A conversation about children's literature and the power of our families' stories with Andrea Davis Pinkney, a New York Times bestselling and Coretta Scott King award-winning author of nearly 50 books for children and young adults, including Loretta Little Looks Back: 3 Voices Go Tell It, our Read Across America February recommendation for middle-grade readers.
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Andrea Davis Pinkney (00:03):
Kids see what they see. They don't see what they don't see. Kids see what we show them. We teach them by what we don't show or tell. So, as we are reading across America, I invite teachers to show kids the tapestry, the mosaic, the quilt that is America, races, faces, and places.
Natieka Samuels (00:27):
Hello, and welcome to School Me the National Education Association's podcast dedicated to helping educators thrive in the early stages of their career. I'm your host, Natieka Samuels. Storytelling, whether oral or written is essential for maintaining family traditions and culture through the generations. This Black History Month we're seeking out stories of black artists, leaders, revolutionaries, and beyond to better understand and honor the black American experience.
Natieka Samuels (00:52):
And for our young readers, we're encouraging them to become curious about their own family stories and engage with diverse stories written by and about black people. Today, I'm joined by Andrea Davis Pinkney a New York Times bestselling and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of nearly 50 books for children and young adults, including Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It, which is our Read Across America, February recommendation for middle-grade readers. Andrea is a four-time NAACP Image Award nominee, has been abducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, worked on various theatrical productions, and is even the subject of the Emmy nominated short film, Andrea Davis Pinkney National Author Engagement. So it's an honor to welcome her to the show today.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (01:34):
Thank you. I've been looking forward to this.
Natieka Samuels (01:37):
So we just heard your impressive bio, but can you start with telling us little bit about how it all started for you? Where did you grow up and how did your childhood inspire your illustrious career path?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (01:52):
Natieka, I like many writers became a writer by accident. I was that kid who struggled in school and I kind of giggle when I think about it now because the teachers that taught me who may be reading the books that I've written probably are scratching their heads thinking, how did that happen? I was the one where a teacher would kind of put a hand on the cheek and say, hmm, what should we do about this one? And thankfully, I had who I now call my fairy God teacher. I had a third-grade teacher, Mrs. Lewis. Mrs. Lewis could see that I was often in the back of the classroom, a little disengaged, not quite feeling it. And she was the one who really changed it all for me. And the way that happened was that Mrs. Lewis got me a copy of selected works of Langston Hughes.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (02:50):
And that changed it all. Those poems were not like reading for me. They were wordplay, they were music, they were celebration. And I quickly learned that that counted as reading. That poetry, short snippets of beauty on the page with a lot of white space could really turn me into a reader, which it did. I will say that I come from a family of a storytellers and teachers. My mom was a teacher she's retired now. She still is a teacher in many ways, she's always teaching. And she read quite a bit and my dad was an avid storyteller. You would come to the dinner table and be prepared to hear and share a story with dad. So I think the storyteller dad, the teacher mom, the fairy God teacher, Mrs. Lewis, I think that those elements, those were the loving hands that came together and encouraged and inspired me to tell stories of my own.
Natieka Samuels (04:02):
It's amazing how many authors I meet through doing this podcast who have educator families. So how did having a teacher for a mother inspire your work?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (04:13):
Well, mom read a lot of, of course, adult fiction. Back then they didn't have these wonderful categories that we have now. There was no middle grade, there was no young adult literature. And so I would see copies of Toni Morrison kind of lying around, book open at the spot where mom last left off. I would see Maya Angelou. I would see a lot of non-fiction that my dad was reading and it occurred to me one day that I could pick up one of these books and read about the history of African Americans in this nation through again, the non-fiction that my dad was reading, I could look at Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. And then when I looked at the cover, I thought, "Hmm, there's a name on the front of that book. Someone has written this story."
Andrea Davis Pinkney (05:05):
When I was in second grade, my dad got me a notebook. And he said, "I want you to write everything in this notebook. I want you to write things you think about, things that make you happy, things that make you sad. Write about your pets, write about your sister Lynn and your brother PJ, and that summer vacation that we went on. And here's a little tip for you." He said, "Try to write something every single day." And he said, "Because that's what writers do. The names on the front of those books. That's what they do. They write every single day, they write about things that are important to them." And that was the beginning of writing, seeing that I could do that. I could make it my own. And I still do that practice today.
Natieka Samuels (05:52):
So did you always know that you wanted to become an author or were there other childhood dreams that you had along the way or even adolescent and adult dreams that you had along the way?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (06:00):
Well, as much as I loved looking at the names on books and the poetry of Langston Hughes, it didn't occur to me back then that I could be an author because again, I was still a little bit of a struggling reader and I struggled with writing and grammar and all that good stuff. But the thing that made the difference for me was this. When I was in the sixth grade, I wrote in my notebook that dad had gotten me, I wrote a story about a man-made of fire. And in the story, when the man started to run his limbs, his arms, and his legs, the fire increased because of the momentum of the running. I believe to this day that my sixth-grade teacher found that notebook in my desk and somehow submitted the story to the Stedwick Elementary School writing contest.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (06:52):
The day of the announcement for the winner of the Stedwick Elementary School writing contest came, it was in the gym. I remember being way in the back and kind of a little bit zoned out thinking this really has nothing to do with me. I didn't enter the contest and I'm not really a writer and sure enough, they called my name. They told me to come down to the front and collect my prize for winning the Stedwick Elementary School writing contest. My prize was that I got to take my entire family out to dinner at the Red Lobster restaurant and I sometimes joke that I learned then that you could feed your family by writing, which I still do to this day. But I think, more importantly, I felt then like I can really do this. Someone believed in me, someone read something that I wrote and found value in it. And I think that was just a very special moment that maybe this is something I can really do.
Natieka Samuels (07:51):
Your suspicion of it being your teacher, I think is a great example of how teachers can completely change the trajectory of the student's life.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (07:58):
That's very true.
Natieka Samuels (07:59):
And you said that you struggled with reading and writing. So how did you overcome that?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (08:03):
The way I overcame struggling as a reader and as a writer was through... And another best-kept secret, it was explained to me at that time that I could read picture books, even though I was again with my fairy God teacher, Mrs. Lewis in the third grade approaching fourth grade, fifth, sixth, there was excitement, value, beauty in reading books that had pictures in them. And then someone pointed out that reading the pictures in a book counts as reading. That's reading, it's called visual literacy I now know, that the illustrations tell their own story and that the words are married with the illustrations, but that I could begin by looking at pictures and that's how it started for me.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (08:57):
And then it was pointed out that, that thing in the front of the book, it's called a flap on the book cover that tells what the book is about. You can begin by reading the flap and that is the beginning of reading the book. So that was the beginning, starting small and building the muscle as it were and knowing that pictures play a big role in how I, myself, as a young reader, internalized language and storytelling and the power of story.
Natieka Samuels (09:25):
So is that why you feel pulled towards children and young adult literature because it has so many pictures or it's often has a lot of pictures in it?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (09:35):
Yes. I mean, the reason that I'm pulled toward young adult literature is because I was a child. I just see the impact that books can have on young people. And I am married to Brian Pinkney, who is a children's book illustrator, and Brian and I have collaborated on collectively 70 books together. And many of those he has illustrated. So kind of living in a house with an illustrator has also really taught me a lot and shown me again that the power of the visual and the importance there. As an author, I'm in schools all over this nation, all over the world really. I'm interfacing with thousands of students. And I see that when I sit with a young person and we talk about the illustrations and if we never read a word, if we look at the pictures and we create our own story, or we have that kind of turnkey sizzle moment where a light bulb goes on in the mind or heart of a child from first looking at the pictures, I think that's inspired me as an author.
