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Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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3 Gifts To Share From When Grandmama Sings
When Grandmama Sings has several topics that are worthy of discussion with the child in your life. When Grandmama Sings takes place in the South in the 1940’s. In the Spirit of Christmas, here are three gifts to instill in your child as you read and discuss the book.
- Love of Extended Family – An extended family extends beyond the traditional nuclear family and includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives, who live nearby or in one household. When Grandmama Coles decides to go on a tour of the South with a jazz band, Belle wants to go with her. But her Dad is apprehensive. However, Belle’s mother steps in and says, “Belle won’t be alone. She’ll be with family and she can help out her grandmother.” Grandmama says, “I want Belle to go. She will be a big help to me.”
Take this time to identify extended families in your own family unit or in friends’ families. This is also the time to discuss why extended families exist. Possible reasons are cultural, economics, health, and divorce. Also, explore the benefits of extended families. - Share Your Talent – A talent is a natural ability to do something well. Grandmama Coles talent is singing. She took the opportunity to go on her first tour so she could share her talent with people beyond her hometown.
Ask your child to identify her/his talent. Talk about ways to share that talent with others. Whatever their talent, it can help someone. - Take Advantage of Opportunities – Sometimes a set of circumstances occurs that makes it possible to do something. This can be something that has been anticipated or not anticipated. You can take advantage of the opportunity or let the opportunity go by. Grandmama Coles took advantage of the opportunity to go on a tour of the South. This led to singing in a huge auditorium, which led to a record contract. Discuss what would have happened if Grandmama Coles did not take advantage of this opportunity. Talk about examples of opportunity taken and opportunity missed.
Instill in your children these 3 qualities and they will be gifts that they will cherish forever!
Learn more about When Grandmama Sings
Negro League Baseball History For Christmas
If you have a history buff on your Christmas list, they will love Last Train To Cooperstown, profiles of the last Negro League inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Kevin L. Mitchell, author of Last Train To Cooperstown, stopped by to talk about his book and all things relating to baseball.
Why did you write Last Train to Cooperstown?
I wrote the book in response to the current decline of popularity for baseball by African-Americans. Due to social, economic, and other issues the attention of African American youth has been diverted from the game. Basketball and football are now the main sports they participate. The number of African-Americans playing Major League baseball is less than during the late 1950s through 1970s. With no Lebron James, Steph Curry, or Cam Newton high-profile type player in baseball, African American attendance at Major League baseball games has decreased.
The book’s purpose is to indicate that because of Negro League baseball’s rich history and its everlasting impact on the game, African-Americans have deep, grounded roots in baseball that cannot be severed by the current trends. The stories of the 2006 Hall of Fame Inductees from Negro League baseball in the book are reminders of those deep, everlasting roots. Readers will get a deeper understanding of Negro League baseball as not just a part of baseball history or African America history, but as being imbedded into the fabric of 20th Century American history.
How did you get interested in baseball?
I think my interest in the sport began to develop in 1957 when I was six years old. Baseball reigned during that time as the nation’s favorite sport. Henry Aaron and the Milwaukee Braves’ defeat of the New York Yankees in 1957 was my first TV World Series recollection. I played a form of stickball with my brother, Lephus Jr., in our backyard. My friend, Big Mike, and I would take turns using the handle of a cut off broom to hit a rubber ball my brother pitched to us. We turned the small yard into a make shift asymmetrical ball field. A red barrel used for burning trash served as first base. Air pollution had not yet become a concern in 1957 so open trash burning in the city was not illegal yet. When I hit a double, I would run to touch the red barrel and then head to second base; the southeast back corner of our garage where my father very seldom kept his car. When scoring from second on Big Mike’s single I would have to remember to touch third base, a post of our neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Shern’s wire fence.
With both of my older brothers and my father being baseball fans, I would watch baseball games on TV with them. There were no 24 hour Cable TV sports stations televising games. The Kansas City CBS affiliate TV station could not televise the weekend national Game of the Week due to the television blackout policy in the 1950s for cities with Major League teams. So we watched selected road games the Kansas City Athletics televised. Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, Hector Lopez, and Bob Cerv are the A’s players with which I first became familiar. I also would listen to my brothers and their friends talk about other Major League players, especially African American ones (Aaron, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, etc). Jackie Robinson had retired the previous year (1956), but my awareness of race relations at six years old was enough to allow me to know of him as the first “Negro” to play in the Major Leagues. However, I was too young to have a deeper understanding of his significance.
Why do you think African American kids have lost interest in baseball?
This could be the topic of someone’s dissertation because there are so many issues as to why African American kids have lost interest in the game. There are social, economic, racial, political, and other factors; and they are all intertwined. A change in the times and differences in the world surrounding different generations also must be considered.
