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[CCBC-Net] What book has changed your life?
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From: Nancy Silverrod <nsilverrod>
Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 14:52:20 -0700
Along with Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl, the other book that really changed my life was Jean Merrill's The Pushcart War, in which the pushcart owners, with the help of some quick-thinking and quick-moving kids, take on the big Mack trucks. This book really politicized me when I read it in fourth or fifth grade. Living in Ann Arbor at the height of the student unrest at that time helped too, but this book brought it to a level that I could relate to as a kid. The idea that a small group could take on the big bad guys thrilled me.
I took its lessons to heart, and started a petition to fire my fifth grade teacher when she opened the desk of a classmate to confiscate a banned packet of Kool-Aid (illegal search and seizure), and didn't punish the tattle tale (suck-up rat fink) who told her it was there! Most of the kids in the class signed the petition, but changed their minds when they realized I was serious about taking it to the principal's office. In the one and only time I got into a fight at school, I punched the principal's daughter as she got in my way, and I stormed home. So much for organizing the fifth grade!
More successfully, the kids in my mostly student neighborhood, petitioned to save a small park from being paved over for parking. I can remember sitting around my kitchen table with my sibs and the few other kids that lived nearby, strategizing our approach to the City.
But later in life I was involved for several years in union work with the IWW, as a steward and negotiator, and I think The Pushcart War was the start of it all.
Nancy Silverrod, Librarian San Francisco Public Library 100 Larkin St. San Francisco, CA 94102 415-557-4417 nsilverrod at sfpl.org
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. -James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)
Received on Mon 22 May 2006 04:52:20 PM CDT
Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 14:52:20 -0700
Along with Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl, the other book that really changed my life was Jean Merrill's The Pushcart War, in which the pushcart owners, with the help of some quick-thinking and quick-moving kids, take on the big Mack trucks. This book really politicized me when I read it in fourth or fifth grade. Living in Ann Arbor at the height of the student unrest at that time helped too, but this book brought it to a level that I could relate to as a kid. The idea that a small group could take on the big bad guys thrilled me.
I took its lessons to heart, and started a petition to fire my fifth grade teacher when she opened the desk of a classmate to confiscate a banned packet of Kool-Aid (illegal search and seizure), and didn't punish the tattle tale (suck-up rat fink) who told her it was there! Most of the kids in the class signed the petition, but changed their minds when they realized I was serious about taking it to the principal's office. In the one and only time I got into a fight at school, I punched the principal's daughter as she got in my way, and I stormed home. So much for organizing the fifth grade!
More successfully, the kids in my mostly student neighborhood, petitioned to save a small park from being paved over for parking. I can remember sitting around my kitchen table with my sibs and the few other kids that lived nearby, strategizing our approach to the City.
But later in life I was involved for several years in union work with the IWW, as a steward and negotiator, and I think The Pushcart War was the start of it all.
Nancy Silverrod, Librarian San Francisco Public Library 100 Larkin St. San Francisco, CA 94102 415-557-4417 nsilverrod at sfpl.org
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. -James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)
Received on Mon 22 May 2006 04:52:20 PM CDT