Natieka Samuels (10:38):
And what's inspiring your writing right now?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (10:40):
Well, what's inspiring my writing right now is, let me say that we are in this lovely global pandemic. It's interesting, a lot of folks are calling it a shutdown, a lockdown, and I have used it as an opportunity to open up, to really get quiet, and think about the power of story. I made my own list called the gifts of COVID. And one of those gifts has been that because of the virtual world, I'm able to be in touch with even more students in a virtual format. But I think that this has really invited me and many other authors and kids and parents and teachers and librarians to really do what you can do at home, which is open a book and read it. In my case, flip-up that laptop and get some writing done. So the quiet has come with some advantages.
Natieka Samuels (11:33):
You got to take any positive outlook that you can, I think.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (11:36):
Yeah, absolutely. And addition to writing, I'm doing a lot of reading, which is great.
Natieka Samuels (11:40):
So you mentioned earlier that you came from a family of storytellers. Can you paint a picture of how you experienced that storytelling as a kid?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (11:51):
I spent my summers with my extended family in Virginia and Maryland and Upstate New York and throughout the nation, really. And I have very clear memories of being 10, 11, 12 sitting on a porch on a summer evening with fireflies igniting the night and hearing the grownups talking. I now understand it as the oral tradition that is core to African Americans, but hearing stories about family, about legacy, about history, about social justice, about growing tomatoes, about courtships, about flowers, about doums, about church, and just listening and taking in those stories and enjoying them and savoring them, and often participating as I got older. And that was the beginning of the power of story and hearing how stories are told and how characterizations happen, those relatives, those aunts, those great aunts, those cousins, those uncles, they were the characters that were formulating in my mind that many of them have become characters in my books and have inspired a lot of the stories that I've written.
Natieka Samuels (13:09):
Can you talk a little bit about how you feel we can use the oral tradition, storytelling, and reading to enhance the way that we celebrate black history and Black History Month in general.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (13:22):
The power of the read aloud. Again, I'm in so many schools and I see the impact of a teacher, a grown-up, a parent, a caregiver, a loved one reading stories aloud to children, hearing the human voice express dialogue, express the story, bring it to life that can ignite the imagination of a child. And of course, silent reading is wonderful, but I think especially during Black History Month and all year, all the time. Sitting with a child, reading a story aloud and I'm having that child read back to me really is a way to spark conversations. Black History Month let's read about the Greensboro North Carolina sit-ins. I'm going to read a passage, you're going to read a passage. Let's talk about what we're reading. So during Black History Month and at every time of the year, reading aloud is something that invites dialogue between a grownup and a child.
Natieka Samuels (14:24):
Thanks for listening to School Me and a quick thank you to all of the NEA members listening. If you're not an NEA member yet, visit nea.org/whyjoin to learn more about member benefits.
Natieka Samuels (14:35):
Well, I want to get into a little bit more about the book. Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It is the Read Across America's recommended book for middle graders for February 2022. So can you talk a little bit about it and tell us what we could expect when we read it?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (14:53):
Let me say that I am thrilled, honored, and proud that Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It is the Read Across America pick, and because I think that's so appropriate. Read Across America because this is a story that is about the impact of what goes on across America. So Loretta Little Looks Back is the story of the little family. It's a real mix of fictional, first-person narratives, spoken word poems, folk myths, gospel, blues rhythms. And it follows the little family over three generations as they approach the right to vote among African Americans in the 1960s. So we begin in 1927 in a cotton field with a family of sharecroppers, we go up through 1954, where we experience some of the very harsh and ugly injustices for African Americans in the south.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (16:00):
And then we come right up to the election of 1968, where our journey has its wonderful kind of climax. I'm pausing because I don't want to ruin it for readers in which we see the impact of the three generations and African Americans gaining the courage to go forth, register to vote, and make their voices heard.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (16:21):
So here's a little snippet from Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It. And before I read this, let me mention that this is what I've called a monologue novel. So speaking of the oral tradition, I've had students, I've had teachers, I've had parents tell me that kids have really enjoyed this as a reader's theater, as a read aloud, sometimes a child says I'm going to be Loretta, I'm going to be Roly. I'm going to be Aggie B and they take on each of the characters. And so much of the storytelling is rooted in the oral tradition and the idea is that these first-person narratives allow readers to get behind the eyes of the characters and to really stand in their shoes and feel what it was like to live back in that time.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (17:11):
So the book begins with Loretta, the first character in the little family, and she starts like this. "Some say this what they call oration. I call it truth talking. Standing up to speak on what all I remember, recollecting. Putting it simple, this is me talking to you about my life, about my times, some pretty, some ugly. I'm coming ahead with a go tell it. A story that starts with me, grows out from my family tree, and ends with you right here. I'm Sharon, the honest to goodness where our feet walked, what all happened and the road were going on, come tomorrow." So that's the beginning and Loretta invites us into the world and the struggles and the triumphs and the glory and the beauty of the little family.