In my opinion, baseball failed to keep up with the increasingly intense competition from football and basketball that developed in the 1980s for capturing the attention of African American kids. The competition was a subset of a changing world, one obviously now much different than when I was a kid interested in the sport.
Being of “baby boomer” age, I grew up doing the time when baseball reigned as America’s pastime with no other sport seriously vying for my attention. My love for the game began and was nurtured during the time called “baseball’s golden era”, the 1950s and 1960s when young white and black boys were passionate about the sport. My friends and I collected baseball cards and knew the names of the players on all the Major League teams. We had Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, and an increasing number of other African American players to emulate. We saw them play on TV, but mostly read about them in the newspaper and magazines. The All-Star Game and the World Series were baseball special events we looked forward to each year with excitement.
Pro football and basketball were growing sports we played, but they failed to capture our allegiance from baseball. They had not yet turned into the billion-dollar advertising and marketing giants targeting African American kids as they are today. The TV networks had not discovered the money bonanza in sports programming. There was no Sunday Night, Monday Night, or Thursday Night Football to get our attention. No 24-hour NFL Cable TV network. No ESPN to broadcast pro and college basketball games throughout the week. There was no Super Bowl, no “March Madness”, and no marathon broadcast of the NBA Playoffs which, not like today, ended in the spring and not mid-summer. It was a different time.
Being before Nike and the other athletic shoe companies, there were no basketball shoe advertising campaigns in front of us. It was a time before pro athletes, especially African American ones, were not endorsing products on TV. There were no “I want to be like Mike” commercials about Gatorade getting our attention. Gatorade did not come around until the late 1960s.
The competition from other sports for the attention of African American kids increased immensely in generations after mine. The world changed, no longer the 1960s. The popularity of football and basketball continued to grow, threatening baseball’s long standing number one sport status by the year 2000. The TV ratings for the Super Bowl and “March Madness” frequently surpassed that of the World Series.
When pro football and basketball began to intensely target the younger generation of African American kids in the 1980s, baseball’s marketing mentality remained in 1960 with a nine-year-old me. It was slow out of the starting blocks in marketing official apparel and gear. Unlike football and basketball, baseball did not use their African American star players to promote the sport. It may not have had a Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, or Jerry Rice; but it could have better utilized Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds (before the steroid issues), Derek Jeter, or Frank Thomas. By the time baseball understood what was happening, the other sports had the ears and eyes of African American kids.
What is your present involvement in youth baseball?
For the last four years I have been on the board of the Kansas City, Kansas Baseball Association (KCKBA), an organization that provides opportunities for kids in the inner city to play competitive baseball. We organize youth baseball teams to play in leagues such as the Kansas City, Missouri RBI, Wyandotte County Unified Government, and other leagues, in addition to having our own T-Ball league. Last season I helped coach two Machine Pitch league teams for kids aged 10 years old and younger.
How are the lives of the Negro League players in Last Train to Cooperstown an inspiration?
They were examples of pursuing excellence in what they did in spite of facing obstacles due to uncontrollable and imperfect circumstances. Racial discrimination robbed them of the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues; that was out of their control. Due to the economic restrictions that characterized Negro League baseball, they had to travel and play often in imperfect conditions. However, they did not use either as an excuse or rationalization to not do their best. As a result, even though the color of their skin kept them out of Major League baseball, the excellence they exhibited on the diamond earned them an undeniable place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame
Do you have plans for another book?
Yes! With the Civil Rights Movement’s initial beginnings as its backdrop, the book will tell of the demise of Negro League teams as the integration of Major League baseball by African American and dark-skinned Latino players gained unstoppable momentum in the 1950s.
You have a popular baseball blog – The Baseball Scroll and a website where you write about baseball history. Explain why you started them.
I started The Baseball Scroll (www.thebaseballscroll.blogspot.com)and the blog on my website (www.klmitchell.com) to constantly promote the unshakable historical connection of African-Americans to the sport of baseball. The content for both includes my personal reflections, as an African American, on baseball events of my youth, the history of Negro League baseball, and information about baseball’s “golden era” (1950s through early 1960s) pertaining to African American ball players. Hopefully, heralding the deep historical connection will revive the interest of African Americans in the game. My blogs also help me connect to other bloggers and baseball historians, both African American and white, who have the same objective.
How can someone get in touch with you for speaking engagements?
My website address is www.klmitchell.com and my direct email address is kevlephmitch@gmail.com
Purchase Last Train To Cooperstown
Margaree King Mitchell Featured On The Brown Bookshelf
I am delighted to be featured on The Brown Bookshelf website. Below is an excerpt from the article. Please visit The Brown Bookshelf to read the entire feature.
