For Teachers

The Liberation of Lefties

By Susan Koehler on January 22, 2025 / Articles, Book Lists, Diversity, Fiction, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, kidlit

I grew up as the youngest of five very ordinary children. Well, we each had our individual personalities, preferences, and idiosyncrasies, but we were mainstream in the obvious ways — like being right-handed.

So, when my niece’s son turned out to be left-handed, it was a source of great curiosity and excitement in the family. This trait was viewed as unique. Cool. Special. And then his sister turned out to be left-handed as well. Then two of my three grandchildren turned out to be lefties. The excitement was almost too much to handle!

A Book Called Lefty

With love for so many lefties, you can imagine my delight when I learned about the book Lefty: A Story That is Not All Right (Union Square Kids, 2024), with words by Mo Willems and pictures by Dan Santat. Oh, how I smiled. Well, the work of these two creators often makes me smile, but this was different. This book evoked images of some children who are very dear to me, so I smiled for a really long time. In fact, I’m still smiling.

The book opens with a question: “Did you know there was a time when you could get into trouble…really, really big trouble…for being left-handed?” The question is being asked by a left hand, held puppet-style, who happens to be speaking to a right hand.

The right hand is incredulous, as many young readers might be. But the book goes on to explain that left-handedness was once feared, maligned, and viewed as something sinister…because it was a variation from the norm.

While that might sound crazy to children who are free to use the hand that feels naturally dominant, it wasn’t that long ago when people were still forcing children into right-handedness. I remember this happening to a few friends from my childhood. The rationale was that life would be easier for them as a right-handed person.

To my horror, I later discovered that in some communities, left-handedness was interpreted to be a sign that the child had been “touched by the devil.” When I first started teaching, I actually had students who referred to a left-handed classmate as “evil-handed.”

According to a 2015 Time magazine article entitled “How Lefties First Gained Acceptance,” the association of evil with left-handedness goes back to the Middle Ages. (Believe me, I did NOT start teaching in the Middle Ages. These attitudes hung around for a LONG time.) The article goes on to identify some very famous and highly-regarded southpaws, including Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Bill Gates, and Barack Obama.

A book like Lefty can be very powerful in helping us normalize a trait that, according to the National Institute of Health, has belonged to 10% of the population dating back to the time of Neanderthals. This made me wonder….Are there middle grade books that celebrate left-handedness? Yes, there are! Here’s a sample of some literary lefties middle grade readers can enjoy.

Middle Grade Books Featuring Left-Handedness

The Left-Handed Shortstop (Yearling, 1989) by Patricia Reilly Giff

When fourth-grader Walter Moles is assigned the role of shortstop in the big rivalry game, he’s overcome with the fear of failure. After all, there hasn’t been a left-handed shortstop since 1892! This book was published just a couple of years after one of my students was referred to as “evil-handed.” I hope that in its time, it found its way into the hands of some kids who needed it.

Choosing Up Sides (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2000) by John Ritter

Lefty Luke Bledsoe discovers that he has a talent for pitching. It’s the first time he’s felt good about being left-handed. That’s because Luke’s dad is a pastor who believes that the left hand is the side of Satan. This award-winning book evokes empathy for lefties as well as for those who struggle to balance family expectations with personal passions.

The Clue of the Left-Handed Envelope (Simon and Schuster, 2004) by George E. Stanley

Left-handedness is right there in the title. It’s a clue to solving the mystery of who sent Amber Lee Johnson an anonymous letter. This chapter book is the first in a mystery series that will delight young readers while building a bridge to longer texts.

Little Lefty (Bella Rosa, 2009) by Matt Christopher

Despite his small size, Bill Bailey can throw harder than anyone else on the team. He’s encouraged when he hears stories about “Little Lefty,” a small pitcher who made it into the big leagues. However, a freak accident puts Bill Bailey’s dream in jeopardy. Matt Christopher has pulled many reluctant readers into the world of books with his sports stories, and it’s great to know that this one features a left-handed protagonist.

The Left-Handed Fate (Henry Holt & Co., 2016) by Kate Milford

Lucy and Max try to end the war between their home country of England and Napoleon Bonaparte’s France. But then the plot thickens when their ship, The Left-Handed Fate, is taken by the Americans. Some exciting historical fiction with a twist of left-handedness makes for a highly engaging story. (And for some added trivia, Napoleon Bonaparte happened to be a lefty.)

Literary Liberation

How lovely to live in a time when lefties are liberated! And how wonderful to know that literature can build a sense of belonging by featuring characters and situations that help us become comfortable with our differences. In a world that finds solace in sameness and order in the ordinary, may we continually look to literature as a means of dispelling fear and building empathy.

Do you know of other middle grade books that feature left-handedness? Please share them in the comments! And remember to share all of these books with young readers who might identify with the characters, grow in empathy, or just simply enjoy a good book.

From the Classroom – Building Knowledge with Text Sets

By Ben Boche on December 23, 2024 / For Teachers, From the Classroom

Welcome to one of our newest features – From the Classroom – sharing tips and tricks for integrating a love of middle grade books and authors into your classroom. This month we are looking at using text sets to build knowledge.

What are Text Sets?

A text set is a collection of sources that support a common theme, issue, or topic. This can include fiction of all types (books, short stories, picture books, etc.), non-fiction titles, poetry, images, newspaper articles, songs, interviews, and other primary and secondary sources. The goal is to move from a textbook or one text only classroom to a multi-text classroom where the focus becomes studying concepts more in-depth to help build knowledge rather than the content of just one text. This always reminds me of the “if you liked this book, you would enjoy reading this book” lists and infographics you might see at the library or online, but instead the goal is to be deliberate about helping our students become mini-experts on a topic!

