SUPERPOWER? A MIDDLE-GRADE STEM BOOK REVIEW by ELLIOTT KURTA, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, and GIVEAWAY!

Here is Elliott Kurta's first foray into reviewing nonfiction. He wants more opportunities--so I'm on the lookout for books to recommend to him. If you have a favorite nonfiction middle-grade, please leave the title in the comments.

REVIEW

If you could have any superpower, what would it be? In Elaine Kachala’s debut book, Superpower?,  (Orca Books: 2022) kids learn about wearable technology, or wearables, that make it possible to have super strength, flight, telepathy, and more! Distilling a complicated topic into an enlightening and profound book, Superpower? explains not only what wearables are but how they’re affecting our society.

Overall, Superpower? is the quintessential nonfiction book. Not only does it cover a cool topic—real-life superpowers—it does so with easy-to-understand explanations and eye-catching illustrations. Each of the chapters is rife with intriguing examples of wearables in use today, and will capture the imaginations of readers. This book is ideal for 9-12 year-olds kids, although it could be read to much younger kids. However, as new and challenging words and terms are occasionally introduced without contextual definitions, parental help may be needed either way.

Illuminating the world of wearables, Superpower? addresses the technologies that are turning science fiction into reality. Covering VR, prosthetics, fitness trackers, smart clothing, and more, the book addresses some of the obvious—and not-so-obvious—examples of wearables already in use today. The book also addresses not only the history of wearables and early examples of technologies but also a glimpse of what we can hope to develop in the future. Additionally, the book features interviews with young scientists and inventors working towards a brighter future. Below, you can see an example found on pages 22 and 23, in which Christina Mann demonstrates her invention, a sonar collar that encourages social distancing.

 A bubble ball? A spiked collar? Finally, a 3-D printed prototype. Christina Mann constructed and tested different designs to spark discussion about COVID-19 and social issues and create practical technologies to keep people safe while protecting their privacy and sensory rights.
Photo credit: Steve Mann and Christina Mann

However, the wearables in development are only half of the story. Superpower? also delves into how wearables have affected our lives, our interactions, and most importantly, our privacy. Despite being a children’s book, Superpower? isn’t afraid to talk about the ethical concerns regarding these new technologies. In between describing what fitness trackers and brain-computer interfaces are, Kachala takes a moment to remind readers what might happen if corporations have unlimited access to our data or if an AI “goes rogue” and takes over. In order to spur further thought, at least once or twice per chapter the book also includes sidebars reminding the readers to “slow down and think human.”

Overall, Superpower? sets itself apart in how it addresses the dilemmas surrounding controversial new technology. While the material is adjusted to a younger audience, quality is not compromised. The photos and illustrations throughout the book expedite the process, renewing engagement throughout each of the chapters. All in all, Superpower? is a great way to introduce middle-schoolers to non-fiction, encouraging the use of critical thinking while remaining an enlightening, exploratory book.

Elliott is a prolific reader of various genres who is more than happy 

to share his opinions on books.

In his free time, he enjoys writing, reading, and running. 

       He is a 9th-grade student in Charlotte, NC.  

AUTHOR INTERVIEW 

CAROL: How did your science background feed your interest in writing this book? 

 

ELAINE: I have a science and social sciences background. Back at the University of Toronto,, I took a Sociology of Health and Illness course, which hooked me and led me to a new career path. I'd worked as a medical technologist, made my way into hospital management, and considered doing a master's in health care administration. This sociology course started me thinking about the social, economic, and environmental issues that affect our health, well-being, and quality of life. 

 

CAROL: Did you write the book first or contact a publisher with a proposal?

 

Outside of picture books, writers usually develop a proposal for nonfiction. But crafting a nonfiction proposal is pretty intense! I had to do a lot of research to write the proposal. It included several elements:

 

• An overview with a captivating hook and summary, noting the genre, key concepts, target age group, who would buy the book, and word count.
• How the book compares to, and is different from, other books in the market.
• Table of Contents, followed by a detailed outline of each chapter.
• Three sample chapters (I had to do three because this was my first book so the publisher would see my writing style and voice).
• Bibliography.
• Marketing and promotion plan.
• My bio.

 

Ted Staunton critiqued it. We made some tweaks, but overall, he thought it was great and recommended that I reach out to Kirstie Hudson at Orca Book Publishers. As luck would have it, Superpower? was a perfect fit for Orca Think, a new nonfiction series that looks at issues making headlines to give kids the tools to think critically. I am beyond grateful for Ted's support and Kirstie's interest in the book! Then, the research and revising continued!  

CAROL: Superpower? is remarkably up to date—including Covid in 2020. Was this a challenge?

