Queridas comadres…it’s TELECONFERENCE TIME!

We ask that you consider purchasing the children’s book we selected for April and donating it to an elementary school in your area. In celebration of El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day)on April 30, we are combining an interview with authors of a children’s bilingual book on activism with a university professor studying when and how children should be taught about racism. This is a different format just for the month of April. In May we’ll be starting our partnership with the American Association of Publishers and Borders, Inc. Reading With Las Comadres where we interview Latina authors about their newly published book and their work.

*

TELECONFERENCE DATE AND TIMES:
DATE: April 24, 2008 / duration approximately 1 hour
TIME: 5:00 PM PST
6:00 PM MST
7:00 PM CST
8:00 PM EST

*

Call in number (long distance charges will apply)
1-712-432-2323 / Access Code: 162718#

That’s Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!
by Carmen Tafolla and Sharyll Teneyuca

Illustrated by Terry Ybáñez, Spanish translation by
Carmen Tafolla, Translation editors: Celina Marroquín and Amalia Mondríguez, Ph.D.

http://www.wingspress.com/book.cfm?book_ID=26

*

THE STORY
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.

*

SOME PERTINENT RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC

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.

“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.”

TELECONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

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. Carmen Tafolla has also published five adult poetry books, seven children’s television screenplays, and numerous short stories and articles.

Sharyll Tenayuca is an attorney in San Antonio and the niece of Emma Tenayuca.

UT Professor of Psychology Dr. Rebecca Bigler, director of the University of Texas at Austin , Gender and Racial Attitudes Lab

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: WEBSITE