I’m thrilled to announce that I have been accepted to the Maryland Teaching Artist Roster! This means that Maryland schools, libraries, community centers, and nonprofit organizations can now access Arts in Education Grant funding from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) to bring me in for:
The best part is that it’s super easy to apply for grant funding! Simply contact me to discuss a program or series that best meets your needs. Then I fill out the application, and all your site coordinator has to do sign off on the application (or provide a letter of support) and fill out a brief follow up evaluation after the program or workshop. Grant payments are made directly to the Teaching Artist from MSAC – so you don’t even have to handle any money.
Give Me a Sign by Anna Sortino Summary: Lilah is stuck in the middle. At least, that’s what having a hearing loss seems like sometimes—when you don’t feel “deaf enough” to identify as Deaf or hearing enough to meet the world’s expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change. When Lilah becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind, her plan is to brush up on her ASL. Once there, she also finds a community. There are cute British lifeguards who break hearts but not rules, a YouTuber who’s just a bit desperate for clout, the campers Lilah’s responsible for (and overwhelmed by)—and then there’s Isaac, the dreamy Deaf counselor who volunteers to help Lilah with her signing. Romance was never on the agenda, and Lilah’s not positive Isaac likes her that way. But all signs seem to point to love. Unless she’s reading them wrong? One thing’s for sure: Lilah wanted change, and things here are certainly different than what she’s used to.
As soon as I found out about this book, I knew I had to read it, and I knew exactly when and where I would do so: at the Deaf/American Sign Language Camp where I have been a counselor and director for 23 years and counting.** Having seen how many of our campers have discovered and embraced their Deaf identities at camp, I couldn’t wait to see how Deaf author Anna Sortino tackled this story. And she NAILED it. Lilah’s story is both effective and affecting, touching on many hot topics in the Deaf community: cochlear implants, hearing social media influencers, interactions with law enforcement, feeling “not Deaf enough”. But the story stays firmly grounded in Lilah’s singular experience, never feeling like a lecture or a checklist. (Aside from being a nuanced depiction of the Deaf experience, this book is also a terrific mentor text for any author who wants to tackle big issues in a natural way that keeps the story grounded in the protagonist’s wants and needs.) Through Lilah’s interactions with campers and counselors, Sortino showcases the diversity of the Deaf community and the disabled community, highlighting many different communication styles, language preferences, abilities, educational backgrounds, and perspectives coming together. Add to that a very sweet summer romance, and you’ve got a fun, immersive read that will appeal to anyone with a heart.
**If you or someone you know is between the ages of 7 and 17 and is Deaf/hard-of-hearing OR wants to learn American Sign Language in an immersion environment, check out Deaf Camps, Inc.’s residential camps!
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Marguerite knows her uncle doesn’t like her. True, she’s in line for the throne before him and he contends she’s too deaf to rule, but she’s known since he broke her hand to keep her from using sign language. Now, as the kingdom’s Bishop-Princep, Uncle Reichard has declared war on magic and Marguerite must hide the fact that she’s a witch. While witnessing her first witch trial, Marguerite rescues a child from death with the help of a handsome, itinerant acrobat, Tys. Marguerite flees, hiding in the neighboring empire where magical gifts can flourish. Before her training is complete, war threatens. She returns home, only to witness her uncle seizing the throne. He isolates and imprisons her. Marguerite’s love for her people drives her to continue defying him. But to challenge him means she’ll have to rely on her homemade invisibility cloak, questionable allies, and Tys, the one boy she never should have trusted.
This beautifully-written novel full of adventure, magic, and romance grabbed hold of my heart and never let go! Marguerite is a compassionate and resourceful heroine who knows who she is even when the world tries to define that for her. I never knew how much I needed a story about textile magic until I read this book! The author wove her own experience as a deaf/hard-of-hearing individual and ASL interpreter into Marguerite’s story, and the results are a gorgeous tapestry of political intrigue, swordplay, romance, and feminist magic.
Good Different by Meg Eden Kuyatt Summary: Selah knows her rules for being normal. She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it. Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student. Selah’s friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble. But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn’t mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it’s too late?
How I adore this book! The author’s gorgeous use of imagery puts us directly into Selah’s point of view. I felt the itchiness of that school uniform and smelled that sour milk big-box store smell. Every detail, from Selah’s dragon metaphors to Pop’s four-colored pen to a through-the-bathroom-stall-wall conversation at FantasyCon, is pitch perfect. This deeply realized and beautifully rendered OwnVoices novel should be on every reading list.
As my co-author Manuela Bernardi and I worked on our book, She Spoke: 14 Women Who Raised Their Voices and Changed the World (along with another project we hope to be able to share with you soon!), we learned about so many fierce and inspiring women whose stories have not been shared as often as they should be. So we are thrilled to bring you this interview with Jen Bryant, author of the very first picture book biography of Patsy Takemoto Mink.