 

Yes! It was my biggest challenge. As time went on while writing the book, I learned of new devices and made some replacements. Covid wearables are a perfect example. I did not have this in my nonfiction proposal, but since I wrote the book throughout Covid, I ran into fascinating information which demanded to be included.   

 

CAROL: Out of curiosity, did you meet the Manns?

 

ELAINE: No, not yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Because I wrote the book during Covid, this wasn't possible. But we corresponded regularly, and Dr. Mann graciously took an incredible amount of time to answer all my questions and send many fabulous photos. Also, he was one of the experts to fact-check the manuscript. I hope we'll meet up soon.   

 

Want to know how Elaine got interested in wearables? On Monday, I'll 

post her answer to that question on the Talking Story Facebook 

group. Not a member? Let me know in the comments and I'll send you

an invitation. 

GIVEAWAY

To enter this giveaway leave a comment by November 16. If you are new to my blog, please include your name and email address. For each time you share this post on social media I'll give you another chance; just let me know what you do. U.S. addresses only. If you prefer, you can email me with your contact information.

Congratulations to Hewi Mason who won MEOW! from last week's blog. 

For more great middle grade books, check out Greg Pattridge's blog on Monday. He features lots of fine books!

This Promise of Change: A Review and Giveaway

Congratulations to Linda Andersen Gutheil who won FREE LUNCH from last week's blog. She plans to donate it to a local school. Thank you, Linda!

This Promise of Change: One Girl's Story in the Fight for School Equality co-written by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy is a book you won't be able to put down. Jo Ann Allen was one of twelve students in Clinton, Tn who integrated Clinton High School in 1956. Debbie Levy has given voice to Jo Ann's stories in a unique nonfiction biography that uses more than eight varieties of poetry. That is quite an accomplishment.

But as Jo Ann and Debbie would most likely be quick to acknowledge, their accomplishment pales in comparison to what the twelve students achieved in those difficult months. 

In a book that is told so beautifully through poignant poetry, it is difficult for me to select just a few poems to share with you. Instead, I'm going to bring you snippets from several to entice you to read it yourself. (NOTE: The last line of several poems appear in a slightly larger font. This is a blogger issue; not the way in which they appear in the book. My apologies to the authors.)

REVIEW

Promise opens with a brief description to the Hill where Jo Ann and her family lived, worshiped, played, held concerts, and went to school--until it was time for junior high and high school when the Negro students were bused twenty miles to Knoxville to a Negro high school. This is a stanza from the poem, "MY SCHOOLS," about her elementary school:

... Green McAddo had no cafeteria, no gymnasium 
and no indoor bathrooms
until the time I started first grade.
The grammar school in town did,
and also had separate classrooms for every grade,
but that school was whites-only,
and still is. (p.21)

From "THEIR SCHOOL":

Clinton High School.
Here it is, right close, right down the Hill,
with its solid red brick and clean white trim
for white students only.
We walk by it, not to it,
because it's their school,
big,
but not big enough
for twelve Negro students
who look at it every day
but have never been inside.  (p.25)


When a judge in Knoxville rules that Clinton can no longer ignore the Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954,  Clinton High School is forced to integrate. It wasn't that the community, principal, town newspaper, or teachers wanted to, they were had to. 

Throughout the book, there are headlines from local and national newspapers and magazines; signs in the town, quotes from the Tennessee constitution, prayers, interviews, and legal rulings. Here is one:

"We have never heard anyone in Clinton say he wanted the integration of students in the schools, but we have heard a great many of the people say: 'We believe in the law. We will obey the ruling of the Court. We have no other lawful choices.""
Editorial in the Clinton Courier-News written by editor Horace V. Wells, Jr. August 30, 1956. (p.62)

At first, Jo Ann thinks that, 

If school were weather, I would say it's serious
with a chance of friendly.  (p. 75)


On the second day, she sees protestors and glares on the way to school. She thinks that "clouds [are] rolling in on my forecast."  (p. 78)

This is from the poem, "LEFT UNSAID":

So my two great-great-grandmothers
slaves,
had children with light complexions,
and narrow noses like yours (and mine),
and thin mouths like yours (and mine),
white enough to pass for white,
which means that
in the branches of my family tree
there are ancestors
who are as white
as you. (p.84)

By the end of her first week of school, the shouting and harassing increase. The students stop eating at the cafeteria because it feels unsafe. The sheriff drives them home. People ask if they want to quit and they say no. In the poem, "HEARING/UNHEARING" Jo Ann thinks, 

But now, I don't want to walk out.
I want to walk in.
I can't unhear what I hear.
I won't walk away from it, either. (p.91)

Less than a week later, riots break out in the street. Here are a few stanzas from "PEACEKEEPERS":

The tanks roll in at lunchtime,
a show of growling might,
As if in answer to the prayers
we prayed in fear last night.

