Radiant by Vunda Micheaux Nelson

Sometimes 

I want to be white. 

White— 

like new snow 

or angel wings. 

White— 

like fresh milk 

or cumulous clouds. 

White— 

like just-washed sheets 

dancing on the clothesline. 

White— 

a full moon on a clear night.

Cooper is named after her Grandfather. I do like to think about names. Her name could be a source of teasing or worse but no, the bullying all relates to the colour of her skin mainly from one boy in her class. She is having a hard time in school - firstly with a dreadful bully named Wade Carter and also with her teacher Mrs Keating. But Cooper has a goal to shine:

I look up “shine” in the dictionary. It means a lot of good stuff. The kind Mama means: “To radiate. To give off light. To be made bright by polishing. To sparkle and shimmer with luster." It means brilliance and splendor. —That’s what I want. I want to shine. To be brilliant. To be radiant. “Radiant” is one of the words.

To shine at school means scoring good grades and 'winning' over Mrs Keating. At times this seems to be an almost impossible goal.

Then there is Wade who takes every opportunity to be so nasty to Cooper. Spoiler alert - in stories (and maybe in real life too) there is often a deeper reason for the bullying - and in this book it is true that Wade is going through some very tough stuff at home but I have to say I found it very hard to be sympathetic (even when his mum died). 

I wish Wade hadn’t heard me say I want to shine. I wish I hadn’t said it out loud. I do want to shine. I want to shine so bright, so bright that I blind Wade. Color blind him.

I wonder, is Wade scared? Scared of me? Or is he just mean?

Cooper, quite rightly, would like different colours for Crayola crayons - different colours to use for skin tones. This could be a good discussion point with a reading group. 

And why does my skin matter so much? Nobody cares if I wear a red blouse or a blue one. Why should they care if I wear black skin or white skin or purple skin?

Then for Christmas Cooper is gifted a small transistor radio and she also discovers the famous pop group - the Beatles. 

Kate and I read about John Lennon Paul McCartney George Harrison and Ringo Starr (with two r’s). We learn some new British words, like “gear” and “cuppa” “lift” and “kip.”

It is also an important turning point for Cooper when another 'black' student arrives in her class. I loved this boy - he is confident, he is kind, He is so proud of his heritage and most of all he is so friendly to everyone. 

There are references to other books in Radiant - The Wizard of Oz; Charlotte's Web; and Langston Hughes poetry. 

Australian readers will be unfamiliar with many of the historical references in this book - the assassination of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, and the Klu Klux Klan along with all the references to racial discrimination but many kids will identify with Cooper's need to find herself, her voice, her own place in the world and her desire for representation - where are the kids like her in stories and films. They will also cheer as she conquers school and gains good results on her end of year report card. I would share this verse novel with mature readers aged 10+.

Publisher blurb: As school begins in 1963, Cooper Dale wrestles with what it means to “shine” for a black girl in a predominantly white community near Pittsburgh. Set against the historic backdrop of the Birmingham church bombing, the Kennedy assassination, and Beatlemania, Radiant is a finely crafted novel in verse about race, class, faith, and finding your place in a loving family and a complicated world.   Cooper’s primary concern is navigating fifth grade, where she faces both an extra-strict teacher and the bullying of Wade Carter, the only child of a well-to-do white family, whose home Cooper’s mother cleans for extra income. How can she shine when her mother works for the meanest boy in school? To make matters worse, Cooper quietly wishes she could be someone else. It’s not all bad, though. Cooper and her beloved older sister have fallen for the Beatles, and Cooper is thrilled to have something special they can share. And what she learns about her British idols adds new complexity to Cooper’s feelings about race.

This verse novel examines complex themes of identity, forgiveness, self-love, and self-actualization through writing that’s accessible to young readers. Nelson intentionally and deftly uses details to situate the novel with history, and she’s crafted an endearing, three-dimensional protagonist in Cooper, whose voice and authentic struggle to make sense of her experiences will resonate in a work that presents fertile ground for discussion. Kirkus

Companion books:

One Crazy Summer

Blended

Ten years ago I read another book by Vunca Micheaux Nelson - Possibles.

