"Maybe Something Beautiful," Nah, I say ALWAYS something beautiful!

This week we read a few articles and continued to focus on Crenshaw. One of our assignments was to look into a book award other than Newbery or Caldecott, find a book that received that award, and evaluate it.

I chose to look more into the The Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award. This award was created by Texas State University 23 years ago in order to commemorate the author's that wrote about Mexican American experiences. I know that many of the students that I will teach in Asheville, NC will be from either Mexican or Latino descent. It is important to me to work on creating a list of books that they can see themselves in (mirror texts).

The newest winner of the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award (for 2017) is a beautiful book. The book is titled Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell. The article, “Culturally Diverse Books: Enriching Variety in an Era of Common Core State Standards (Boyd, Causey, & Galda, 2015), discusses some of the ways to determine if a book is high quality. I will use their three categories to evaluate the book, Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood (Campoy & Howell).

Visual and verbal sensitivity: The images in the book are filled with people of Latino descent. However, there are also Caucasians, African Americans, old and young, and the mixing of races. There are children of different races painting together, and planting flowers and trees together. I believe it to be both visually and verbally sensitive. The words are written in very plain English, but they have a hint of Latino or Mexican spin on them. For example, it references “papas” rather than “dads” or “fathers.” It also alludes to the type of dancing that takes place, “salsa, merengue, bebop!” While I know that the salsa is a stereotypical dance of the Latino or Mexican people, based on the research I have done, it is accurate that they would dance that way.

Authenticity and accuracy: As I mentioned above, I believe that the references to Mexican culture are authentic and accurate. While the book focuses more on the visual aspect of diversity within the book, the few references are accurate as far as I can tell. The message that the book gives is that being from a small, non-wealthy section of a city can be a beautiful place full of community and love. Regardless of the color of their skin, all of the people are accepted and welcomed into the community of artists.

Ideology: As I began discussing in the accuracy and authenticity section, the ideals of this book are definitely community, art, dance, and happiness. While I have never been to the small, East Village near San Diego, CA, it appears in the story to be a place of community. I looked up the demographics, and found that over half of the population lives in non-family households. Therefore, many of the housing options are community based rather than single-family houses. This could confirm the idea that they people are connected closely in their community. This book definitely sheds a positive light on the people of the Mexican and/or Latino cultures.

Social Justice issues this award might be connected with:

· Bullying: Many students from different cultures and races are bullied in school. With Mexican and Latino students, some struggle to understand what others are saying, or struggle with speaking up about their needs. It is often hard to find out about bullying in students who cannot verbalize that it is happening to them.

· Immigration/Migrant workers: I worked with a lot of children of migrant workers when I did my block 2 internship. The students spoke little English, and left schools so often they didn’t make a lot of friends and we had a hard time figuring out what they knew and what to teach them, before it was time for them to leave again. I may or may not deal with this in the schools I will work in in the future, but it is an issue that should be known about by teachers all over so that we can find the best way to help these students.