Clinton's leaders asked for them;
the governor agreed.
They saw the lawless trampling
of the bigoted stampede. (p. 107)


From "WE ARE THE NEWS":

The news is something
that happens
to other people
in other places

Until it happens to you. (p.124-5)

Tension escalates with the KKK burning crosses on the Hill. 

"AND THEN THERE ARE THE THUMBTACKS"

Scattered on our chairs
A prank straight out of cartoons
They think we don't look? (p. 173)


From "THEIR SILENCE":

And so I go through the school day
surrounded by a hard shell of silence,
chitchat and cheer bouncing off the walls,
none of it meant for me.  (p. 180)

Eventually, all the "little" acts of hatred add up to too many "BIG THINGS":

Where once they kept their distance,
the white kids who hate us
are up close now, hard on our heels,
truly stepping on our heels--
Gail Ann's are bloody.  (p. 193)


After Thanksgiving break, the twelve students return to hair pulling, hands tearing their books, insults, wicked notes in their locker, nails and eggs thrown at them, and more buttons worn by students which say, KEEP WHITE SCHOOLS WHITE.

The school board suggests they return to Austin High. 

Here are two stanzas from "WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?"

This plan is good if you're a fan
of the Klan.
It treats us as less than
every white man.
It can't stand.
We will finish what we began.

To be clear:
a bus to Knoxville again--
that's moving in the wrong
direction.  (p. 209-210)

The principal closes the school after violence erupts and a pastor is beaten. At an election that follows that event, all the white supremacist candidates lose. Jo Ann calls that, A REAL VICTORY.

Before all this,
before all that happened
happened,
I thought there was nothing I could do
about segregation.
I'm just a girl, I thought,
one girl who tries
to look at the good side of things,
because there's nothing I can do
about the bad.
I'm still that good-side-looking girl.
but now when I see the bad, I'll think--
I'll know---
there's something I can do about it. (p. 233)

REFLECTION

As you can tell by the number of poems I quoted, I believe This Promise of Change should be a part of every middle-grade Social Studies curriculum. It is easy to read and even the reluctant reader (or the boy who doesn't like poetry) will be hooked by this riveting true story. The back matter includes information about what happened to each of the twelve students; a scrapbook of photos, notes from both authors, a civil rights timeline, and several pages of resources. The authors also put Clinton, Tn into the context of the Civil Rights struggle. 

A MINI-INTERVIEW WITH DEBBIE LEVY

I spent a pleasant thirty minutes chatting with Debbie via Zoom about historical fiction for older middle-grade readers.  I slipped in a few other questions also. For the record, she is now working on a poetry collection and a nonfiction historical picture book. If you look at the list of books she has written, you'll see that many are about social justice. I asked her about this passion and she said, 

I seem to return in my books to the theme of the Other or Outsider. Surely this has roots in my Jewish identity, for Jews have been and still are so often the Other. But also, for me the best of Judaism is tied to the quest for justice, and so it is tied to the themes of such books as This Promise of Change and We Shall Overcome. And then there’s my status as the daughter of a refugee. My mother, the protagonist of my nonfiction-in-verse book The Year of Goodbyes (re-released in 2019 in a new edition), was the Other as a girl in Nazi Germany, and when she immigrated to this country in 1938. I cannot emphasize enough her influence on me as a fighter and as a person who was always open to and interested in those who were different from her—treating others as she wished she’d been treated when she was the ultimate Other.

GIVEAWAY

I am giving away this book in conjunction with the summer issue of Talking Story on Community. If you are interested in winning Promise, please leave me a comment along with your email address if you are new to my blog. A winner will be chosen on July 18. 

Making Friends with Billy Wong by Augusta Scattergood: A Review with Help from David Corbett

Congratulations to my fellow blogger, Clara Gillow Clark, who won a copy of TWICE BETRAYED on last week's blog. Stay tuned friends, I have lots more giveaways coming up!

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One of the writing blogs I follow is Writer Unboxed. When I find an article by one of their contributors in Writer's Digest, I pay extra attention. 

Soon after completing Augusta Scattergood's middle grade novel, MAKING FRIENDS WITH BILLY WONG (Scholastic Press, 2016),  I read David Corbett's article "To Change or Not to Change?"(Writer's Digest, January, 2017). Thanks to Corbett, I found a terrific template to review Augusta's book. (Quotes from his article are in bold.)