Throwback Thursday: Margaree King Mitchell
The tagline of Margaree King Mitchell’s website is “Creating Stories that Inspire.” Indeed her moving titles, from picture books to YA, touch children and adults and show the potential for greatness that lies within each of us. Her Coretta Scott King Honor Award-winning book, Uncle Jed’s Barbershop, debuted in 1993 and became a classic featured in classrooms and libraries, Reading Rainbow and theaters. Is it any wonder that people eagerly awaited a second collaboration by Margaree and acclaimed illustrator James E. Ransome? We featured Margaree as a 28 Days Later honoree the year that stirring book, When Grandmama Sings, debuted. It was another intergenerational treasure, rooted in black history, that stayed with you long after you put it down.
Enjoy Margaree from February 28, 2012
If you are at all familiar with the picture book genre, you’ve likely heard of Uncle Jed’s Barbershop, the much heralded, 1994 Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Margaree King Mitchell is the author of that still-popular title, as well as Granddaddy’s Gift (1996).
Her latest book, When Grandmama Sings, was released last month to wonderful reviews. As we wind down this year’s campaign, it is an honor to feature the words and work of Margaree King Mitchell.
Visit The Brown Bookshelf to read features on African-American authors and illustrators.
The Buzz
From School Library Journal:
Gr-2-4 – Set in the segregated South of the 1950s, Mitchell’s poignant story features eight-year old Belle and her loving, stalwart African-American family. When Grandmama, who can’t read but whose singing voice captures the hearts of all who hear her, joins a jazz band for a tour of the South, Belle pleads to go along. Thrilled to expand her world beyond Pecan Flats, MS, she experiences firsthand the difficulties her people face: hotels marked “White Only,” diners that refuse them service, police who search their cars and luggage for no reason. Through it all, Grandmama sings to growing crowds, believing in the power of music to bring people together. When, at the story’s end, a recording contract beckons her “up north,” Grandmama tells Belle to believe in herself and “sing her own song.” Ransome’s full-page images, rich in color and feeling, portray the landscape of the South and the individual emotions of the characters with equal aplomb. Placed in the past, the message is still relevant for children today.” (Barbara Elleman, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA
From Kirkus Reviews:
Belle joins her beloved grandmother, a jazz singer, on a summer tour of Southern towns and sees that segregation is everywhere—not just at home in Mississippi.
Holding tight to her uncle’s lucky rabbit’s foot, Belle watches as Grandmama and the musicians face the ugliness of Jim Crow in diners and theaters and on the road. In Alabama, the police dump their belongings on the roadside, a state’s welcome. She also listens as her grandmother shares her dreams for an integrated society and thrills to her resounding performance on stage in Atlanta, one that leads to an offer to make recordings for a company up North. It’s a moment that inspires Belle to dream, because “the promise of her song helped me believe in myself.” As in Uncle Jed’s Barbershop (1993), for which Ransome won a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor, Mitchell has crafted another compelling story of an African-American family both strong and determined despite the all-powerful clamp of racism. Ransome uses watercolors in warm tones of yellows and browns to reveal nuances of expression and the warmth of family and community.
A gentle story that shows the everyday realities of segregation through the observant eye of a child. (Picture book. 5-9)
From Publishers Weekly:
“Mitchell and Ransome, the team behind Coretta Scott King Honor–winner Uncle Jed’s Barbershop, reunite for another story set in the early 20th century, in which intimate family relationships are set against a backdrop of racial segregation. Eight-year-old narrator Belle lives with her parents and Grandmama in the fictional town of Pecan Flats, Miss. Grandmama’s singing voice has earned her local fame, and when a man offers to “book her and a band on a small singing tour of the South,” she agrees, bringing Belle along for the ride. Written in the past tense, Belle’s narration has an elegiac quality, but while the band encounters plenty of discrimination on the road, triumphs outweigh setbacks (and Grandmama doesn’t come to any serious harm). Ransome’s lovely, naturalistic watercolors draw out a wealth of emotions from the characters, particularly Grandmama, whose expressions range from weariness to passion while she’s singing, and determination, such as when she slams money on the counter of a restaurant that won’t serve them. It’s a stirring reminder that it’s never too late to chase one’s dreams, no matter the obstacles. Ages 5–9. (Jan.)”
