Story: Books for May 2021 — The Children's Diversity and Justice Library

Stories are powerful. They help tell us who we are. They tell others who we are. And they tell what we believe.

More importantly, the stories we tell about, and to, ourselves, reveal what we believe about ourselves, and demonstrate what it is that we want known.

As much as we shape them, our stories also shape us. What we tell ourselves about who we are becomes what we learn and teach about who we are. Becomes what we believe about who we are. Becomes what we know about who we are.

This month’s theme of story is particularly relevant to the CDJL as our mission is to share and make more widely accessible the stories of people and communities who have been under published and under represented in literature, as well as to use a justice lens in the honest telling of history and calls for change.

As we highlight the power of story, storytelling, and how stories shape us, we also focus on what stories remind us about:

who we are
who we are as family
who we are as anti-racists
who we are as living and interconnected beings
and who we are as people of courage

As always, we remind ourselves, and you, to pay keen attention to who is telling the story, who benefits from the story, and whose story is missing.

*Monthly themes adapted from the work of Soul Matters Sharing Circle https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com

The power of story, storytelling and how stories shape us:

Picture Books

I Am A Story, Dan Yaccarino
I, Too, Am America,words by Langston Hughes with art by Bryan Collier
Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré, Anika Aldamuy Denise author, Paulo Escobar illustrator
Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation, Edwidge Danticat author, Leslie Staub illustrator

Juvenile & Middle Grades

I Am An American: A True Story of Japanese Internment, Jerry Stanley
Dia’s Story Cloth, Dia Cha author, Chile Thao Cha and Nhia Thao Cha illustrators
The Story that Cannot be Told, J. Jasper Kramer
How I Became A Ghost, - A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story (Book 1 in the How I Became A Ghost Series), Tim Tingle
I Can Make This Promise, Christine Day
1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, National Geographic Children’s Books
We Are Still Here!: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know, Traci Sorell author, Frane Lessac illustrator

Teen

Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America by Amy Reed
We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World by Malala Yousafzai
Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation, Monique Gray Smith
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People ReVisioning American History for Young People) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Debbie Reese (Adapter), Jean Mendoza (Adapter)
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong by Rebecca Stefoff (Adapter) and James W. Loewen (author)

Adult

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

Stories remind us who we are:

Picture Books

This Is Me: A Story of Who We Are and Where We Came From, Jamie Lee Curtis (author) and Laura Cornell (Illustrator)
The Girl and the Wolf, author Katherena Vermette and illustrator Julie Flet
When We Were Alone, David Alexander Robertson
Love is in the Hair, Marcus Ware
Magnificent Homespun Brown: A Celebration, author Samara Coyle Doyon and illustrator Kaylani Juanita

Juvenile & Middle Grades

I Am Not a Number, Jenny Kay Dupuis
Dia’s Story Cloth, Dia Cha author, Chile Thao Cha and Nhia Thao Cha illustrators
Little Man, Little Man, James Baldwin
I Can Make This Promise, Christine Day
Apple in the Middle, Dawn Quigley

Adult

Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, Jane Jeong Trenka, Sun Yung Shin, Julia Chinyere Oparah (editors)

Stories remind us who we are as family:

Board Book

Mommy, Mama and Me, Leslea Newman
Daddy, Papa and Me, Leslea Newman
Hugs of Three: My Daddies and Me, Stacey Bromberg
Hugs of Three: My Mommies and Me, Stacey Bromberg and Joe Taravella
Good Night Families, Adam Gamble
Welcome, Precious, Nikki Grimes

Picture Books

Catherine’s Story, Genevieve Moore and Karin Littlewood.
Lullaby (For a Black Mother), words of Langston Hughes, art by Sean Qualls
Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation, Edwidge Danticat author, Leslie Staub illustrator
Just Like A Mama, author - Alice Faye Duncan, Charnelle Pinkney Barlow illustrator
Night Shift Daddy, Eileen Spinellei
The Best Family In the World, Susana Lopez and Ulises Wensell (Illustrator)
Just Add One Chinese Sister: An Adoption Story, Patricia McMahon (author), Karen Jerome illustrator
Stella Brings the Family, Miriam B. Schiffer author, Holly Clifton-Brown illustrator
Bridge of Flowers, author Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Syrus Marcus Ware illustrator
The Zero Dads Club, Angel Adeyoha
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, Kevin Noble Maillard author and Juana Martinez-Neal illustrator
We Sang You Home / Ka Kîweh Nikâmôstamâtinân (Cree and English Edition), Richard Van Kamp author, Julie Flett illustrator, Mary Cardinal Collins translator