About the Book: Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight: Patsy Takemoto Mink and the Fight for Title IX
text by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Toshiki Nakamura
Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins
January 25, 2022
ISBN 9780062957221, hardcover $17.99, 48 pages
ages 4 and up
At an early age, Patsy Takemoto Mink learned that working toward a goal could come with challenges. But she never gave up. As the Japanese proverb says, fall down seven times, stand up eight. That spirit helped Patsy throughout her life. She wanted to become a doctor, but medical schools refused to admit her because of her gender. So … Patsy carved her own path. She went to law school, ran for a seat in the United States Congress, and helped create Title IX, the law that requires federally funded schools to treat boys and girls equally. Although many people tried to knock her down, Patsy always got up again. She was a historic trailblazer who championed equal rights and helped create a better future for all Americans.
As someone who has enjoyed and participated in athletics from a young age, I am always on the lookout for topics related to that. I had such fun researching and writing ABOVE THE RIM: HOW ELGIN BAYLOR CHANGED BASKETBALL (Abrams, 2020, illus. by Frank Morrison), that I wanted to do more. My agent, Alyssa Henkin of Birch Path Literary, and I were discussing the fact that Title IX, the law that provided gender equity in education and athletics, would be fifty years old in 2022. There were already some wonderful books out about that very important piece of legislation—but none that focused on the life of Patsy T. Mink, who was a co-sponsor and driving force behind Title IX. As a high school athlete, I benefitted directly from the increased support for women’s athletics, so it was truly an honor to bring Mink’s story to life.
What lessons can readers take from Patsy Mink’s story?
A duruma doll
To be honest I’m very careful not to think about “lessons” when I choose a topic or create a picture book text. Instead, I try to share the person’s life story as accurately and lyrically as I possibly can—and if lessons arise from that naturally, then that’s great. In this case, I think the idea of never giving up and of being persistent in one’s goals despite setbacks and failures, is what comes through. The title “FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES, STAND UP EIGHT” is an old Japanese folk saying that reflects that concept. The daruma doll—which is a recurring symbol in the book—also embodies it. I love how illustrator Toshiki Nakamura carried that image right through the pages and made it come alive! In addition, I think Patsy’s own life was a model for women of her generation and beyond as they struggled to be seen as equals in professions such as higher education, law, and medicine.
What is your favorite detail or story about Patsy Mink that didn’t make it into the book?
There’s always so much great stuff that I read, watch, listen to, and makes notes about that never gets into the books I write. This one is no exception! I spent a week in Washington, D.C. poring over the Patsy T. Mink papers at the Library of Congress. I was enthralled by her family photos, her scrapbooks (she took hula lessons as a young girl), and her letters to family members. She was very close to her brother and to her whole extended family and made sure she got back to Hawaii for important events even when she was serving in Congress (and you have to remember that this was the 1960s and 70s when air travel wasn’t what it is today.)
I was also incredibly moved by the letters Mink received while in Congress from women who, just like her, were rejected from medical and law schools, or were passed over for promotions in higher education, simply because they were female. It was both heartbreaking and infuriating to read those letters and underscored why legislation like Title IX was so critical!
How did you become a writer? Very slowly and quite accidentally. I majored in languages (French and German) in college (Gettysburg College in central PA) and for the first few years after graduating, I taught those languages in high school. I also worked in a bank, a clothing store, art gallery and had other jobs before I started thinking about writing. I left full-time teaching after our daughter was born and started doing some freelance work for a small gift-book company. I also started reading and writing more nonfiction and poetry—and in 1991, after a lot of rejections, I had my first nonfiction books published. Looking back, they were very different from what I do now, but I put my head down and tried to build on them in order to learn as much as I could about both the creative and the business side of writing.
What’s next? What are you working on now?
I’m working on a second picture book biography with editor Alex Cooper at HarperCollins. Still a bit early to say much more about that one now . . . but the subject is, indeed, another inspiring woman!!
About Jen Bryant
Jen Bryant, author. Photo by Elizabeth Fontecchio.
Jen Bryant writes picture books, novels, and poems for readers of all ages. Her books have received the Sibert Medal, two Caldecott Honors, two Schneider Family Book Awards, and two Orbis Pictus Awards. Jen and illustrator Melissa Sweet have collaborated on biographies of creative artists and writers, including A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin and The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. Jen’s biography SIX DOTS, a Story of Louis Braille, illustrated by Boris Kulikov, is available in Japanese, Korean, Hebrew and also in a print/ braille version. Jen’s book Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball, a civil rights story illustrated by Frank Morrison and published by Abrams, was the 2021 NCTE Orbis Pictus winner. Jen lives with her family in Pennsylvania.
Stories By Hand with Kathy MacMillan 