From The Horn Book:
From the author and the illustrator of Uncle Jed’s Barbershop (rev. 11/93) comes another picture book about life in the segregated South. The narrator recounts her grandmother’s story—she couldn’t read but “always had a song to sing”—which centers on Grandmama’s singing tour with her eight-year-old granddaughter there to keenly observe everything. Grandmama and her musicians initially draw small crowds, and Belle nervously points out the “whites only” signs wherever they go, but Grandmama is undeterred. Gradually word spreads about Grandmama’s talent as the tour continues, but the group still must contend with suspicion from Alabama police. The narration is calm and matter-of-fact, like Grandmama, who remains focused on what’s right, while in contrast Ransome’s paintings show the shame, sadness, and anger the characters feel. Mitchell’s latest picture book gives modern-day children a realistic depiction of the small humiliations and frightening moments African American travelers went through in their daily lives during the Jim Crow era, and it makes an excellent book for discussion. – Susan Dove Lempke
From Elizabeth Bird’s Librarian Preview:
Remember Uncle Jed’s Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell, and illustrated by James Ransome? I sure as heck do because that book ends up on a lot of school lists of required reading. Well, that book came out in 1993 and is still in print to this day. Now Mitchell and Ransome have reunited at long last in When Grandmama Sings. In this picture book (historical) a girl can read and her grandma can’t. When her grandmother’s singing gives her a chance to go on tour she does so with her granddaughter. The trouble? They’re touring the segregated south. This is a book that covers both a meaningful relationship and history. A good companion to last year’s The Green Book by Calvin Ramsey and Floyd Cooper, don’t you think?
3 Reasons to Give Uncle Jed’s Barbershop This Christmas
Uncle Jed was the only black barber in the county. And he had a dream. Living in the segregated South of the 1920’s, Uncle Jed had to travel all over the county to cut his customers’ hair. He lived for the day when he could open his very own barbershop. But Uncle Jed encountered setback after setback that delayed his dream. However, not even the Great Depression could force him to give up on his dream. Uncle Jed finally opened his barbershop after saving for years and years. The community celebrated with him and so did his niece, Sarah Jean.
Uncle Jed’s Barbershop is a stirring story of dreams long deferred and finally realized.
Here are three reasons to give Uncle Jed’s Barbershop to the child on your Christmas list.
- Uncle Jed’s Barbershop inspires children to dream great dreams for their lives and realize that those dreams can come true. I will always remember the girl in Little Rock, Arkansas who said to me, “I want to be a doctor when I grow up, but my Grandmama says I will never be one. Now I know I can be a doctor.”
- An award-winning musical has been adapted from Uncle Jed’s Barbershop. The most recent honor is a Henry Award nomination for Outstanding New Musical. Theatre critics say: “Get ready for some toe-tapping fun!” – “Uncle Jed’s Barbershop leaps from the bookshelf to the stage!” –
- James Ransome’s wonderful richly colored paintings bring the story to life.
Learn about Uncle Jed’s Barbershop
Learn about Uncle Jed’s Barbershop Musical
Splinterfire Features Young Adult Book Author
Margaree King Mitchell, author of the YA novel, The People In The Park, is one of four featured authors on Splinterfire for the month of October. Also featured are authors Lee Goldstein, Mary Ellen Donat, and Lee Benning.
The following is an excerpt from Splinterfire – Meet The Authors:
“Margaree King Mitchell was born in Holly Springs, MS. She is a graduate of Brandeis University and now lives in Kansas City. She is the creator of the Everybody Has A Dream program, which empowers students in urban and rural areas to shoot for the stars with aspirations for their lives. In 2002 Margaree received the SCERUS Award at the National Invitational Conference of Educational Research in the Urban South.
Margaree is renowned for her wonderful picture books. The People In The Park is her first foray into young adult fiction.”
Visit Splinterfire to continue reading about each author.
Children’s Book Tackles Importance Of Voting
A wonderful review for Granddaddy’s Gift!
“The United States has seen some turbulent times in its history, especially for African-Americans. Granddaddy’s Gift highlights one aspect of American history, the African American struggle for the right to vote. The stars of this touching story are Joe Morgan and his granddaughter whom he calls ‘Daughter’ but everyone else in their community affectionately calls ‘Little Joe’ because she is like his shadow. Joe Morgan is a man who has worked hard all his life and in spite of his 8th grade education, he owns his own land on which he farms and raises animals. He stresses the importance of education to his granddaughter through both his words and actions. When it comes time for someone in their Mississippi community to stand up and attempt to register to vote, Joe Morgan answers the call. As a result of his decision he, his family and ultimately the entire African American community are faced with adversity, but in the process he teaches his granddaughter some important lessons.
“Granddaddy’s Gift illustrates how the freedoms that many of us take for granted are indeed a gift from the generations before us. The illustrations perfectly complement this keenly written story and add a personal touch. The story instills a sense of pride in the legacy left by ordinary but brave people who helped to change the cultural climate of this country. I highly recommend this book, not only because it relates historical information but also because of the values the story represents.” -S. Seay
For more information: Granddaddy’s Gift