Mary Ann Cappiello and Erika Thulin Dawes recommend the following steps to build text sets:

Start with the content – What do the students need to know/what concept do you need to teach? It’s great to have a middle grade text serve as your anchor for the text set.
Build the text set – Find all sorts of material that will support the concept you will be teaching.
Organize the texts – What will you read first? Second? At the same time? Why?
Responding to the Text – What will you have the students do before/during/after reading?

A great place to start is with your standards to figure out what topics or concepts to teach and what students should know and be able to do with these topics and concepts.

Sample Text Sets

Below are a fiction and a non-fiction text set for any middle grade classroom.

Fiction

Studying fictional characters in class? Why not change it up and study villains instead of the usual boring, goody two-shoes heroes! Think of all the conversations you could have about villain character motivations, villain character’s impacting the plot, irony, and more. You could probably build a villain text set around anything, but since it’s the holiday season, I thought a great picture book tie-in would be How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Use that in conjunction with a clip of Scar’s song “Be prepared” from the Lion King and examine the lyrics, specifically. Finally, read any great middle grade novel with a great villain (I chose Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer), and you have a high-interest text set about villains!

cover of How the grinch stole christmas by Dr. Suess

Non-Fiction

I recently picked up Dan Sasuweh Jone’s latest Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Boarding Schools. What’s great about middle grade non-fiction books is they come complete with a well-researched bibliography which are perfect for creating text sets. Taking from this bibliography, a great text set could include reading portions if not all of the book, examining a picture of a student before and after they entered a school, and reading a newspaper article about the federal government’s response.

cover of Stealing little moon by Dan Sasuweh Jones

Main Text

picture of Hastiin To-Haali before he entered school and then tom torlino after being in schol

Picture of Hastiin To-Haali before entering school and as Tom Torlino after being in school

Article: Interior Department leaders decry traumatic legacy of federal boarding schools for Native American children by Rob Manning

Don’t forget to check out the National Park Service’s amazing article for teaching ideas (complete with standards, objectives, and activities) about this topic!

Bonus: Need help with students who might not be reading at grade level? Check out the Middle School TopicReads at TextProject.org

Where to Start?

Take a look at some of the many books recommended here on the Mixed Up Files and then start finding other texts, resources, poetry, images, and primary and secondary sources to support your topic and standards.

In the comments, share your favorite text sets you already use in the classroom or are thinking about using in the future!

Diversity in MG Lit #50 December 2024

By Rosanne Parry on December 18, 2024 / Articles, Diversity, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers

Friends, I started writing these Diversity in MG Lit posts six years ago in the fall of 2018. Today marks my 50th post. I wanted to reflect on how far we’ve come and where we might best spend our energy in support of diverse books in the future.

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center has been carefully and exhaustively compiling data on the racial and cultural composition of children’s book characters and children’s book authors and illustrators. Their data shows broad and consistent advances in the number of children’s books both by diverse creators and about diverse characters. The improvement has been particularly strong for Black, Asian, and Latine creators and characters. Each of those categories include more than 10% of the children’s books studied. Indigenous American, Pacific Islander and Arab titles saw a doubling over the last six years though the overall numbers are lower than 10%.

Equally encouraging is the recognition diverse titles receive. Taking the window of 2018-2024, all the National Book Award winners but one were diverse. And in the ten years before that (2007-2017) six of the ten winners were Black, Indigenous, or Asian.

The American Library Association has many book awards meant to elevate diverse books and their creators. But if we only look at the Newbery Award which does not make race or ethnicity of the author a qualification, all but one of the Newbery medals from 2018 to 2024 went to diverse authors–86%. Each Newbery committee can select as many as 5 honor books in a year. There were 26 honor books and 77% of them went to diverse authors.

This is all very encouraging and has come about due to the efforts of groups like We Need Diverse Books which formed to address this issue in 2014. It’s worth remembering that teachers, librarians, and independent booksellers have been pushing for greater diversity for many decades before social media brought the issue to wider attention.

We have much to celebrate as we complete the circle of another year. And yet there has been a dramatic rise in book banning and virtually all of it targets books for young readers by diverse creators and about the diverse experience. The LGBT+ experience has been a particular target of book banning.

Many anticipate that these bans will increase as the Trump administration takes office. Some states, most recently New Jersey, have passed laws to prevent book bans. Local action does seem to be the most effective deterrent. Book banning is broadly unpopular even among conservatives. And most book banning attempts ultimately fail, though not without causing disruption and heart ache. For my part I plan to pay close attention to my local school board and encourage my state representatives to enact anti-book ban legislation.

I have a far bigger concern than the bans though. Most diverse books are bought by teachers for their in-class collection or by librarians for school and public libraries. The children who need diverse books the most rely almost entirely on these free access opportunities. However, school and library funding has been decreasing for years. The most diverse communities have little or no access to an independent bookstore leaving them only the smaller inventory at big box stores. For example, I work at a medium-sized indy in Portland. Our middle grade section holds hundreds of individual MG titles. By contrast the local Target typically has no more than 30 MG book choices.

In some ways because book bans are emotionally-laden events, they distract from a far more dangerous agenda. Project 2025 would destroy public education as we know it. Among many objectives, it calls for the elimination of Title 1 funding and Head Start programs. Those programs make literacy possible for millions of low income and mostly diverse children. If those children never learn to read, it will not matter how many diverse books we create for them.

So although I will gladly continue to trumpet the arrival of new diverse books for middle grade readers, the lion’s share of my attention will go toward protecting public education and public libraries for all children. Our teachers and librarians and all of our children have never needed our support more.

For Teachers