perfect and beautiful.  Yet, all his father saw was his deformed leg, thinking his son would be useless, he left his family forever.

As Emmanuel grew, his mother told him he could do anything, but despite learning how to crawl and hop, how to do chores, and even earn some money, most people just told Emmanuel to beg.  Here, however, was a strong, determined boy, who managed to get himself to school two miles away, and who even learned to play soccer after saving enough money to buy a ball, aided by the crutches his grandmother found him.

When his mother passed away, Emmanuel realized he would have to support his family.  But the memory of her last words, "don't give up" rang in his ears and Emmanuel came up with a plan to show the world that disabled does not mean unable.  He boldly wrote a letter to the Challenged Athletes Foundation in San Diego, California and they generously responded by sending Emmanuel a bicycle, complete with helmet, shorts, socks and gloves.  Before long, he had mastered riding.

Now, Emmanuel was ready to begin his 400 mile bike ride through Ghana, raising awareness and support for all the disabled people in his country.  He talked to everyone who would listen about his mission and hopes for the disabled.  Emmanuel soon became a national hero.  Oh, and he completed his 400 mile journey in just 10 days!

What a remarkable young man Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah is.  Not only did he raise awareness that people with disabilities are valuable members of society who can do great things, but he shows the young reader how one person can take action and actually change the world.

The writing in Emmanuel's Dream is fluid and spare, sometimes sounding like free verse poetry, sometimes like poetic prose, but it all works together.  Sean Qualls' mixed media folk art inspired illustrations are done in a palette of bold mat mainly oranges, browns, and turquoise blues, on a pale peach background, giving the sense of being in a warm, tropical climate.

Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah and
his bike today

Emmanuel, who was born in 1977, has continued working as an activist for the disabled in his county.  He eventually made his way to the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) at their invitation.  While there, he was able to receive a prosthetic leg and shortly afterwards entered the CAF triathlon.  He also received $50, 000 in award money, and when he returned to Ghana, he founded Emmanuel's Dream, an organization that helps children with disabilities.

If Emmanuel's Dream isn't an inspiration for young readers, I don't know what would be.  This is a wonderful book that should not be missed, but shared with kids in schools, home schools, libraries and personal libraries everywhere.


This book is recommended for readers age 5+
This book was borrowed from a friend

This is book 4 of my 2015 Nonfiction Picture Book Reading Challenge hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy