There is a lot of controversy about whether or not our nation should be celebrating Columbus Day. Obviously, we know that Cristoforo Colombo did not discover America in 1492 because there were already people living on the land. The story of the holiday, though, is much more complex and doesn't have as much to do about the Italian explorer who sailed under the Spanish flag. It has much more to do with the history of Italian immigrants in the United States. From NY Public Library -- from 1892. Between around 1880 and 1924, more than 4 million Italians, mainly from Southern Italy and Sicily, (my ancestors included) arrived on American shores looking for opportunities unavailable to them in their home country -- like all immigrants coming to America. Photo by Lewis Hine Like other immigrants they were not met with open arms. Read the White House Proclamation on Columbus Day from 2022. "Things have not always been easy; prejudice and violence often stalled the ...
I just spent a wonderful weekend with educators at NCTE and had conversations about pairing fiction and nonfiction books in the classroom. While most of these discussions involved books about the environment an article this morning in Publishers Weekly Daily (PW Daily)reminded me of some other connections. I just had to share this with you all. A Murder in Massachusetts is the story of the murder that inspired America's first crime novel -- The Scarlet Letter . It reminded me of two other books that have a similar connection -- A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, which weaves the true crime story of Grace Brown, who also inpsired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy . I can already hear the classroom discussions!
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