Sunday, January 15, 2017

The Power of Books

Yesterday I jumped on to Twitter to send a friend a message and saw our president elect's tweets about Congressman John Lewis. To say that I was dismayed would be an understatement. I don't have a lot of respect for our president-elect, but I do have great respect for John Lewis. To say Lewis is, "All talk, talk, talk - no actions or results" was beyond the pale. I sat looking at my computer in shock. Then, I decided to act.

If you know me personally, you might know that I abhor conflict, I cannot tolerate a lot of negativity. I could tweet my dismay, I could complain, but instead I thought of Lewis. I thought of what I learned about him from the amazing March trilogy of graphic novels he penned with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. I recalled that they are constantly checked out in my classroom. So I figured I'd buy another set for my class. While purchasing it, I also decided to buy a set for my house for my boys and husband to read. Then I shared on social media that I felt it was a great day to purchase this series. I assumed that others, like myself, would want to do something positive. So many friends wrote me back that they were going to order a set themselves. My heart swelled with pride that more families were going to know Lewis's story. 

As the day wore on I saw that first Lewis's memoir, then the March trilogy, were now out of stock on Amazon. At one point, the trilogy was the #1 book of the day. Apparently the increase in sales for it was 106,700%. Yowza. I hope there were folks flooding bookstores as well to purchases these fine books. What a celebration of an amazing man. 

If you are looking for some books to purchase, I give the March trilogy my highest recommendation. It is a series that I think everyone in our country should read. I'm sharing all of the books I ended up purchasing in my own "protest" below because maybe you, like me, feel powerless and want to do something. Here are some books that need to be in our classrooms. We can all learn a lot from the power of books.