READING WITH LAS COMADRES
in celebration of
El día de los niños/El día de los
libros
Thursday,
April 24, 2008
8:00pm
Eastern Time, 7:00pm Central Time, 6:00pm Mountain Time,
5:00pm Pacific Time
The
interview should last approximately 1 hour
Join
Adriana Dominguez and comadres around the
nation on April 24, as she interviews
Carmen
Tafolla and Sharyll
Teneyuca
authors
of
That's
Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!
published
by Wings Press
and
Dr.
Rebecca Bigler
Director
of the University of Texas at Austin, Gender and Racial
Attitudes Lab
Have you
ever wanted to know how an author writes a book? Where she
gets her ideas? Who or what is her inspiration? What she hoping
to accomplish? Now you can have these and other questions
answered in the Reading with Las Comadres LIVE Teleconference
Series!
Each month comadre guest interviewers (announced monthly),
will interview a comadre author, whose latest book has just
been released, in a teleconference. For
the April teleconference we are not offering any free books.
Instead we are asking that you purchase a book and donate
it to an elementary school. To register just fill out the
form below. You will receive a confirmation with the
date, time, and call in numbers for the teleconference. On
the day of the event, just phone in and listen to the interview!
You may send questions to the author via Nora Comstock
until two days prior to the teleconference.
That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!
Carmen Tafolla is one of the most anthologized of
all Latina writers with work for both adults and children
appearing in more than two hundred anthologies. With work
translated into Spanish, German, and Bengali, Tafolla has
been published in a great variety of genres. Twenty of her
children's stories and poems have been published in English
and Spanish educational publications K through college level
by educational publishers including Pearson Learning
/Scott-Foresman, Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Heinneman-Rigby,
and Harcourt School Publishers. Carmen Tafolla
has also published five adult poetry books, seven children's
television screenplays, and numerous short stories and articles.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the pecan shellers of San Antonio,
Texas, were some of the lowest-paid workers in the nation.
They were all Mexican-Americans, who had fled the revolution
in their home country. Pecan shellers worked twelve hours
a day, seven days a week, for as little as six cents a pound.
In addition, they had to work in dusty, closed rooms. This
made many of them ill. And then, in 1938, their wages were
cut in half. They needed someone to be a voice for them, someone
both brave and caring. They needed a hero. A young woman,
barely twenty-one, answered their call.
Her name was Emma.
But Emma Tenayuca was not born a hero of the poor. That's
Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo! tells how the seeds
of Emma's awareness and activism were sown when she was very
young. This story of courage and compassion shows how each
of us, no matter how young, can help to make the world more
fair for everyone.
Illustrated by Terry Ybáñez, Spanish
translation by Carmen Tafolla, Translation editors:
Celina Marroquín and Amalia Mondríguez,
Ph.D.
****+****
Historians regard this as the first successful large-scale
act in the Mexican-American struggle for civil rights and
justice. No less than a legend in her own time, she is now
an honored figure in Mexican-American history. Internationally-recognized
Chicana poet Carmen Tafolla, a long-time friend of
Emma, and Emma's niece, lawyer Sharyll Teneyuca, tell
how the young Emma learned that positive action is the way
to justice in this, the first book ever – for children
or adults – about Emma Tenayuca. San Antonio artist Terry
Ybáñez based her illustrations on historical
photographs of Emma and San Antonio, and on her own experiences.
She surrounds her pictures with autumn pecan tree limbs, and
the many-hued blues of the south Texas sky.
White Children More Positive Toward Blacks
After Learning About Racism, Study Shows
Challenging the idea that racism education could be harmful
to students, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin
found the results of learning about historical racism are
primarily positive. The study appears in the November/December
issue of The Journal Child Development.
Psychologists Rebecca Bigler and Julie Milligan
Hughes found white children who received history lessons
about discrimination against famous African Americans had
significantly more positive attitudes toward African Americans
than those who received lessons with no mention of racism.
African-American children who learned about racism did not
differ in their racial attitudes from those who heard lessons
that omitted the racism information, the study showed.
"There is considerable debate about when and how children
should be taught about racism," says Bigler, director
of the university's Gender and Racial Attitudes Lab. "But
little research has examined elementary-school-aged children's
cognitive and
emotional reactions to such lessons."
Interviewed by:
Adriana Dominguez is the Executive Editor who manages
the children's division of HarperCollins' Latino imprint,
Rayo. Before joining Harper, she was Críticas
magazine's Children's Review Editor. She has many years of
publishing experience in the children's market, and has worked
for most major publishers. She has worked with many noted
Latino authors, such as award winners Pat Mora, and
Monica Brown. El día de los niños/El
día de los libros; Book Day/Children's Day,
is an organization founded by author Pat Mora and sponsored
by ALSC.
