Part of my morning reading always includes the online magazine Slate, and today I discovered that the parent company, The Washington Post, had added something new. A magazine, The Root, “that provides thought-provoking commentary on today's news from a variety of black perspectives.”

Okay, doesn’t the title seems a little cliché, and the timing of the debut, well, insincere? Does it take a black man running successfully for president for black perspectives to find a forum?

Or am I wrong. Is my reaction cynical? Am I too inclined (given the season) to see slavishness and pandering where there is only coincidence?

It’s not that we don’t need a forum for black experience and voices. And after all the editor-in-chief is Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. His (and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s) eight-volume, 4,000-entry, completely stupendous African American National Biography is coming out next month from Oxford.

And the title no doubt references the interactive genealogical section that the site also hosts. Through AfricanDNA.com (co-founded by Gates) African Americans can trace their ancestry in a number of different ways, including DNA testing.

The website states that “The Root aims to be an unprecedented departure from traditional American journalism, raising the profile of black voices in mainstream media and engaging anyone interested in black culture around the world.”

We welcome their perspectives and wish them well.

On a personal note, I’ve been collecting great books about African American issues for the last couple of months in anticipation of Black History
Month. Yes, I’m a couple of days early, but here’s the first.

Andrea Cheng has written and illustrated a very unusual book, Where the Steps Were (WordSong, 978-1-932425-88-8) about an ordinary class of third graders, their always extraordinary questions, and the teacher who guides them. Miss D. takes the class through lessons on American history, with an emphasis on the experiences and contributions of blacks. Five of the children narrate the year in poems.

CARMEN
Rosa Parks

Harriet Tubman,
she came before Lincoln,
but then how did Rosa Parks
fit in?
Miss Parks
just died,
Miss D. says.
—And she was a slave?
—No, she was a seamstress
who wanted to sit
in her seat on the bus.
We find 1955
on my time line.
Dang,
that was about one hundred years
after slavery.
That’s the year I was born,
Miss D. says.
—So when you were little,
we couldn’t have sat together
on the bus?

The children also talk about personal concerns and family matters.

JONATHAN
Everything Dies

Grams had a husband once
and so did my mom
but their husbands died.
Everything dies
like these cicadas
all over the playground.
Simon’s dad
was murdered one day
and so was Lincoln
in that theater
and Martin Luther King
talking about dreams.

There is additional tension as their school is to be demolished at the end of the year.

JONATHAN
Keys

Mr. O’Leary
has all the keys,
every last one
to every last door
in our school,
even the bathrooms
and the boiler room
where he took me and Anthony
to show us
all that heat.
What’s he going to do
with those keys
when they tear our school
down?

Cheng’s sister teaches third grade in Cincinnati, and the book is based on her experience. The class takes a field trip to a farm, and finally to a theater to see a play. There, history comes home to roost as the children, sitting in the balcony, are accused without evidence of spitting on the crowd below. Back in their classroom—having missed the play—the children write letters to the theater manager, asking him if their skin color had anything to do with their presumed guilt.

Where the Steps Were is fascinating, heartbreaking, and hilarious. It’s an extraordinary collection of voices of ordinary children. Our ordinary (not) children.

It’s primary day in Michigan, where the main offices of ForeWord magazine are located. Unfortunately, the National Parties are punishing the state for wanting to have more a voice in the election process by canceling some or all of their delegates to the national conventions. While that’s nothing to celebrate, it is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and for that, we have a few book suggestions from Sleeping Bear Press.

Riding to Washington (Sleeping Bear Press, 978-1-58536-324-7) is the story of a girl who rides with her father on a bus from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C., to see and hear Dr. King speak.

At first, she’s convinced that the only reason she’s going is because she’s too much trouble for her mother to handle alone, what with her two baby brothers. On the way, however, she experiences first-hand the effects of inequality and segregation and comes to understand the need for all people, even little trouble-makers like herself, to do the right thing.

Author Gwenyth Swain’s father and grandfather made this trip in 1963, to march for civil rights. The language of the book is colloquial and historical – a choice that will provide discussion material for classrooms. The book is beautifully illustrated by David Geister, with the colors, sites, and textures of the '60s.

Sleeping Bear of Chelsea, Michigan, began publishing in 1998, and considers its authors and illustrators to be “the heart and soul” of the press. Many of their books would be welcome additions to public or home libraries. Here are two others that celebrate the trials and contributions of Black Americans.

 

Let Them Play by Margot Theis Raven
Illustrated by Chris Ellison
978-1-58536-260-8

In 1955 there were 62 official Little League programs in South Carolina, and all but one were white. This is the story of the Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars, an all-black team, that wins the state tournament by default when none of the other teams will play them. At the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the Cannon Street team is invited as guests, but they are not allowed to play. Let Them Play takes its title from the chant shouted by the spectators who attended the World Series final.

 

D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet
by Nancy Sanders
Illustrated by E. B. Lewis
978-1-58536-293-6

D is for Drinking Gourd,
and the North Star that led through the night
from station to station on the Underground Railroad,
escaping on a dangerous flight.

From the abolitionists to the Harlem Renaissance, D is for Drinking Gourd celebrates the role the African American community has played in the shaping of America.

It’s deadline time for Book of the Year Awards at ForeWord magazine. FedEx, UPS, and the USPS struggle up our mountainside of stairs – bump … bump … bump — with their dollies of submissions. They’re grumbling; I’m grumbling too.

It’s not that I’m doing a lot of heavy lifting, or that the submissions are inferior. It’s the packaging.

One glance at the wrapping and it’s a dead giveaway who’s the professional and who’s the amateur.

Now, I’m not a snob. I give everything a close look – it’s getting close enough to look that’s the problem.

The professionals have got it down: padded envelope with book and press release. Pull the string and it’s open. The envelope can be recycled. I figure it’s the Golden Rule at work here. The professionals no doubt receive their fair share of manuscript mail and they know what a struggle it is to cut through the tape, the bubble wrap, more tape, the cling film, more tape, Styrofoam jacket, more tape. It makes you crazy. It makes you mad. Is that the first impression you, as a publisher or a writer want to make? Of course not.

So, here’s the thing: If you’re sending books to a distributor, they need to arrive in pristine condition. Go ahead. Bubble wrap them to death.

However, if you’re sending books for review or a contest, dinged corners matter not. It’s not as bad as luggage at the airlines, but it’s not a china shop around here either. We’re not selling books, we’re reviewing.

First of all, no tape. I hate tape. Why do so many people think they’ve got to seal the seal with tape? I’ve got one package around here that is completely enclosed in tape. You could eat off it. Have I opened it? Nope.

Also, I dread anything sent in bubble wrap. I can't get the knife to go through that stuff at all, plus it clings to the book in an unreasonable manner. And then, there's the damned tape!

Speaking of which, choose an envelope that gives your book a bit of room to maneuver. If you have to shove the thing into the wrapping, then I'll have to coax it out. I want a book that leaps into my hands.

No Styrofoam padding. Styrofoam is evil.

No Styrofoam chips. They are the devil’s spawn. (I got a book a while ago from a publisher of spiritual books. The thing was suspended in endless and eternal amounts of Styrofoam chips. What a mixed message.)

Also, if you're sending a book for review or a contest, forget the press kit. Press kits are for newspapers that may be interested in writing a feature without having to do research or make a phone call. At ForeWord, we review books, and the books will speak for themselves.

Forget the bookmarks, stickers, magnets, and pens as well.

But don't forget the one page press release packaged with your book. Got to have that for our filing. (This isn’t necessary for contests, but not a bad idea anyway.)

Oh, and one more thing: No Tape.