This week, I read the amazing book called The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson. This book is book about a twelve-year-old girl named Candice who after moving for the summer to her late grandmother’s house in Lambert, South Carolina, found a letter in a box in the attic. That letter was address to Candice’s grandmother and talked about the Washington family and how the Allen boys ran then out of Lambert a long time ago. The author of the letter talked about the Washington family and how he loved their daughter Siobhan and made it his mission to destroy the Allen’s for what they did. However, that hurt the town of Lambert and he wrote in order to make up for what he did. In the letter there was a clue for how to find some money that would support the town and make the world better. Candice’s grandma could not solve this puzzle and was even ridiculed for trying to. However, that was not going to stop Candice from trying. She, along with her neighbor Brandon are detectives in their book trying to piece all the different clues together in order to solve the puzzle which her grandma could not do. They have many ups and downs throughout their journey and there are also some social justice issues presented along the way, some which were actually true in real life. Not only is the reader following Candice’s and Brandon’s journey through the book and witness their hardships, but the reader is also getting the hardships of what people faced in the past. Varian Johnson does an amazing job at highlighting historical social justice issues, but he also connected them to present day characters and acknowledges the similarities and differences of the hardships that people who are black face regularly.
On Johnson’s website, he writes about where the inspiration from this book came from and I feel like this event in his life is all too real for so many people of color in general. He wrote about how his brother went away to a leadership camp his junior year in high school and Johnson had to pick him up from their airport when he came back. At the airport, after picking up his brother, a police officer followed them to his car and said they were acting suspicious and thought they were drug dealers. They let the officer search the bag and he found nothing. This makes Johnson think of all the cases you hear about now with Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and all of these different people who had been treated terribly by the police just because they “look suspicious.” His experiences of being discriminated against and marginalized helped him to create these characters and write them in a way that is more meaningful because he knows what they are experiencing when they do face discrimination in this book. He has lived experience to help guide him to appropriately portray these characters and make them feel more real to the reader. One thing that Johnson wrote that really stood out to me was:
“But all this police officer saw was what he wanted to see: two black kids that MUST have been drug dealers. Because why else would we be at the airport? Never mind that one may be returning from a leadership conference. Never mind that we were clearly related. Never mind that we had never even held a cigarette or drank a beer, much less handled hard drugs. Never mind that we would go on to graduate as co-valedictorians of our high school class. We were the enemy.”
This reminded me of a Tedx video I watched the other day which can be seen below. Megan Ming Francis is the speaker in this video, and she is a professor of Constitutional Law and American Politics. She shares with the audience two different cases of where she felt prejudice and discriminated against because of her skin color. The first case she described happened to her brother who was sitting on a stoop with some friends when police officers came over and threw him to the ground and searched him because they “thought” he was dealing drugs when really he was just hanging out with some friends. The second case she described happened to her at an airport where airport security “thought” that she had brought brass knuckles onto the airplane when it was really just a ring. He would not let her go until she explained that she was a college professor, which he then had to look up online to prove that she was telling the truth before he was willing to let her go. This may not be a video appropriate for younger students because some of the topics/ideas in here might be a little complex for them, but it is still a really interesting video that emphasizes that people who are black face discrimination almost everywhere in their lives. It was very eye opening to me and I think it could be very eye opening to a lot of people as well.
This book hit on a lot of different important topics. It addressed sexual identities, bullying, what it means to be a family, discrimination, etc. It incorporated so many important topics that are talked about a lot today and are still problems in our society. I think that this would be a great book to read with a class to teach them easily, from just one book, how to be more empathetic and respectful to everyone. There are a ton of powerful messages presented throughout the book that I am very impressed with how Johnson incorporated them all.
