An A-ha! literary moment

Okay, so here's what happened.

I went back to the community center yesterday, armed with five books which - let's face it - I was hoping would have a real effect on Dani and Darryl, the first graders I read with. My agenda was that they would hopefully see themselves in these stories about other African American children and the world of reading would suddenly open up, and the light in their eyes would go on, and they'd have a literary A-ha! moment.

It happened and it didn't happen.

Darryl was gone. In his place was Chris, a second grader. He dismissed all five picture books politely, but summarily.

Dani was next. I spread the books out on a table. Elizabeti's School. Princess Grace. I Lost My Tooth in Africa. Max Found Two Sticks. Piggy Pie Po (the only one about an animal.) Dani didn't seem bothered that they were picture books, but her rejection of almost all of them was immediate and viseral:

She didn't like Elizabeti. My instinct told me it was because the child's face was more real than pretty and because, in the illustration on the cover, she and the other children in her class all wore white uniforms in what appeared to be a rural village school setting.

The combination of not pretty and rural village were a no-go.

She didn't like Princess Grace. Again, I don't think the illustration of Grace on the cover was in accordance with Dani's personal standard of prettiness.

She didn't like Max because "I don't like sticks." And she didn't like the book about the tooth in Africa because she thought getting a chicken instead of a dollar when you lose a tooth was silly. When I told her that it was a real story, Dani said, "I don't like real stories."

We read Piggy Pie Po. Then Dani went and picked out another Fancy Nancy book.

"Why do you like these books?" I asked.

"Because she's fancy."

"But look at her," I said, picking up Princess Grace. "She's fancy. She's a princess. And she's your age."

"She is?"

"Yes." I quickly opened the book and started flipping through the pages so Dani would see the contemporary illustrations of Grace with her friends. I told Dani about the plot, that there's going to be a parade in school, and each class gets to choose two girls to be princesses on a float, and Dani wants to be one of them.

Dani said she'd been a princess last Halloween. She wore a "long pink dress and a tiara." Grace wore pink, too.

"So, do you want to read this one?" I asked.

She did.

I have to confess that I'd never read Princess Grace. In the story, Grace asks her Nana to sew her a costume for the "contest" to be chosen as one of the two princesses. When her Nana ask what kind of princess Grace wants to be, Grace doesn't know. Then Nana asks what a princess does and Grace doesn't know that, either.

I asked Dani what she thought a princess did. She thought for a long minute, and then she said, "She wears a beautiful long dress ... and she sits ... and she waves." (Dani did a very good royal wave. I swear, she had to have watched the Kate Middleton wedding.)

I kept reading. The book becomes an exploration of what princesses do, and what other kinds of princess there are in the world beside the Disney prototype. (Really, Disney, you have got a lot to answer for.) Grace's wise teacher tells them about several real princesses: Amina of Nigeria, who "led warriors into battle and built walls around all the villages," and Pin-Yang of China, "who started a women's army."

Dani was as surprised by that idea as Grace. She liked the illustrations of these princesses on magnificent horses, brandishing swords and surrounded by women warriors on horses. Then we came to an ingenious illustration of Princess Grace in her long pink dress having to face down a huge snake the way a Zimbabwean girl called Nyasha "who was kind to a snake that turned into a prince" had to.

Dani and I agreed that a princess needed a lot more than a long pink dress to face down a snake as big as that.

Then we came to the fine, fine part of the book where Nana sews a princess costume for Dani using some Kente cloth from The Gambia, and in the next picture all the children in the class are standing on a float in the parade (the teacher scrapped the contest; they all got to participate; go, teachers!) dressed in exotic costumes as princes and princesses from around the world. In the last illustration, Grace stands front and center. She's wearing an African costume and she has a gold band around her forehead and a heavy gold necklace around her neck. She's beautiful, and the pride and self-awareness in her face because of the costume she's wearing are genuine and effective.

"Look at those beautiful greens and yellows and browns and golds," I said, and Dani reached out and ran her hand up and down Grace's costume several times.

A-ha!

Bye-bye, pink princess.

We never did get to that Fancy Nancy book.