Roberto Germán [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Our Classroom. In this space, we talk about education, which is inclusive of, but not limited to, what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto Germán, and Our Classroom is officially in session. Welcome back to Our Classroom. Joining me today is Dr. Laura Jiménez, a master lecturer in the Language and Literacy Education Department at Boston University's Wheelock School of Education and Human Development and director of the Center for Educating Critically. Her scholarship and activism focus on how marginalized communities are represented in children's and young adult literature.
Roberto Germán [00:00:58]:
Her work has appeared in numerous academic publications as well as outlets including the Boston Globe and the New York Times. She is also the author of Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover: A Critical Guide to Choosing Children's Literature. Laura, welcome to our classroom. Glad to have you here.
Laura Jiménez [00:01:18]:
Oh, Roberto, it's truly a pleasure. I love the podcast and I actually encourage most of my students to check it out.
Roberto Germán [00:01:26]:
Well, I greatly appreciate that. I greatly appreciate— even though I'm a Boston College grad, and I know you're—
Laura Jiménez [00:01:32]:
I won't hold that against you.
Roberto Germán [00:01:33]:
I, you know, I, I just wanted to get the tension out the way before—
Laura Jiménez [00:01:37]:
You know what, I wasn't gonna say it.
Roberto Germán [00:01:40]:
Listen, I'm, uh, I'm a truth teller here, you know. I put all my cards on the table. So now that we have that out the way, I respect that the Terriers are representing here.
Laura Jiménez [00:01:51]:
Right, exactly.
Roberto Germán [00:01:52]:
There's room for us all. But as it relates to your book, Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover, and it's, it's one of the things I appreciate immediately is that you're not just asking us to examine children's books. You're asking educators to examine ourselves and the things we read, the books we love, what we notice, what we don't notice, and ultimately the power we have when choosing books for children. And there's one idea in the book that I couldn't stop thinking about. So I want to start there. What if the book I love isn't good for my students? Because we love our books.
Laura Jiménez [00:02:31]:
Oh, we love our books. And we love the way they make us feel, right? We love the memory of our books. They're incredibly important to us, and they help build who we are today. Right? And I never want to take that away from people, right? But the thing I think we forget is that that nostalgia, that feeling of warmth or excitement or community is not— it may be triggered by the book, but it's not actually about the book itself, right?
Roberto Germán [00:03:08]:
Mm-hmm.
Laura Jiménez [00:03:08]:
The book is the object, and the book may have been there when we needed it. The story may have given us what we craved in that moment, or it may have been the point of connection between the reader and a teacher, a reader and, you know, their friends, or a reader or their caregivers. And all that is beautiful. But the book itself needs to be put Back on the shelf, right? If it is a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, you know, ableist depiction, it's okay, right? It happened. Move on. Give a kid a chance to have that connection without the accompanying damage.
Roberto Germán [00:04:05]:
The nostalgia is a powerful thing.
Laura Jiménez [00:04:08]:
Oh.
Roberto Germán [00:04:09]:
You know, it's powerful. We look back, we have memories, and certain books or characters remind us of a period of time in our lives.
Laura Jiménez [00:04:20]:
Absolutely.
Roberto Germán [00:04:21]:
So it's powerful. But nostalgia is also potentially dangerous, right? It could be a force when we, the adults, choose books for children.
Laura Jiménez [00:04:33]:
Exactly. When we choose books over our students or over children, over our children— I'm a parent, you're a parent, right? Over our nieces and nephews, over our neighbors' children. When we think that the object, right, the book is just an object, right? When we think that is more important than the person in front of us, That is when things go south. That is when things go very, very badly. It's how we simply keep the status quo moving forward, right? If we don't admit that things like Little House on the Prairie are multiply racist and incredibly misogynistic and incredibly ableist, Probably the only reason why they're not homophobic is because we don't even appear anywhere in there, right? It's— if you had a great time reading that with, again, a parent, a sibling, a caregiver, remember that time and that connection. And as an adult, go back and reread it with a critical lens. Go back and take a look at the depiction of When Pa dresses up in ratty clothes and literally, and I'm going to just say it out loud here, and literally does blackface.