Natieka Samuels (18:14):
Yes. And this book is a work of historical fiction. So what are some of the maybe advantages that historical fiction can have over our standard teachings of like history books or just things that we memorize about the black experience in America?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (18:33):
So I'm the author of many books, historical fiction, non-fiction, poetry. The beauty of historical fiction for me as a writer and as someone who enjoys these books with the young people in my life is that I'm able to infuse the characterizations with truth, with things that really happened, but bringing an emotional component to them, bringing the characters alive. What were they feeling? What are some of the sensory details that happened in their lives? In the case of Loretta Little Looks Back, there's a moment where one of the characters experiences a white Christmas in Mississippi. Now there's a little bit of a surprise with that. Again, I'll let readers read it and find out how is it that there's a white Christmas in Mississippi, but the sensory details that happened rooted in fact, allow me to expand the canvas on history in ways that I hope bring it alive for readers.
Natieka Samuels (19:35):
Read Across America is all about building a nation of diverse readers and also bringing diverse books to homes and schools. So I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't ask you why you feel diverse books, meaning exposing kids to all kinds of different cultures, families, places is important, regardless of whether they are the race that is represented in the books or not.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (20:00):
Well, I think Read Across America again is the perfect vehicle for telling so many of these stories. Yes, Read Across America. So if you visit now, most classrooms in the United States of America, and again, as an author, I'm in classrooms all over this nation, you will see that the majority of those in every state have children of color that are filling those classrooms and it's increasing. And so kids see what they see. They don't see what they don't see. Kids see what we show them. We teach them by what we don't show or tell. So, as we are reading across America, I invite teachers to show kids the tapestry, the mosaic, the quilt that is America, races, faces, and places. When we do that, when we show the face, when we fill our collections with a multitude of kinds of books and experiences, we are pulling up the shade on that window. We are letting the sun in. We're allowing us to look out and see other experiences. We're allowing others to look in and see the experiences that we have.
Natieka Samuels (21:08):
That's like a perfect commercial, I think for Read Across America. What are you looking most forward to right now?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (21:15):
Right now, I am really looking forward to the day when I can get back into classrooms, back into schools in person with a lot of students. I know a lot of schools are back. Some folks are still remote. And again, I've enjoyed the remote experiences because I have the opportunity to interface with a lot of kids. But I think that being in the space with the energy and the environment and the excitement reading aloud to lots of kids in person is something I'm really looking forward to. And I have faith that that's going to happen soon.
Natieka Samuels (21:47):
How do you keep learning for yourself? How do you continue your personal education?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (21:52):
The way I continue to learn is to read. I read everything and it's something I tell young people. Parents will say, what if my child wants to be a writer or is interested in books. I say to teachers and grownups, I invite kids and myself to read everything and especially read things I think I might not like. I invite myself to kind of push past my comfort zone. If there's a certain genre or category that may not be my cup of tea. That's what I read first. And there's always a learning experience. And that's how I keep my thinking alive. And there's always a gift in those books, there's gift in every book. So I continue to read and I continue to push past my comfort zone. I will say too, that one of the joys of living in New York City, even in a pandemic is that I spend a lot of my time in the theater with my mask on, of course. Because that's where I can hear dialogue, see characterizations come to life and that really informs my writing.
