04/11/2020
Barrier Breaking Books #4: Children/Youth
Good evening to you on this Good Friday,
I hope you are staying sane and finding safe ways to connect with others. As wonderful as reading is, it is no substitute for real human relationships.
But everyone’s circle of relationships is limited. I ‘know’ thousands of people. I have over 1,400 friends on Facebook. But when it comes to people I know well—what they love, what they fear, how they are likely to respond in different circumstances, what gives their lives meaning—that list is much shorter and much less diverse.
A global pandemic may not offer the best opportunities for making new friends and diversifying your inner circle. It does, however, offer most of us more time to read. So, under the present circumstances, I want to encourage you to make the most of this opportunity to gain a broader perspective and get a glimpse into the lives of people whose experiences are very different from your own.
It is a given that reliable non-fiction books provide excellent opportunities to broaden your understanding of social realities. But I have found that the fictional characters in novels have done more to arouse my compassion for people in the real world than I would have thought possible. I discussed some of these kinds of novels in previous articles, but today, I want to share from an oft-overlooked genre—children/youth.
Rick Riordan has written several book series’ that are based in various ancient mythologies. I have read all the books in the following series’ (17 total with the 18th being released later this year): Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, the Trials of Apollo, and Magnus Chase and the God’s of Asgard.
The heroes in each of these books are usually misfit kids who have troubles at home and have all gotten kicked out of their various schools for different reasons. They all present symptoms typically associated with ADHD and dyslexia. Most of them feel unwanted, unworthy, and insecure. And yet, by reading these books, I have been drawn into their lives and fallen in love with all their quirks and oddities.
As a parent of an ADHD student who has been at the receiving end of stigmatizing, I have a great appreciation for Riordan’s work. He also shows a great respect for people of different nationalities, different religions, and different gender identities and attractions. All of this is done without judgment, without any hint of inappropriate sexual behavior, or profanity. I highly recommend these series’.
I will only discuss one other book, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. I don’t often pick a book off a bookstore shelf that I had never heard of before. But when picking out a book for my daughter, I was drawn to this book and read the synopsis on the back cover. I decided to take a chance and am so thankful that I did. This book picks up the story of a young girl, Coyote, and her father, Rodeo, five years after the tragic loss of the three other members of their family. They had been on the road running from their pain for five years.
But when Coyote receives some news from her grandmother, she knows she has to find her way home and come face to face with their grief—the very place her dad refuses to go. Coyote has to convince her dad to take her across the country without letting him know that she is guiding them home.
Along their ‘remarkable journey,’ they encounter a stranded musician, a Hispanic boy and his mother, a runaway teen, and a very loyal goat. Throughout the book, we hear Coyote thinking variations of, “He’s a good one, that Salvador.” It’s like a mantra reminiscent of Genesis 1, the way she assesses each individual she meets and deems them “good.”
The book is life-affirming and fun. It’s the kind of book that subtly chips away at the insidious xenophobia that keeps us isolated from others. I hope you take the time to read some of these books, and more importantly, foster a vibrant compassion for the real, non-fiction people you may encounter when this pandemic passes.