Roberto Germán [00:06:02]:
Hmm.
Laura Jiménez [00:06:04]:
Go back and reread the book where Ma calls all, again, I apologize for this, Ma calls all of the Native Americans in the area that they are colonizing, savages and brutes, right? Remember when anybody with any kind of neurodivergence or physical disability was cast aside in those books, right? You may remember it as this beautiful story of a young girl discovering herself and becoming empowered. And There was some really heart-wrenching, horrible stuff in it.
Roberto Germán [00:06:45]:
Yeah, it's definitely interesting to read some of these texts as an adult and to see how the content lands. And it's interesting because we certainly get a lot of resistance for some of the content we create through Multicultural Classroom and Lorena's work in association with Disrupt Texts. much pushback. But it does make me wonder who taught us what good literature is and whose tastes, identities, and values have shaped that definition.
Laura Jiménez [00:07:19]:
Right. It's interesting when we talk about high school, right? When we talk about secondary school, there's literally a canon of literature. There's this list. Sometimes it's formal, sometimes it's informal, but it exists. Right? And usually it's filled to the gills with dead white guys. We got Shakespeare, we got Faulkner, we got Hemingway. Maybe we have Vonnegut every once in a while. And then they sneak in Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird, but I'm convinced She got in the American canon because they thought she was a dude.
Laura Jiménez [00:08:08]:
I really, really believe they thought Harper was a dude's name.
Roberto Germán [00:08:13]:
Yeah, I think that's entirely possible.
Laura Jiménez [00:08:16]:
Right. And then to appease us, they do allow Toni Morrison in, which is wonderful. I mean, her work is astounding and beautiful and heart-wrenching. and all the things we want our high school students to read, I often worry about the teachers teaching that book, teaching things like The Bluest Eye. Do they have the expertise to bring that in and give it justice? I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying that's one of my worries.
Roberto Germán [00:08:48]:
Fair.
Laura Jiménez [00:08:49]:
When we talk about what makes somebody educated and the only thing we're talking about is majority of dead white guys, Nothing wrong with dead white men, right? But we got to wonder what history that has. And it turns out that way back in the day in England, lots of people couldn't go to college, right? It wasn't, you became a merchant, right? And you bought and sold things and maybe you needed to interact with the banking class or if you were a banker, you had to you had to deal with lords and ladies and stuff. And they really believed that if you as a merchant or a banker read a set of 20 books, then you would've gotten a classic Oxford education. Okay, great. They thought that. We can move on from that. We can move on from the idea that if we read these 20 books, that are hundreds of years old, that that gives us an education, right? I don't think it makes sense that— so listen, dude, or America, I am 59, 59 years old, solidly Gen X. Why are the students in my classroom that are 20, why did they read 80, 90% of the same books in high school that I did?
Roberto Germán [00:10:19]:
Wow, that's interesting data.
Laura Jiménez [00:10:23]:
Right? That is a shame, right? And what I mean by read, let's be clear, they were assigned, right? I mean, a lot of these books are assigned. These kids aren't reading them. They're getting Cliff Notes. They're getting SparkNotes. They're getting, you know, now They're just asking for a summary on AI. They're getting that downloaded. They're watching a movie. They're asking their geeky friend who actually does read the book.
Laura Jiménez [00:10:59]:
They'll do anything. Adolescents will put in more effort into not reading because they don't like it, because it doesn't engage them, because it doesn't talk to them, because there's nothing to connect to them. Right? They'll put in more energy into not reading than it would actually take to read. Right? And they have a lot of options.
Roberto Germán [00:11:22]:
Explore those options, young people. And for those of you who do like reading, or for those of you who we are able to engage, let's say we have a number of different texts and they are engaging. What should an educator learn to notice once simply having diverse characters is no longer enough? What are some things that they need to keep their eyes open to and be mindful of as, as the educator, as the instructor, as somebody trying to cultivate a love of reading and fostering learning, but also to, to address a host of different issues and topics and push our learners deeper into critical thinking?
