Like many book lovers, I grew up bubbling with excitement for the annual Scholastic Book Fair at school. My mom was a teacher, and she prompted me to circle the books I wanted to order from the paper catalog. When the day came, I’d gather my selections and proudly present my couch-cushion coins to the cashier for a bookmark or two. In addition to new installments about the perennially unchaperoned Boxcar Children and the disheveled Amelia Bedelia, I was enamored with the Baby-Sitters Club, specifically Jessi, the lone Black girl in the after-school babysitting business. I’d read about Jessi’s relatively carefree life as a babysitting ballet dancer to balance out the time I spent reading about the weighted existence of Addy, an ingenious runaway slave…
The post How a Third Ward Bookshop Makes Black Readers the Main Characters appeared first on Texas Monthly.
Read: Read More