Martin and Anne by Nancy Churnin illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg

Subtitle - The Kindred Spirits of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank

What interests me even more than what someone does with his or her life is what is in his or her heart, what that person aims to do. What caught my breath and filled me with wonder 

is how both Dr. King and Anne Frank responded to the hatred and cruelty 

they faced from the time they were born. It would have been understandable if they answered hate with hate. Instead, incredibly, they maintained faith and love in humanity. 

Both believed in justice and kindness and the essential goodness of the human spirit. 

Nerdy Book Club

Martin and Anne shows the links between these two lives. Both were born in 1929. Both experienced discrimination and unkindness and dreadful hatred in their lives. Both left us an important legacy of their words about peace and generosity and equality.

Compare their lives:

Martin has to go to a different school from his friend.

Anne's family flee Germany and move to Holland. After the Nazi's invade, Anne's school is closed.

Martin's community is filled with signs that say 'Whites only'.

Anne has to wear a yellow star and she cannot buy an ice cream or see a movie.

Martin, even as a young boy, is good at making speeches.

Anne has plenty to say and she does this in her diary because her family have had to go into hiding.

"Martin decided to become a minister who would lead his people to stand for justice."
"Even with all the hate around her, Anne believed that people were really good at heart."

Martin won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was 35. He was killed when he was just 39.

Anne died aged 15 but her diary became a worldwide best seller.

A surprisingly successful and enlightening combination strengthened by striking artwork. Kirkus

Yevgenia Nayberg is an award-winning author/illustrator, painter, and stage designer. Her debut author/illustrator picture book, Anya's Secret Society, received a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection Award. She’s an author/illustrator of Typewriter and Mona Lisa In New York.  Her latest book, I Hate Borsch!, is the Gold Winner of the 2022 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Awards. Born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine, she now lives in New York City.

Nancy Churnin is a children’s book author who writes about people that have made the world better and inspire kids to be heroes and heroines, too. Additional honors include the 2021 National Jewish Book Award; 2022 Sydney Taylor Honor and Sydney Taylor Notables in 2022 and 2019; four Social Studies Notable Trade Books for Young People; the 2018 South Asia Book Award; two Children and Teen’s Choice Book Awards finalists; two Junior Library Guild selections; starred reviews from School Library Journal; Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly; and multiple state book lists. She lives in Texas.

I first spied this book, Anne and Frank, in 2021 (it was published in 2019) and so I have had it on my 'wish list' for five years. Every so often I check the price which unfortunately never seems to come down.  I am collecting and purchasing books for a presentation at a forthcoming Teacher-Librarian conference. Yes, I have probably spent way too much of my own money (over AUS$300+ so far). Martin and Anne is set at AUS$35 which is over my usual price limit but I was sure this book would be splendid, and I was right. Here are some teachers notes for Martin and Anne. In this video you can see the author Nancy Churnin. Read a Nerdy Book Club interview.

In my former school library I read other books about Anne Frank in Term Four to Grade 6 such as these:

Behind the Bookcase

And about Martin Luther King Jr and events around his life I would read these to my Grade 6 groups:

I have a post about these three books and a novel that links with them here.

It would be fantastic to share this book Martin and Anne with a group of students in your library - they could be quite young aged 7+ or up to high school level. With the youngest children I would begin by sharing these two books:

Little Martin grew up in a family of preachers: his dad was a preacher, his uncle was a preacher, his grandfather was a preacher…so maybe he’d become a great preacher too. One day, a friend invited him to play at his house. Martin was shocked when his mother wouldn’t let him in because he was black. That day he realized there was something terribly unfair going on. Martin believed that no one should remain silent and accept something if it's wrong. And he promised himself that—when he grew up—he’d fight injustice with the most powerful weapon of all: words.

Anne Frank was born in Germany to a loving family. But when World War II broke out, Anne and her family had to hide in a secret annex in Amsterdam. Here, Anne wrote her famous diary, describing her belief in people's goodness and her hopes for peace. After the war, her diary captured the hearts of the public and she became one of the most important diarists of the 20th century. (Teacher's Guide)

It would be a brilliant lesson if your students selected two other books from the Little People Big Dreams series and, using Martin and Anne as a model, they then created their own joined story. For example Neil Armstrong and Katherine Johnson OR David Attenborough and Jane Goodall.

