A humorous and heartwarming bounce-to-the-beat underdog story about a young rapper whose rhymes help bring his community together.
SIMON B. RHYMIN’
by Dwayne Reed with Ellien Holi, illustrated by Robert Paul Jr.
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, March 2021
(chez Sterling Lord Literistic)
Eleven-year-old Simon Barnes dreams of becoming a world-famous rapper that everyone calls Notorious D.O.G. But for now, he’s just a Chicago fifth grader who’s small for this age and afraid to use his voice. Simon prefers to lay low at school and at home, even though he’s constantly spitting rhymes in his head. But when his new teacher assigns the class an oral presentation on something that affects their community, Simon must face his fears. With some help from an unexpected ally and his neighborhood crew, will Simon gain the confidence to rap his way to an A and prove that one kid can make a difference in his ‘hood?
Dwayne Reed, who is known as Teach Mr. Reed on social media, is a Chicago teacher, singer, and rapper who has appeared on Good Morning America, MTV’s TRL, Windy City Live, World News Tonight, and more. The video for his hit song, “Welcome to the 4th Grade,” has been viewed over 1.7 million times on YouTube. He has 39,000 Twitter followers and 4,500 YouTube subscribers. When he’s not writing, rapping, or teaching, Dwayne can be found presenting at educator conferences across the U.S.
Filipina-American Ting Velosa travels from New York to Manila, both to escape her imminent divorce, and to begin research for a biography of Timicheg, an indigenous Filipino man brought to New York at the start of the twentieth century to be exhibited as part of a ‘human zoo.’ But as she speaks with family and friends, and revisits old haunts, she finds modern Filipino society languishing under the capricious dictatorship of Procopio ‘Copo’ Gumboc. To make her way, Ting must balance the aristocratic traditions of her family, seemingly at odds with both situation and circumstance; reconnecting with her high school friend Inchoy, a gay socialist and professor of philosophy; and beginning a new affair with her old boyfriend Chet, a businessman with questionable ties to the regime. All the while, family duty dictates that Ting be responsible for Laird, a cousin’s fiancé, who has come to the Philippines to rediscover his roots, nevermind not speaking a word of Tagalog. As Ting works on her book, she cannot extricate herself from Laird’s insurgent nationalism, nor from the increasingly repressive regime, even as she finds ways to remain on the periphery of lurking danger. Shuffled between history and the unfolding present, Ting finds herself inevitably colliding with the question of whether the country of her birth will ever change.
What do you do when you suddenly find yourself confronted with a mortal threat to your society’s fundamental, stabilizing principles? Mildred Harnack chose to stand. Milwaukee-born, she was the leader of the largest anti-Nazi resistance group in Germany, and the only American woman to be put to death on Hitler’s orders. Despite its unmatched vastness, the record of World War II atrocity and nobility will forever remain incomplete. This ever-expanding volume of belligerence and courage is perhaps the most gravely gendered historical document we have; a war perpetrated, suffered and recounted by men. There are periodically polite acknowledgments of the roles played by woman in ‘aiding’ the war effort, but these usually have the hollow ring of tokenism. Mildred Harnack’s short but monumental life shows us just how incomplete that record remains. From 1933-42, with her German husband, Arvid, Mildred led a cell that couriered top secret military intelligence to the Allies, helped dissidents and persecuted minorities escape Germany, and distributed literature that encouraged civil disobedience and exposed Nazi plans. Fusing elements of biography, political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner brilliantly interweaves family archives, original research, exclusive interviews with survivors, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, enthralling story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.