Award Winning Children's author finds me on Not in Our Town!
Submitted by Nell Fleming on January 28, 2010 - 11:00am
It's not every day that an award winning children's picture book author calls a mother two days after the purchase and reading of her book. But let me start at the beginning, if there is such a place, as this tangled web of connections is hard unravel. It all started when a librarian at the University of Illinois Center for Children's books responded to my request to diligently search for any fictional picture book ever published with a white woman and a black man as a couple, married, parents or otherwise, preferably on the cover of the book. I was starting my proposal for a study on the demographics of children's picture books in the current century. Only one book was referred and the librarian who found it thought that perhaps it was a non-fiction book but wasn't sure. I can understand why she thought so, because the main character, Tyler, is a real person and the source of the inspiration for this rhyming tale of how we view people based on their perceived skin color. It was so far the only book I was able to identify that had a white woman as the spouse or partner of any person of color or in any interracial relationship in a children's fiction picture book and it isn't even completely fictional. Why does it matter if it is fiction or non-fiction you may wonder? The reason is because fiction speaks to our imagination and what is possible, desirable, and worth wishing for. Non-fiction is valuable because it speaks to what is true and real now and in times past.My proposal was approved and I started my research last week which consisted in choosing a starting year to work on, 2005. One the third of 2500 pages of book covers to research I spotted the book in question, Am I a Color Too? By Nancy Vogel, and wondered to myself why I had not yet purchased or checked the book out. And so, I obtained a copy and read it to myself and then to my daughter, who is biracial also. Imagine my surprise when the author called me the two days later to say she had found me on the Not in Our Town Web site because she had been following my work as the Racial Justice Coordinator at the YWCA specifically the Women with Biracial Children Support group. It took my brain a minute to figure out what was happening. As I listened to the voice mail I wondered if she was calling about my work life, my school life, or my personal life. When I returned her call we went through a series of additional connections including mutual friends in Illinois although we both live in other states and parallel interests and odd coincidences mostly learned through facebook.Although I've never been one to believe in fate or purpose behind random synchronicities it is not hard to see why people would attribute meaning to these kinds of experiences. There is a kind of otherworldly quality when the odds of meeting someone at just the right time and place to connect on so many different levels is statistically improbable at least in the world I was raised in before the internet. I imagine that people from a different time would have called the internet magic and I guess it is in some ways. The issues that I hold dear used to make me the odd one, the black sheep, the eccentric but now I'm connected with so many thousands of people like myself in my community, nation and the world that I am seeming more average all the time. If racial justice becomes the average lifestyle, I’ll take it. I can always dye my hair blue when I turn 65.
It's not every day that an award winning children's picture book author calls a mother two days after the purchase and reading of her book. But let me start at the beginning, if there is such a place, as this tangled web of connections is hard unravel. It all started when a librarian at the University of Illinois Center for Children's books responded to my request to diligently search for any fictional picture book ever published with a white woman and a black man as a couple, married, parents or otherwise, preferably on the cover of the book. I was starting my proposal for a study on the demographics of children's picture books in the current century. Only one book was referred and the librarian who found it thought that perhaps it was a non-fiction book but wasn't sure. I can understand why she thought so, because the main character, Tyler, is a real person and the source of the inspiration for this rhyming tale of how we view people based on their perceived skin color. It was so far the only book I was able to identify that had a white woman as the spouse or partner of any person of color or in any interracial relationship in a children's fiction picture book and it isn't even completely fictional. Why does it matter if it is fiction or non-fiction you may wonder? The reason is because fiction speaks to our imagination and what is possible, desirable, and worth wishing for. Non-fiction is valuable because it speaks to what is true and real now and in times past.My proposal was approved and I started my research last week which consisted in choosing a starting year to work on, 2005. One the third of 2500 pages of book covers to research I spotted the book in question, Am I a Color Too? By Nancy Vogel, and wondered to myself why I had not yet purchased or checked the book out. And so, I obtained a copy and read it to myself and then to my daughter, who is biracial also. Imagine my surprise when the author called me the two days later to say she had found me on the Not in Our Town Web site because she had been following my work as the Racial Justice Coordinator at the YWCA specifically the Women with Biracial Children Support group. It took my brain a minute to figure out what was happening. As I listened to the voice mail I wondered if she was calling about my work life, my school life, or my personal life. When I returned her call we went through a series of additional connections including mutual friends in Illinois although we both live in other states and parallel interests and odd coincidences mostly learned through facebook.Although I've never been one to believe in fate or purpose behind random synchronicities it is not hard to see why people would attribute meaning to these kinds of experiences. There is a kind of otherworldly quality when the odds of meeting someone at just the right time and place to connect on so many different levels is statistically improbable at least in the world I was raised in before the internet. I imagine that people from a different time would have called the internet magic and I guess it is in some ways. The issues that I hold dear used to make me the odd one, the black sheep, the eccentric but now I'm connected with so many thousands of people like myself in my community, nation and the world that I am seeming more average all the time. If racial justice becomes the average lifestyle, I’ll take it. I can always dye my hair blue when I turn 65.