Laura Jiménez [00:12:08]:
I think there's a few things. All right, it's never— I'm never going to give you the one-off, you know, this one crazy trick will solve everything. I'm not going to do that, right? I'm not a Ginsu knife. You're— if you're old enough to remember those commercials, you'll, you'll know. Otherwise, look up those commercials because they're fabulous. Okay. A couple of things that we need to keep in mind. There is no one book that every reader is going to be interested in.
Roberto Germán [00:12:34]:
Right.
Laura Jiménez [00:12:35]:
It does not exist. Right? So just get rid of that. And that's a hard one. That's a hard one for teachers to get rid of because they really do— we have been taught that way. We experienced it in school.
Roberto Germán [00:12:52]:
We personalize it.
Laura Jiménez [00:12:53]:
College. We have, oh, my book. This is what I teach. This is my best lesson. This is my favorite unit. Right? We know from research that if you have a class and you assign one book, right, approximately 30% will read it. That's a big number. I mean, that's huge.
Laura Jiménez [00:13:19]:
But if a kid got a 30% on a test—
Roberto Germán [00:13:22]:
It's not a good look.
Laura Jiménez [00:13:24]:
Or if I got a 30% on a paper—
Roberto Germán [00:13:26]:
It's not a good look.
Laura Jiménez [00:13:28]:
So why are we continuing this practice, right, that clearly fails our students? Really fails our students, right? So one is let go of that idea that the one book is somehow one book to rule them all, right? It's not going to. Then expand your classroom library, expand your assignments, do genre studies. Right? And so maybe you have a selection of 5 books that the kids can, that the students can, you know, join in on, right? Same genre, different authors. Okay? Do a history piece, right? We're gonna look at, you know, this battle in World War II. Find nonfiction. Find different voices. Find historical fiction, right? Find all of these different ways to look at that event, right? So expand the way you're thinking about what should be read and in what order. Most of all, do not fall into the mistake of what I call tragedy porn or trauma porn.
Roberto Germán [00:14:41]:
Mm.
Laura Jiménez [00:14:42]:
Okay? And so this is when teachers really want to be like, They want to be in the spot where they think they need to be. All they bring in— so I'll just— right now we're in Latino History Month, which is actually 2 weeks on each month.
Roberto Germán [00:15:00]:
It is 2 weeks, right?
Laura Jiménez [00:15:02]:
It's straddling a month. And all they will do is bring in really sad tales about refugees, Really sad tales about being left out, really sad tales about borderlands, really sad tales about being— speaking Spanish, really sad. Just crying. Now listen, I'm Mexican. We love a good cry, right? We love a good telenovela. All right. But—
Roberto Germán [00:15:37]:
That is true.
Laura Jiménez [00:15:38]:
That's not all we're made out of. Right? African American History Month, what do they bring in? They bring assassinations, they bring civil rights movements, they bring overcoming. Right? Now listen, I'm not saying the African American community and the Afro-Caribbean community has not overcome everything, but there is so much more to those communities.
Roberto Germán [00:16:02]:
Absolutely.
Laura Jiménez [00:16:03]:
Right? There is joy. There is laughter. I don't know about you, but I know my community is full of snark. Serious, sarcastic, ironic language play and snark. And you don't see that right often. But there are, there are other authors bringing that in.
Roberto Germán [00:16:26]:
Can you name some of those authors?
Laura Jiménez [00:16:29]:
Elizabeth Acevedo is She got Mexican. I'm gonna forgive her for that. Right? She was a poet. I mean, she's still a poet. Okay, she's a poet. And she has such gorgeous, yummy language and language play.
Roberto Germán [00:16:48]:
Mm-hmm.
Laura Jiménez [00:16:49]:
Right? She plays with language, especially if you go back to her earlier work, you know, With the Fire on High. Her— the dialogue, the dialogue between the main character and her friends is Oh, it's just so good. And it works on so many levels.
Roberto Germán [00:17:04]:
Yeah, we love Elizabeth. She's Dominican. So we're biased.
Laura Jiménez [00:17:08]:
Okay, right. Exactly right. I didn't, I didn't, I'm not buttering you up. Right. But then like, you know, and then look at Ibi Zoboi. Right? She did a recasting of Pride and Prejudice. It's just called Pride. Right? And it's gorgeous.
