Recently,
I excitingly told my young daughters we were going to wake up early and go
berry picking at a “pick your own” farm. My three year old exclaimed “I don’t
want to pick berries at a farm I want to pick them at a store.” Although it was
funny, it made me realize how disconnected we are as a society to our food
sources and the nameless people who make it possible for us to have fresh
fruits and vegetables on our tables.
The
stereotype of a farm worker is an adult male, but according to the National Farmworker
Ministry,
there are up to 500 of children and teens (under the age of 18) hired as farm
laborers in fields across the United States. Many of these young people are
undocumented immigrants or are part of migrant farm working families. Unfortunately,
most of these hardworking people go unnamed and unnoticed.
Migrant farm workers often follow the crops to
sustain employment and many of the children of migrant workers go to school
during the day and work several hours as well.
This lifestyle can be very disruptive to students because they move
several times a year and go from classroom to classroom often not bonding with
teachers or other students. One child of
migrant farmers influenced by the lifestyle and work ethic instilled by his
parents was Juan Felipe Herrera, a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist,
teacher, and activist, who in 2015 was appointed as the nation’s first Chicano
poet laureate.
Herrera’s
publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories,
young adult novels and picture books for children with twenty-one books in
total published in the last decade.
Two
of Herrera’s books that depict the life of young migrant workers and the
children of migrant workers are Calling
the Doves/El Canto de Las Palomas (1995) and The Upside Down Boy/El Niño De Cabeza (2000). Both books are
bilingual and are appropriate for elementary-age children and above.
The Upside Down Boy is a memoir of the year Herrera’s
migrant family settled down near San Diego, California in order to allow him to
attend school for the first time. Juanito is overwhelmed by the new school, and
he misses the “campesino” way of life. Everything he does feels abnormal and
makes him feel upside down. He doesn’t synch with the routine at school and
when he tries to speak English, “his tongue feels like a rock.” Eventually he
is able to find his voice through poetry, art, and music, with the help of a
patient teacher and his supportive parents. Herrera's choice of words and the
accompanying illustrations by Elizabeth Gomez tell a very important story about
feeling “upside down” in a new situation in a way that young children can
relate to and older students can use as a starting point for a deeper,
empathetic discussion. The book was dedicated by Herrera to his third grade
teacher, Mrs. Lucille Simpson, who inspired him “to be a singer of words, and
most of all, a believer in [his] own voice.”
Calling the Doves won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award,
an award that celebrates and inspires exceptional new writers and illustrators,
who are seldom recognized in the early stages of their careers when Herrera was
not well known and new to the children’s book circuit. The book bravely tells
the stories of migrant workers, their struggles and their stories of travel,
life on the road and random opportunities for work. The poetic vignettes and
accompanying illustrations capture the unique culture of migrant workers from
the point of view of a young boy. Like Upside
Down Boy, this book is an excellent resource to discuss migrant workers.
Herrera dedicated this book to Cesar Chavez to honor his work with United
Farmworkers Union and to his parents who taught him that “inside every word
there can be kindness.”
Additional Resources:
- Lee & Low Books, great friends of ours, have both reviewed books plus two more in a four book collection at a discounted rate. Click here to learn more and continue to build a diverse classroom library. Lee and Low also provides a resource for using the books to teach and discuss “Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera with Students.”
- Watch this video to see how Juan Felipe Herrera introduces Calling of the Doves and inspires young writers with tips for story writing. Plus he reads an excerpt in English and Spanish which makes for a great classroom introduction!
- After using Juan Felipe Herrera children’s’ books as a start for discussion, dig deeper with older students in this lesson plan, Interpreting the Impact of Cesar Chavez’s Early Years, to see how Chavez’s later work was influenced by his childhood as a migrant farmworker.
- Read our previous blog post, “The Power of Poetry and the Immigration Experience,” for ideas on how to incorporate poetry and picture books to teach immigration.
We offer free lesson
plans, resources, book/film
reviews, and grants to
#teachimmigration. Stay connected! Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration and
our blog Immigration
In and Out of the Classroom.
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