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Valentine’s Day

We’re not a [cards & tchotchkes = love] kinda family, but I like take this opportunity each year to talk about healthy romantic relationships, marriage rights, particularly how multiracial families have been targeted in the past, and how LGBTQ+ families are still struggling for equal rights.

When is it?

• The 14th of February

Read

• From Archie to Zack
• This is NOT a Valentine
• Worm Loves Worm

Watch

• How America outlawed interracial marriage

Discuss

• What is marriage?
• What are the benefits of marriage? (legal, financial, child custody, healthcare.)
• When did interracial marriage become legal?
• When did gay marriage become legal?

Dig deeper into this topic:

• Crushes & Puppy Love: Kids books about mutual respect, consent, and clear boundaries
• Talking about consent with kids
• Consent & Body Sovereignty for Infants & Toddlers
• Love is Love is Love: Diverse Family Constellations in Kids Books
• Gay Protagonists in kids stories
• Kids books featuring Multiracial Families

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Celebrating lovers is over-rated, let’s celebrate our kickass buddies for Galentine’s Day

When is it?

• The 13th of February

Read

• Jenny Mei is Sad
• Max and the Talent Show
• Song of the Court

Activities

• Creating heart paper airplanes

More Resources:

• Celebrating Galentines Day with stories of Supportive Friendship
• Healthy Sibling Relationships
• Helping Kids Navigate Jealousy
• Luminary Braintrust Members: Join the Friends From a Time Ago Collaborator Laboratory discussion group
• Template Letter: Setting Boundaries with Friends

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Celebrating the legacy of Black women who dared to disrupt business as usual

When is it?

• Annually on February 4th
• Also see Transportation Equity Day

Still searching – we still haven’t found a book about Rosa Parks that I’m willing to recommend without reservations.

We’ve probably read about 30 (all the ones I can find, at least) picture books, graphic novels, and board books about Rosa Parks. Most reduce her decision and her courage to whim, erasing her strategic genius and collaboration with the NAACP. Parks’ disruptive resistance was carefully planned and deftly executed, and it kicked off the start of the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Erasing the intention and intelligence behind her protest worked to gain white sympathy in the media at the time – but through the modern lens, we’re erasing how brave she really was.

Even though I have many issues with the Ordinary People series, I Am Rosa Parks is the first book we begrudgingly use to kick off these discussions. It’s funny, engaging, and goes into deeper detail on how mindful Parks was in her resistance – but it’s also factually inaccurate and implies that ‘racism is over.‘ We use it as a critical read to unpack the whitewashing of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Since the mainstream media and public curriculum saturates kids with a two-dimensional, pedestal-ed martyr of Parks, we then turn our attention to Claudette Colvin (all the books on her are are even more whitewashed, or terribly bland) and Georgia Gilmore in Pies from Nowhere.

In Pies from Nowhere, kids see how movements are not created or maintained by whim or luck. Nor are they achieved through the actions of just with one person.

Baking is not the first talent we think of when we imagine heroes and change-makers. This story opens up the lens on what it means to work in collective resistance down at the grassroots level, and how everybody can (must) play a part in revolution.

And then we bring it into the modern day Black Lives Matter movement and Black Futures stories – because anti-Black racism did not end with Rosa Parks.

Read

• I Am Rosa Parks
• Pies from Nowhere
• Because Claudette

Watch

• The hidden Life of Rosa Parks
• Claudette Colvin Refuses to Give Up Her Seat (ages 8+, content includes substance use and lots of irreverent cussing.
• Claudette Colvin tells her own story
• Bree Newsome Takes Down the Confederate Flag

Tying Parks’ resistance to modern times within the Earthquakes’ lifetime – we’re also learning about Bree Newsome’s take-down of the confederate flag and that impact on state flags in 2020. (There are no children’s books on Newsome yet, so we watch this video).

Afterward, we talk about what has changed, and what has stayed the same since Parks’ refusal.

With the stories and videos above, we unpack the way Gilmore and Parks contributed to a wider movement. The way Newsome trained for her ascent, and how her accomplice, Jason Tyson, used his whiteness to hug the flag pole to prevent cops from electrocuting her with tasers.

More Resources to dig deeper

• Transportation Justice Family Action Toolkit
• Children’s Books on Civil Disobedience & Disrupting Injustice
• Stories of Nonviolent Resistance For Kids
• Stories about Segregation & Desegregation
• Learning About Cultural Erasure with Milo’s Museum
• No White Saviors: Kids Books About Black Women in US History
• Children’s Books By Brilliant Black Women: #OwnVoices Authors & Illustrators

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Let’s take this low-key event as an opportunity to unpack ‘innocuous’ sexism in kidlit.

Groundhog day is kind of delicious NBD we don’t have to feel guilty about failing to celebrate or acknowledge, which is lovely. We acknowledge groundhog day like, every three years. But when we do – why not take this opportunity to unpack messed up cultural norms?

When is Groundhog Day

• Annually on February 2nd.

Read

• Groundhog’s Dilemma – An otherwise lovely story sullied with a Jezebel trope. See if you and your kids can spot the problematic message about women.
• Groundhug Day (ages 3-7) This story does double duty as a lovely book on supportive friendship for Galentine’s Day (see below.)
• Punxsutawney Phyllis – Another otherwise lovely story about shattering the glass ceiling, ruined by some anti-ageist stories stigmatizing older adults.

Discuss: Punxsutawney Phyllis

• What message does this story tell us about the obstacles girls and women face when applying for positions of power?
• What message does this story tell us about older adults?
• What are the consequences when stories about bigotry use other targeted identities as a footstool?
• How could the anti-elder stereotypes in this story ultimately screw Phyllis over when she’s an older woman?
  

More Resources to dig deeper:

• Keeping Women in the Kitchen (and out of kidlit) with Jimmy Zangwow