What a great book to start off the school year! I'd even recommend it for up through eighth grade.
Liberty Street is a quiet street where the residents live in fear of upsetting the General. Everything is the same, same, same. Each house is the same, everyone follows similar schedules... ho-hum boredom!
Until... the Araboolies move in. See what they do to change an everyday ho-hum street into a street that is worth living on.
This book not only examines the differences in people and life (which make the world a not-so-boring place!) and actually celebrates them! A great way to start off the school year.
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The book is supposed to be a fable about intolerance. A very stuck up family called the Pinches is angry when the loud, colorful "Araboolies" move next door. The Pinches call the army but the army removes them instead of the Araboolies. Then the rest of the neighbors paint their houses crazy colors and the neighborhood looks like a carnival.Problems:1. Araboolies, seriously? Why not just call them Arabs if that's what you're trying to say. Imagine for a minute that the book was called "The Arabs." Arab people would be offended to be portrayed as silly, loud people who party all the time. The only groups who would not be offended if this book was about them are college students and circus performers. A name like "Araboolies" and the decision to make the Araboolies have green and purple skin... this gives plausible deniability. "I'm not stereotyping, the Araboolies are made up." But we know who the analogy is about (black people, immigrants, ethnic minorities), so yes you are.2. This isn't harmless. Real people are having to live with these kinds of stereotypes about them. Black people get the cops called on them when they barbecue on their own property, or there are "too many of them" in a space white people think belongs to them, like a wealthy neighborhood. The Pinches calling the army in the book is not much of a parody. White people often perceive black and Latino people as louder than they really are. More aggressive than they really are. At work, black people have to change their hair to look more like white person's hair to be "professional." Immigrants get mocked for having an accent. Muslims are seen as threatening for visibly practicing their religion. Native Americans are stereotyped as people who live in teepees to this day. The Araboolies have a big tent in the yard. The book doesn't address that in real life, the Pinches would be reacting exactly the same way even if their new neighbors had the same lifestyle as they did.2. Context: Publishing lacks diversity. UNDERSTATEMENT. White people in the United States are barely a majority anymore. They would be less so if we didn't have policies setting strict limits on non-white immigration. Non-white characters in books are uncommon or rare. This is after backlash about lack of diversity. When we do see people of color in books they are usually flat characters, people in the crowd, or written by white authors who don't understand the experiences of someone who grew up in the culture they're portraying. I guess it's better than having ONLY white characters. But if you changed the appearance of a lot of these token diverse characters to white and left everything else the same, nothing would look out of place.So why give a huge platform to a book about fake diversity when we could be reading a book written by an author who is not white and learn about a REAL culture and the REAL struggles he/she faces? Authors who are not white have a really hard time getting published! I've read some of their books that are published by tiny independent presses instead of Scholastic or Harper Collins. They are fantastic! Why do I have to look high and low to find books like these, when my schools and libraries are flooded with books about fake diversity written by people who don't have a lived experience of discrimination, immigrating to a new country, having a dual cultural identity etc.? If this book was pure entertainment, fine. Getting published by a dominant company is a stroke of luck, a prize. But this book is being promoted as teaching diversity and asking for a big pat on the back. Read about discrimination in the publishing industry, it might surprise you.
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