As a parent, it’s my duty to nurture the tools my children have. Fortunately, I love reading to them. In a culture saturated with electronic screens that often provide input without any interaction, it’s so nice to sit together and interact with the stories as a primer for questioning the world they live in.
But something was missing for me.
During the infamous summer of 2020 there was a call to “do the work.” What that referred to is the need for people to sacrifice some of their leisure time, at the very least, to learn about race in America. That also included a deluge of books for children that introduced them to historical figures in America that were black. I skimmed through them, usually looking at the cover images, but rarely if ever saw anyone I considered to be one of my heroes. Funny thing is, most of the people I was looking for had researched and written extensively, for decades, on the very issues we were supposed to be diving into. Many of them grew up during a time where racism was legal and accepted as a social norm. They had both intellectual and common sense about these issues. So, where were their stories?
I wanted to be able to introduce my children to some of these heroes. To introduce them to people who lived through these issues and could shed some light on how we avoid it today and into the future.
After some sulking, I decided to take my own advice and correct the issue as I saw it.
Tommy Goes to Harlem introduces children to Dr. Thomas Sowell by telling a simple story: his story. An orphaned boy from a country home without electricity or running water moves to Harlem, NY. There he finds a friend who introduces him to the world of libraries and he falls in love with reading. The results of that introduction changed his world, and changed the world.
Thomas Sowell went on to be the first person in his family to graduate sixth grade, dropped out of high school, was drafted into the Marine Corps, tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and ended up being an intellectual giant.
This introduction is meant to put a name to a face, give children a perspective on achievement, and help them to understand reading can be a key to success. I hope that anyone with small children enjoys it as much as I have enjoyed the process. No politics, identity or otherwise. Just a good old fashioned story with a simple lesson applicable to all human beings.
You can find both the paperback copy and Kindle version here.