I thought that it was really interesting that this idea of bullying came up quite a bit when reading. There were many instances from the book where Brandon was bullied and most of the time it came from kids from school, especially one named Milo, but I feel like he got a little bullied from his grandpa. There were remarks throughout the book that his grandpa made that belittled Brandon and made him feel bad for being himself. By having bullying be present in this book helps to make readers more empathetic to people who are bullied. I felt so bad for Brandon and the hardships he faces with the kids from school, it physically hurt me to read about a kid being bullied by another kid in that way. I think this is something students can really relate to when reading this book and it may make them more likely to stop bullying when they see it. It would also lead into a great discussion about how to stop bullying when you see it. Then, as a teacher you could tie it back to how Brandon was feeling in these moments and relate your teaching of how to stop a bully to the situations in this book. It may be more meaningful and impactful to students that way. Also, I love that we read this book in October which is national bullying prevention month. It is a good month to be talking about this when the rest of the world is and to participate in all the events happening after reading. I could see in a classroom reading this book in September/early October and then finding different websites and events to participate in to help stop bullying. Below are just a few links to different organizations talking about bullying prevention.
Click on the image above to go to the website. Or explore another website below right here.
Johnson also does an amazing job at intertwining historical events and people into this book. When doing so, he chooses characters and events that are not as well know. For example, he includes information about the baseball player named Biz Mackey who was a great professional baseball catcher in the 1950s. He was even inducted into the hall of fame in 2016. Click on his name to read more about him and his career as a baseball player. It was unique to talk about Mackey in his book because when we think of baseball players who are black and very talented, we usually think of Jackie Robinson. This is showing the reading that there were other players out there who were also very talented who might easily get overlooked. Another example of this in his book is when Johnson talks about Althea Gibson who was a very elite tennis player and revolutionized tennis and helped to guide it to what it is today. Recently, there was a statue created in her honor and for more information about her and the statue created to honor her, click here. I added some more resources here about these people, but Johnson also includes information about these historical events and people in his authors note at the end of his book which is also a great resource. I was curious and wanted to look up more information, but Johnson does a good job highlight these people/events at the end of his book which I really like and value that he did because it shows where he is coming from in his thinking and helped me to look up more information about them. I learned a lot from Johnson about historical events and people that I had no clue existed.
This book could also lead to a great social studies lesson where students research other historical injustices and people that are sometimes overlooked by society. For example, I am sure there are many other prominent people who created big changes in other sports, so it would be interesting to look up those people as well and see how they play a role in trying to break down social injustices. Then, through this research, students could also create person poems for these people. That would be something really fun and interesting to do with students because not only are they learning more about people and social justice issues, but they get to position themselves into their shoes and really take on a challenge about how to appropriately represent them and their daily lives. It will also students to better understand history and to better understand social injustices that people have face for years and years.
I still have some questions after reading this book like:
Did Brandon and his grandpa ever make up?
Did Reggie/James Parker die or was he still out in the world somewhere?
What made the author chose these specific historical events to include in his book?
Why didn’t any of the other people who received a letter ever investigate, I wonder if they were at all curious if it was true? Why were they so quick to follow the orders of the mayor when the Candice’s grandmother was not?
These would be great prompts to give students to write about to see what they think the answer is or it would be fun to challenge students from the class to come up with a question they still have about the book and try to imagine a possible answer to their question. This is something I really enjoy doing in my own head because a lot of the time these questions can have many different answers and you have to use clues from the book to support your reasonings to why that might be the best answer to the question. Last week we talked a lot about persona poems which would also be really cool to do with the characters from this book, but it may also be fun to prompt the students to do a free write after this book about a question they still have and then challenge them to come up with a possible solution. I feel like that would also provide insight into student’s comprehension of the text and major takeaways that they had. That could also be something fun to do halfway through the book and have students try to predict an answer to their question and then come back to that prediction at the end of the book to see if their predictions were correct.