Every story implicitly asks two simple questions: 1) What happened? and 2) Why? These questions may remain unanswered, but they cannot be escaped...we need to keep in mind what Les Edgerton means when he says every story is about the same thing--trouble--or what Steven James means when he says that stories are not about what happened, they're about what went wrong. (Writer's Digest, pp. 26, 27)

For Azalea Morgan, the protagonist in MAKING FRIENDS, her life goes wrong in the first paragraph: 

All it took to send my summer on the road to ruin was a fancy note and a three-cent stamp. The minute that envelope showed up, Mama was packing my suitcase. (p. 1)

The reader quickly discovers the three types of problems which Corbett says characters try to answer:

• External challenges: tasks in pursuit of a goal in the physical world. 

For Azalea, that means surviving a summer in Arkansas without her best friend and being asked to help a cranky grandmother she doesn't really know.  

• Internal questions: doubt concerning deep-seated issues such as one's worth, purpose, nature, identity--in which characters are forced to ask, Who am I? What kind of person do I want to be? 

Azalea doesn't make friends easily and when she finds out her grandmother expects her to be friends with Billy Wong, the local grocer's grand nephew, Azalea thinks,

Like it or not, I was going to meet more people than I was ever friends with back in Texas. (p. 26)

           **********

Would this Billy Wong boy want to talk to me? Did we speak the same language? I wasn't so great at talking to ordinary boys back home--boys who didn't look like they'd just arrived from some faraway country. Mama says I'll get over that talking-to-boys thing. I doubt I'll get over it this summer in Paris Junction, Arkansas. (p. 29) 

• Interpersonal Relationships: efforts to grow closer to or distance oneself from another character or characters. 

In spite of her doubts about being friends with a Chinese boy, Azalea begins to see the ostracism Billy faces. That, along with his friendliness, draws the two together. After they get ice cream at the drug store, Billy asks her if she wants to bike at the creek or hunt turtles. 

If I hadn't already talked more than I'd talked in my entire lifetime to a boy, I'd be explaining that no, I will not be exploring a creek. I will be fixing dinner and watering Grandma Clark's garden till the cows come home....Even though it was easy eating ice cream together, I had a hard time picturing being good friends with a boy. Especially one so different. 

But today was fun. So I looked right at Billy Wong, and I answered, "Maybe." (p. 64)

In the Writers Digest article David Corbett wrote, 

When a protagonist of any kind changes, it's usually because the struggles and conflicts he has faced have forged a different understanding of himself, his abilities and/or his world, including the people in it. (p. 28)

By the mid-point of the book, Azalea is calling Billy her friend. She is also surprising herself by becoming braver than she ever had been in Texas. She discovers hidden truths about Willis, the town bully, as well as about her grandmother. These discoveries spawn new actions.  

Despite her fears, towards the end of the book Azalea climbs up her grandmother's tree behind Willis, who has been throwing acorns down on her and Billy. She asks:

"You doing this because you're mad at me? What'd I do?"

"This was my tree till that Chinese boy came. Now every time I climb it, he's around." 

When a breeze rustled the tree's leaves, I grabbed hold of a thicker branch and held on. "Ever think about being friends with Billy?" I asked, still not quite believing I was perched in a tree with Willis DeLoach. (p. 173)

With that interaction, the reader knows that Azalea is well on the way to growing and changing. 

Like Kirby Larson's LIBERTY, Augusta Scattergood inserted poems from Billy's point of view. Her sparse use of language gets to the heart of how Billy is feeling. This is one of my favorites:

Keeping Notes on Lucky Foods, My Private File

The screen door pushes open.

The bell ting-a-lings.

A white man steps inside, tall, frowning.

Hat pulled close over his forehead.

Eyes darting fast

from Kay's Cookies to Dum Dum suckers,

cash register to cigar boxes.

"Need me some garden fertilizer," he snarls.

"Near the fishing lines," I answer, nicely.

He draws his words out.

"Bologna? Cheese? Bread?"

"Right this way, sir," I say.

I reach into the cool case of cheese and lunch meat.

Weigh a thick wedge of cheddar.

Punch the cash register's round buttons.

Hand the man groceries.

Watch him leave.

He'll go in my stories.

Mixed together with

track meets,

Future Farmers,

Student Council,

dusting soup cans,

pricing crushable cracker boxes.

And new friends.              
Property of Billy Wong, Spy (p. 123)

Corbett concludes the article, 

Look to your story to determine whether your main characters must change, and the degree of change they will undergo. Change is by no means a requirement--but when the story leads to self-examination, or revolves around a relationship, it is all but inevitable that the action will create the re-evaluation of self that we equate with change. (p.29)

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Teachers and home school educators: Augusta just posted her classroom discussion guide on her website. You can download it here.

Augusta and I have been Facebook friends for several years.
We enjoyed meeting in person a few weeks ago, half-way between our homes in Florida.
We talked about books and writing for three hours-
and now I have a new "real" friend!