Laura Jiménez [00:17:25]:
And it shows Bev's style the way it is today. Right? It shows the people. It shows the area. It shows the architecture. It's the smells. It's everything. All of it is, again, just alive with sense. And it's alive with, again, the voice of the community.
Laura Jiménez [00:17:46]:
Right? I just finished reading for the second time because I'm going to be teaching it, both The Marrow Thieves, which is a dystopian novel, about what happens when white people lose the ability to dream and Native Americans have not lost that. So indigenous folks get hunted down and basically put back in boarding schools. So she's using definite— she's tackling some heavy history in a dystopian novel. So it's fabulous. And then the other one I just did was Firekeeper's Daughter, right? Again, showing Native Americans in the here and now, right? Dealing with the past, but also having friends and family and humor and mystery, right? When we bring those kinds of books into classrooms, what we're showing kids, and this is like, you know, we could also talk about picture books, but, right? I always think of Lorena as being secondary, right? But we're all— we're showing kids that all of these communities have a distinctive voice, have a past and a present, and most importantly, a future, right? And it's showing them that those folks, that that community that may not be mine, but that community is worthy of study, of serious reading. Right, of close reading, of reading for understanding and reading for entertainment, right, of reading for phrases that just float off the mouth, right, of ideas that they hadn't thought of before. Read for the strangeness, the strangeness of that community to you. All that's great.
Laura Jiménez [00:19:42]:
Right? There's so many great novels. There's so many fabulous middle grade easy readers or, you know, beginning novels, right? And there's so— there's been a renaissance in picture books in the last 10 years, right? By not bringing those in the classroom, we are doing a tremendous disservice to our students.
Roberto Germán [00:20:04]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So imagine I'm listening to this episode and tomorrow morning I walk into my classroom and stand in front of my bookshelf and I realize, I don't, I don't think I've ever really examined these books this way. I can't replace my entire library tomorrow. So where should I start? What counsel do you have for educators who are in that type of situation?
Laura Jiménez [00:20:33]:
Right. Don't panic. That's first of all, do not panic.
Roberto Germán [00:20:36]:
That's good because a lot of people, that might be that first thing, like panic or guilt.
Laura Jiménez [00:20:41]:
Right. None of those. I mean, I understand them, but those are understandable emotional responses and they don't really get us any closer to a solution. Or if you're going to panic, go outside, take some deep breaths, look at the sky, and then come back in. Right. And then I like to start from one place and then move outward. You're right, you can't just like chuck everything out and start new. I mean, we all know how much a book costs.
Laura Jiménez [00:21:13]:
Book costs like $20. That's—
Roberto Germán [00:21:16]:
You know, in some cases you're, you're up against the system, right? You might not even necessarily be able to get rid of these books. You know, it could be a problem for you. But You know, let's, let's be critical thinkers here. You know, you can connect it to some articles, you can connect it to podcasts like this one.
Laura Jiménez [00:21:38]:
I would say.
Roberto Germán [00:21:40]:
You know, there's a number of things that we could do, uh, music video, that, uh, so, you know, analyzing artists' lyrics. I think about when I was teaching high school English at Lawrence High School and I was teaching Romeo and Juliet.
Laura Jiménez [00:21:54]:
Right.
Roberto Germán [00:21:54]:
First-year teacher. I'd never taught Romeo and Juliet. And Shakespeare also wasn't like my guy. But I had to teach it. So I'm like, all right, cool. I'm gonna teach this Romeo and Juliet. But I supplemented it by playing the modern movie— well, modern at that time. It was with—
Laura Jiménez [00:22:14]:
Is that the one with Leonardo DiCaprio?
Roberto Germán [00:22:16]:
Yes, yes.
Laura Jiménez [00:22:17]:
Yes.
Roberto Germán [00:22:18]:
Which, you know—
Laura Jiménez [00:22:19]:
And Claire Danes.
Roberto Germán [00:22:20]:
There's a lot I could say about that. There's, you know, so much. to pick apart there. But I also connected it to a bachata song by Anthony Santos.
Laura Jiménez [00:22:31]:
Yeah.