I thought it was also really interesting to see how Johnson incorporated this idea of “passing” into the book with Coach Douglas and with James Parker. I feel like this was a big deal for society, especially back in the early to mid-1900s that we don’t typically hear or read about. For one of my history classes I took early on at Appalachian State I had to read a book called Love on Trial by Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone. This book was all about an annulment case between and interracial couple in the 1920s. Leonard Rhinelander and Alice Rhinelander were the interracial couple to were talked a lot about in the 20s. Leonard married Alice not knowing she was “colored” because she was someone who could “pass” as white. Leonard (mainly his family) tried to convince the court that Alice “tricked” him into thinking she was white and “deceived.” The case revealed much about what it meant to be “colored” during the 20s and delved into the complexity of race and confusion people had at “defining people as colored.” This is not a book that should be read with younger students. Some of the language and things they talk about may not be the most appropriate for them. However, it was still a very interesting book where I learned about “passing” for the first time and it was interesting to see how this was very common for people to do in the early 1900s, yet we rarely hear about it. In The Parker Inheritance it reminded me of the book that I read a couple years about and it was interesting to read about again and how the characters in this book used it to their advantage to gain better lives.
This is a great book that shows the culturally diverse potential of children’s literature. Johnson does an amazing job at representing the black culture and community that is present today and that happened in the past. Not only that, but he creates a strong female character that has a sense of agency throughout the book and a desire to solve the puzzle. This is also another really powerful subtle element in The Parker Inheritance. Sometimes there is a negative stigma around girls and being good at math and solving complex problems. This book breaks down that stigma and shows that a female can be good at math and be good at problem solving. The article, “Culturally Diverse Literature” by Fenice Boyd, Lauren Causey and Lee Galda, talks about the “danger of a single narrative” and the problem that happens when students don’t get access to diverse literature. Chimamanda Adichie who is a Nigerian novelist thought that her own stories that she wrote had to be about people from other places than her home country. She had never read a book that had African characters in it, so she thought that she needed to include other people in her books. One point that the others made in the article that really stood out to me was “It is important to not just see self and others but to recognize oneself in others, to understand our common humanity…And with careful selection of excellent books for children and young adults, teachers and teacher educators can prepare students for creating and maintaining a better world” (Boyd et. al.). This reminds me of The Parker Inheritance because it is a book that allows students insight into another child’s world where they can relate to the characters, and for some it may be their first time seeing strong African American individuals portrayed in a positive way.
The article, “Culturally Diverse Literature,” reminded me a lot of this graphic (shown above) that we looked at in class the other day that shows the diversity of race in children’s literature. There is a vast difference as you look across the different races to see how they are all portrayed in books. I think this is very important to know as a teacher so that we can work hard to make sure that we are giving our students access to books that portray many different types of people. It is also important not to just pay attention to race but also to consider different abilities/disabilities presented in the books, different identities, different religion, etc. We want to make sure that all students can see themselves in books, but then also be able to turn and see others as well and gain insights into someone else’s life that is different from their own. The article had a great Table that shows the Authors and Illustrators of Culturally Diverse Literature which can be seen below. That is a chart that would be good to reference to when you are looking to buy more books for your class or if someone asks you for a book that shows culturally diverse literature, this list could be a good starting out point for someone wanting to include more diverse books in their class. These books don’t all have to be bought new either, because that could get expensive. My parents live near 5 different Goodwills/thrift stores and my mom and I are constantly going around to the different thrift stores and buying books, one time we spent 4 hours in one store looking at books and the lady didn’t want to count them all up and gave us a really good deal on the book, some of which looked brand new. Above are a few of the ones I have found from my thrift store searches.
Sources:
Boyd, F. B., Causey, L. L., Galda, L. (2015). Culturally diverse literature: Enriching variety in an era of common core state standards. The Reading Teacher, 68(5), 378-387.
Francis, M. M. [Tedx Talks]. (2016, March 21). Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis | TEDxRainier. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aCn72iXO9s&feature=youtu.be
Huyck, D. and Dahlen,S. P. (2019 June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/.
Johnson, V. (n.d.). The story behind the parker inheritance. [Author Varian Johnson]. Retrieved from http://varianjohnson.com/books/the-parker-inheritance/story-behind-parker-inheritance/
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