Contemporary Counter Narratives
A Little Background Information
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story written by Kevin Noble Maillard and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal is a moving story about Indigenous people and their traditions tied to fry bread. Maillard creates several themes throughout this book, with the primary focus being on community and tradition. The illustrator, Juana Martinez-Neal, created illustrations that aligned perfectly with the themes of community and tradition that Maillard established. On each page, the reader can see a group of people of various races, ages, and heritage coming together to create fry bread; Fry bread has more meaning than just a type of bread.
Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship written by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, and illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko takes a personal experience approach when talking about race. Latham and Waters both pull on their personal experiences with race to establish two main characters that serve as a representation of their #OWNVOICES. In this text, the topic of racism is explored from the lens of an oppressor and target. Through the use of poems, Latham and Walters are able to create authentic scenarios where children are often judgmental and biased due to the lack of pre-existing knowledge surrounding race.
Cultural Authenticity
Kevin Maillard, the author of Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, is a member of the Seminole Nation, Mekusukey band, making this book personal and culturally authentic. In his author’s note he states, “Most Native families have a fry bread lady, usually a grandmother or an old aunt who holds a special recipe that she passes on to her female successor.” He then goes on to talk about when his Aunt Maggie started to burn the fry he took over making it. Making fry bread became Kevin’s job- this shows truly how meaningful and impactful this story was for him to share with others. By creating a culturally authentic text that centers around Indigenous culture and uses present-tense verbs and language, Maillard allows the reader to see a culture that is present and still thriving today.
Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes and Friendship written by Irene Latham and Charles Waters is culturally authentic because it shows students that racism is not something that happened a long time ago in history, but it is something that still exists today. This text also shows students that people all over the world still experience hate, injustice, and violence due to the color of their skin. I think this book brings up topics that are hard for many people to talk about. Having these conversations about race, misunderstandings, and breaking stereotypes is very important to talk to students in our classrooms about, especially in today's society.
Artistic Media
The artistic media of these books pay homage to cultures and heritage. Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story and Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship are both are texts with counter narratives that are supported by cultural authenticity. The illustrators for each book were extremely detailed and paid attention to colors, textures, and detail to make their illustrations culturally authentic. Another important artistic media to note is in Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story where various Native American tribes and nations line the inside pages of the beginning and end of the book. This is an extremely powerful, but subtle, way to integrate even more cultural authenticity into this text.
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story
Implications For The Classroom
Critical Indigenous Literacy
While reading Debbie Reese's journal article Critical Indigenous Literacies: Selecting and Using Children’s Books about Indigenous Peoples this particular section resonated with me. High-quality children's literature with representations of indigenous people that are culturally authentic is CRITICAL to have in classroom libraries to expose children to this diverse literature as well as provide mirrors and sliding glass doors for children in our classrooms.
I would use Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story written by Kevin Maillard to talk to students about community, indigenous cultures, and to explore personification poems. I would talk to students about the community when discussing this book because it is an underlying theme throughout the book; people come together to make, eat, and learn about the history of fry bread. I would also talk to students about indigenous cultures when exploring this book for many reasons. First, before reading the reader notices that when they open the book there is a continuous list of Native American tribes that are also featured at the very end of the book. Next, the book explains that fry bread is art, history, a place, and a nation. People come together from various cultures in a community, just as the fry bread symbolizes the coming together of the community. Lastly, I would like to explore personification poems with students after reading this book because it reminded me of “I am” poems. It reminded me of an “I am” poem because almost every page started with “Fry bread is ____”. I think that the invitation to create personification poems would allow students to think critically about community, culture, and the message that they want to send as they write their poems. By providing students with the invitation to write their own personification poetry they are going to be able to recognize and understand this specific type of poetry better because they have context for how to write this type of poetry and what it looks like in a text.
What Makes Fry Bread Unique?
Awards Recieved
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Noble Maillard is very different to any other book that I have read- beginning with the first pages that the reader sees when opening the book. I have never seen a book that lists Native American Tribes in its interior pages nor at the beginning or the end of a book. I also do not recall reading many, if any, books that use what I like to think of a personification poetry to write each page. Each page begins with the statement "Fry bread is_____" and then it elaborates on the statement in one to two sentences below. This sentence structure reminded me of an "I am" poem, like the one that I featured in previous blog post. It was a very interesting page structure to say the least when talking about reading this book. Another thing that makes Fry Bread different from other books that I have read is the elaborative Author's Note at the end of the story. The author explains each "Fry bread is" statement in detail which allows the reader to fully comprehend the messages that the author is trying to send. Lastly, I thought that this book depicted a wide variety of people from different cultures in the illustrations very well. When reading the title, I thought that this book would highlight stereotypical images of Native Americans, but this was not the case. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the author and illustrator worked collaboratively to remind the reader that there is not one specific way a Native American should look. I really loved the diversity representation of the people that were drawn. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this unique book and think that it will be a great resource to add to any classroom library.
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The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
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The AILA American Indian Youth Literature Award
Can I Touch Your Hair?
Challenging Stereotypes
Awards Recieved
NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor Book
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NCTE Notable Children's Book
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ALA Notable Children's Book
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Kirkus Best Middle Grade Book
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State Awards List (DE, MI, PA, & UT)
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Named one of 10 Books All Young
Georgians Should Read
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Nerdy Book Club Award Winner
Cybils Award Nominee
While reading Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship, these two pages were among many that stood out to me. This spread addresses many stereotypes associated with the African American community and violence. On the page that reads Sleepover, the parents tell Charles that he can go visit his cousin Ronnie during the day but he was not allowed at his house at night because he lived in a "rough neighborhood". These parents are associating the cousin's neighborhood with danger at night, but do not express worry or fear for their child to visit during the daytime. The next page is titled Why Aunt Sarah Doesn't Go Downtown after Dark. This page is sending the message that Aunt Sarah does not go downtown after dark because she will encounter many African Americans and that brings her fear at night. This is because of stereotypes that have been created associating African Americans with violence, especially during the evening hours. In reality, Aunt Sarah should not be afraid to be Downtown after dark, but because of these stereotypes that have been created, she has made herself fear being in this setting after dark.
Closing Thoughts
When reading this book to students, these two pages are incredibly important to discuss. In lieu of recent events involving the police and the African American community, it is so important to talk to students about how the police are there to protect us. This scene is very authentic to how many students may view police officers after these recent events. In upper elementary grades, I believe that it would be appropriate to talk about that sometimes people can do bad things for the wrong reasons- but that doesn't mean that all people, especially police officers, are going to be like that. In the classroom, we may have students who fear the police because of situations similar to the one described in this book because they have acquired a negative connotation with law enforcement officers. I think that it is important to invite local law enforcement officers into the classroom to read to students or talk about safety to help students develop positive connotations with officers and understand that MOST police officers want to keep the people in their community safe.
About The Authors
Kevin Maillard
Irena Latham
Charles Waters
About The Illustrators
Juana Martinez-Neal
Selina Alko
Sean Qualls
Additional Resources
Click To Read The Story!
Sources
Laminack, L. L., & Kelly, K. (2019). Reading to make a difference: Using literature to help students speak freely, think deeply, and take action. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Maillard, K (2019) Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story. Published by Roaring Books Press.
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Waters, C & Latham, I (2018). Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship. Published by Lerner Books.