Roberto Germán [00:22:32]:
That it's Romeo and Julieta, you know, but in bachata form. And then there's a song by a rapper from my city, from Lawrence, who was buzzing back there, Crump Snatcher. He did a song called Romeo and Juliet, and it was a street take. It was a street version of Romeo and Juliet, and it was just And it resonated with the kids.
Laura Jiménez [00:22:53]:
Sorry, I had to get a pen. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Roberto Germán [00:22:56]:
Yes, yes.
Laura Jiménez [00:22:56]:
I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm learning. Wait, okay. Krumm Snatcher?
Roberto Germán [00:23:00]:
Krumm Snatcher. Yeah, Krumm with a K. Oh, K-R-U-M-B.
Laura Jiménez [00:23:06]:
And it's Romeo and Juliet.
Roberto Germán [00:23:07]:
Snatcher with an A, not ER.
Laura Jiménez [00:23:10]:
Okay, great. Yeah, I assume that.
Roberto Germán [00:23:11]:
The song title's Romeo and Juliet.
Laura Jiménez [00:23:13]:
Yeah.
Roberto Germán [00:23:14]:
And oh yeah, I'll be curious to hear your take after listening to it. But for me, you know, somebody who grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, somebody who was deeply influenced by hip-hop culture, and also, you know, someone who was— even though I was teaching English lit, I was still kind of finding my identity as a reader.
Laura Jiménez [00:23:39]:
Sure.
Roberto Germán [00:23:41]:
Cultivating my love as a reader, because that didn't really happen for me in school. No, it happened probably more so when I went to college and there were some texts in college. There were some texts that I'm like, oh, hold up, Frederick Douglass. Oh, biography.
Laura Jiménez [00:23:58]:
Okay. Yeah. W.E.B. Du Bois.
Roberto Germán [00:24:00]:
W.E.B. Du Bois. Read that in college. Yes. So those are the texts that I started reading in college. I'm like, all right, hold up. Now you got me. Now I'm paying attention here.
Roberto Germán [00:24:10]:
And so through 4 years in undergrad and then I become an English teacher and I'm like, all right, cool, I got to teach these texts, but I'm going to teach them my way.
Laura Jiménez [00:24:19]:
Exactly.
Roberto Germán [00:24:19]:
I'm going to teach them. And when I say my way, I'm like, yeah, I'm owning it, but I'm also my way in the sense of, hey, I understand my population and I understand that straight up teaching, just straight up Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, you know, the traditional way, it ain't going to land like that. You know, but the things that I was doing to supplement that—
Laura Jiménez [00:24:43]:
Exactly.
Roberto Germán [00:24:43]:
It was impactful in reaching my learners.
Laura Jiménez [00:24:46]:
The first thing, the first thing, and it sounds odd because I'm a book person, I like my research is books, I talk about books, I have books everywhere around me.
Roberto Germán [00:24:56]:
I see.
Laura Jiménez [00:24:57]:
My partner teases me that if we have an emergency, if we have a literacy emergency, you are no longer— you are no farther than 5 feet from a book at any one time in the house. All right, but you have to look at the students in front of you, not the students you're thinking of, not the students you grew up with, but the students that are right there in your classroom, right? If your population, which most populations have changed in the last 20 years, if the population of your students have changed and your literature has not, that's where you start. I'm not talking about necessarily like throwing everything out.
Roberto Germán [00:25:34]:
Right.
Laura Jiménez [00:25:34]:
But I'm saying make some room on your shelf. Make some room for authors and stories that honor the students that are in your classroom. Okay? There are lots of racist books, and if you go look at them, you'll know. Some of the big ones that schools love are The Blue Dolphin, really anti-Indigenous, right? The Pearl, Really horrible. That is a story about a family choosing infanticide over money. Well, it's horrible. You mentioned, we mentioned, I mentioned W.E.B. Du Bois, right? He has a refrain in his Black Folks— no.
Laura Jiménez [00:26:22]:
Yeah.
Roberto Germán [00:26:23]:
Souls of Black Folk.
