Lauryn Hill? Michael Jackson? Rod Carew? Then the PERFECT NAME came to me out of the blue, and I knew I needed to sell this one, because next I was going to go to Bob Ross, and nobody needs to go there. Jimi Hendrix, but this was before the very nice children’s biography of Jimi came out, and dad nixed Jimi because of the drugs. Little girl looked blank and her dad looked skeptical. I get tired of googling stuff - about 75% of telephone reference nowadays is googling stuff for people who are afraid of computers. I was brainstorming all the famous women – and men, hey, I’ve known little girls to dress up like Popes for this project – who had sported Afros, and it’s not like you can Google that, or maybe you can now, I’ll wait here if you want to try. This is where Diana Ross comes in, of course. Turns out, part of the assignment was to dress up like their report subject, and she picked Foxy Brown because she already owned an Afro wig. Then I got her talking about the requirements of what was obviously a school project. While my mind processed this request, and made a sound kind of like tires spinning in mud, I vamped by explaining that not a lot of fictional characters have biographies written about them. Foxy Brown, the 1974 blaxploitation film starring Pam Grier, Pam Grier’s bosoms, and a handgun. “You know, like, Foxy Brown in the movie.” Ah. You try to stay pretty neutral while answering questions, but I think we’re allowed a little leeway sometimes. Years ago, a little girl came in with her dad looking for a children’s biography of Foxy Brown. “What’s Diana Ross doing in there?” I wondered, and then I remembered. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart. Mentally flipping through all those faces and names this morning, the usual suspects popped up: Susan B. I at least have that interior slideshow to help me out. As a parent myself, I’d like to spare my comrades in arms the humiliation of trying to get a kid amped up for a project they never wanted to do in the first place. Whenever I see that happening, I hustle over to help out. “Betsy Ross? She lived right here in Baltimore! No? How about… Helen Keller? She was deaf and blind!” The kid stands there looking unenthused while mom and dad pull things off the shelves. Black History Month, Be Your Hero, Halloween, Who Invented That? – all of these topics send kids to the biography section of the public library. Over the years we compile a mental gallery of Biography People – people that we can suggest when a kid mopes in and mournfully sighs, “I have to write a report.” "Let’s take a walk over to the Biography section"Īs I was thinking about what I was going to write for Women’s History Month, my mind played that little slideshow that I think plays in every librarian’s mind when report time comes around for the kids. March 31 - Today's post contributed by Paula Willey
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