I previously talked about this book by Nancy Churnin:

Manjhi Moves a Mountain

Walking to the Bus-Rider blues by Harriette Gillem Robinet

Alfa is only twelve years old but he carries a lot of weight on his young shoulders. Each month the family, his sister and Great Grandmother, have to find fifty dollars for their rent. They live in a two room hut with no electricity and no running water.

His great Grandmother, Mama Merryfield, makes around ten dollars a week cleaning houses or sometimes only six or seven if "the white ladies were mean." Alfa works in a grocery story filling shelves, cleaning and stacking vegetables. He makes about five dollars every two weeks and older sister Zinnia makes about the same. "So our total family income was about sixty dollars a month, and we paid fifty dollars in rent."

But things are going wrong. Each month money disappears from their hiding place. This month they are ten dollars short for the rent. Then when all three are working at a cleaning job, the home owner accuses them of stealing over $2000 from the kitchen. Alfa, Zinnia and Mama Merryfield are African American and this is Alabama. They are considered guilty automatically. 

While all of this is happening every one is walking. It is the time of the bus boycott. Now Alfa needs to prove his family are innocent, he needs to find the thief and he desperately needs to find the extra ten dollars for their rent. His fears about eviction and homelessness are heart breaking.

Here are some text quotes to give you a flavour of this writing and an idea about life during these times:

"I saw a police car slow down as it drove by. The policeman tilted his head, staring at my bloodied face looking up at him. He rode on. The white boys kept kicking me. If I had struck one of them while the policeman was watching, I would have been arrested and beaten at the police station."

"The Montgomery bus system was bad. We didn't blame the company or the drivers; we blamed the System. The System made you pay up front, then get off the front of the bus and enter in the back door. Sometimes before you reached the back door, the driver would drive off with your dime or nickel."

"I had heard that white police were arresting coloured drivers right and left for going to slow, for going to fast, stopping their cars, starting their cars. The fines were costly, yet the drivers kept rolling."

Publisher blurb: During the Alabama bus boycott, six months after Rosa Parks made her famous bus protest, Alfa Merryfield and his family struggle to pay the rent. But someone keeps stealing their rent money -- and now someone is accusing them of stealing! With only a few days left before rent is due, Alfa and his sister, Zinnia, know they don't have much time. To solve this mystery, they must "walk the walk and talk the talk of nonviolence" that Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders preach -- and what they discover may be more than they dreamed... 

This book from 2000 is now sadly out of print but if you can find a copy and if you work in a school library read chapter 19. It describes a terrible scene where Alfa tries to use the city library.

With my city in lockdown I am rereading some books from my own shelves. I had a copy of Walking to the Bus-rider blues in my previous library and I was happy to spot this copy for just $1 at a charity book sale. Read more about Harriette Gillem Robinet here. 

I love talking to students about Rosa Parks. Even though I am in Australia, I am able to incorporate this into our Grade 5 topic on Democracy. In this unit we talk about gaining the vote (suffragettes) and legal and illegal ways of protesting. Rosa refused to give up her seat on the bus and so for 371 the African American people and other citizens of Montgomery Alabama walked everywhere. It was a peaceful and very powerful protest.  They walked to work, to church, to visit friends, to shop and to the doctor. They walked in the summer heat, the winter cold and in the rain and through thunder storms. I read these three books here in Australia to my students:

I am listing this book for older primary students aged 11+ because I think readers need some maturity to understand the dreadful racism which is described here.

Social issues, civil-rights history, adventure, and mystery are all skillfully combined in this gripping story of 12-year-old Alfa Merryfield, his sister Zinnia, and their great-grandmother Lydia. Setting her story in Montgomery, Alabama, during the summer of 1956, when the bus boycott precipitated by Rosa Parks is already six months old and racial tensions are high, Robinet has created richly delineated characters and conveyed a strong sense of time and place from the perspective of two African-American children who are deeply involved in it all. Kirkus Star review