Natieka Samuels (22:52):
What were some of your favorite books growing up and how did they inspire uninformed the way that you write today?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (23:00):
My favorite book and it is still my favorite is the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read that book, I'm going to say in sixth or seventh grade, I read that book almost every year. And that book is what is part of what I now understand as my textual lineage. So textual lineage are the books that you grew up reading that are your favorites, that define who you are, that expand in your thinking and continue to expand your thinking that open your heart, that make you see the world in new ways, that inspire you to be a better person. And To Kill a Mockingbird is part of my textual lineage.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (23:42):
Now, it's kind of a fancy term. It's a very on-point term. It was developed by Dr. Alfred Tatum at The University of Chicago. I've come to discover that as a writer, as someone who's with a lot of young people, a lot of students, as the daughter of an educator and teachers, I say to teachers, as we all read across America, this is our opportunity to develop for young people, their textual lineage, the books that will ignite, inspire and help define who they become.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (24:16):
We all look back at Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. We all re-read those book. We remember them. They're kind of part of our creative and literacy DNA. And so To Kill a Mockingbird, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, so many books by Patricia McKissack and Virginia Hamilton those are part of my textual lineage and I continue to read those. I was just reading the other night, Her Stories by Virginia Hamilton and getting that feeling. I hear a song from years ago and it just has immediate emotional resonance. That's what the textual lineage is. The books that resonate with you emotionally and stay with you, and help define how you read books as you grow up.
Natieka Samuels (25:01):
What's something you wish you had known when you were first starting out in this career?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (25:06):
When I was first beginning, I wish someone had told me that slow and steady wins that race. That we want to start out at a pace that we can keep and that the best stories... When I put that loaf of bread in the oven, sometimes I got to leave it alone so that it can bake. And I know that with my own writing, I work very hard at the books that I work on, that I write. And I've had books that have begun, gone into a file for literally as long as a decade, come back out and I've seen the light, and then they're published. So slow and steady wins the race. I always remind students when I go into classrooms when I write a book or a story and I submit it to my editor at the publishing company, I usually have to rewrite it up to 10 times.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (25:57):
So when I send it to her or him, I call that now my pre-first draft, what they're getting is my pre-first draft. I wish someone had told me that. I used to think, oh, ping, I'm going to send it over on the email attachment. I'm done. It's great. And so lot of revision. Now, I really embrace revising over and over and over. And I even see things that have been published. And I look, and I read, I say, "Oh, I wish I had changed this." I wish myself and I wish others a long slow creative process.
Natieka Samuels (26:28):
And what's next for you? I know I asked what you're looking forward to, but what are you working on right now?
Andrea Davis Pinkney (26:35):
So I have a new book coming out called Because of You, John Lewis. And it's a picture book illustrated by Keith Henry Brown. I'm very excited about this. Because of You, John Lewis is the true story of a remarkable friendship between a 10 year old boy, Tybre Faw from Johnson City, Tennessee, and his meeting of Congressman John Lewis. Again, it's a true story, some of you may have seen the CNN coverage on young Tybre Faw when he read Invictus, John Lewis's favorite poem at John Lewis's Memorial service, where young Tybre stood in the Ebeneezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther king was the pastor. And I'm very excited about that because we see in the book how this young boy wanted more than anything to meet John Lewis and through a set of very serendipitous circumstances, he gets to meet John Lewis. They become friends, and we learn that young Tybre is the activist of tomorrow. He's literally following in John Lewis's footsteps. So I'm very excited about Because of You, John Lewis coming up soon.
Natieka Samuels (27:45):
All right. We're looking forward to seeing that on the shelves. Well, thank you so much for sitting down and talking to me today, Andrea. This was a really great conversation and now I'm very excited to get back to the books on my Kindle.
Andrea Davis Pinkney (27:57):
Thank you. Thank you, Natieka.
Natieka Samuels (27:59):
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