Laura Jiménez [00:26:24]:
Yes. Souls of Black Folk. That says he asked the question, when will I not be the problem? That is something I think people need to think about. What about— what is it that is the issue in the book that you have in your curriculum? What is the issue of the book that you were thinking of doing a read aloud? What is the issue of the book that the kids are going to engage with? Because if the issue is their Blackness, if the issue is their Asianness, if the issue is their queerness, you are, you are commenting on their identities in ways that is damaging, right? So if we can avoid the kids being the issue, right, then we go farther, right? If we allow them to read stupid literature about Dumb stuff that reflects their lives, right? We'll get them in a book. Sometimes we gotta like just get them in a book, right?
Roberto Germán [00:27:30]:
Yeah, you need a starting point.
Laura Jiménez [00:27:33]:
Exactly right. So learn your students, give them options. We know through research that especially adolescents, if they make the choice They own the choice. They're much more likely to engage, to engage deeply, and to finish what they're doing. And listen, you and I are both parents. We know little kids, if you say, go brush your teeth, they will lie down and scream. But if you say, will you go brush your teeth, or do you want to put on your pajamas? Now listen, they're going to do both. They're doing both.
Laura Jiménez [00:28:12]:
But we're giving them a choice. Right? If we give kids a choice, do you wanna read this? Do you wanna read that? Do you wanna listen to this or do you wanna listen to that, right? Can we have— if we incorporate them in those book choices, right, then they're way more likely to be engaged with the pieces of literature, with the story, with the thinking that comes along with great literature.
Roberto Germán [00:28:39]:
Present choices in order to increase engagement.
Laura Jiménez [00:28:44]:
It's huge.
Roberto Germán [00:28:47]:
Absolutely. Now, Laura, for folks who want to learn more about your work, they want to connect with you, they want to dig into your book, Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover: A Critical Guide to Choosing Children's Literature, Where can they do so? Where can they follow you?
Laura Jiménez [00:29:08]:
So I'm no longer on X because it just became a trash bag fire, and I was like, I can't do it anymore. I'm still on Facebook, again, because I'm old. So they can find me on Facebook, Laura Jimenez. And then I think there's a bunch of numbers on it. I think I gave it to you. They can always email me. They can also reach out to me via Threads. I'm now on Threads and I'm having such a good time.
Laura Jiménez [00:29:35]:
It's such a better community. This seems to be where everybody from X left. I'm also on Instagram, although I don't spend a lot of time on there because I don't know what to do.
Roberto Germán [00:29:46]:
That's good.
Laura Jiménez [00:29:48]:
Or they can look at our website, Educating Critically. It's a Boston University center. And just reach out. I'm always there. And especially like, oh, listen, if you're going to buy a book, either go through the publisher or go through Barnes & Noble. Bezos don't need any more of our money. All he wants to do is like, I don't know what he's up to. Does he want to build a colony on Mars? Does he want to shoot things into space? Does he just want to build another gazillion-dollar yacht? I'm not interested.
Laura Jiménez [00:30:22]:
So say some stuff when you get in line.
Roberto Germán [00:30:26]:
Well, folks, you can preorder the book. Uh, you can—
Laura Jiménez [00:30:30]:
It's gonna be out in 2 weeks.
Roberto Germán [00:30:33]:
There you go. So check it out. It'll be out on October 15th, uh, published through Routledge. And so you go to the publisher's website, Routledge, uh, or as mentioned, Barnes & Noble. Order yourself a copy, preorder the copy for Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover: A Critical Guide to Choosing Children's Literature. All right. Those of you who need a resource to help you think more deeply about the conversation we just had now, as it relates to books that we love that, that aren't always the books that we need, well, we've given you some options here. You can connect with Laura at any of the social media sites she mentioned, or Or the website, and certainly purchase a copy of her book, dig into it, and implement, implement much of what she's offering there.
Roberto Germán [00:31:29]:
Laura, thanks for being here. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your expertise. Greatly appreciate it.
Laura Jiménez [00:31:33]:
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
Roberto Germán [00:31:35]:
Yes, yes. Look forward to seeing how your book impacts the literary world and beyond.
Laura Jiménez [00:31:42]:
We can always hope.
Roberto Germán [00:31:44]:
Your engagement in Our Classroom is greatly appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show, and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race, bias, education, and society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com. Peace and love from your host, Roberto Germano.
