by Sam Juliano
Then it happened. A sudden, terrible light flashed all around. The light was bright orange – then white, like thousands of lightning bolts all striking at once. Violent shock waves followed, and buildings trembled and began to collapse.
-Toshi Maruki, Hiroshima No Pika (1980)
Eric Schlosser’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety is a harrowing and unnerving work about the palpable prospects of a nuclear detonation, one the author believes we have so far averted because of an astounding run of luck. Four years later the war of words with North Korea as a result of the rogue nation’s ongoing development of nuclear weapons has again brought the matter to center stage, with potential destruction as feasible as Schlosser had envisioned it. Literature for children on this most unthinkable of viable calamities is understandably scarce, especially works on the aftermath, like the once-banned Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence and the shattering Hiroshima No Pika, a 1980 Japanese picture book by Toshi Maruki that chronicled the terrifying events and nuclear fallout after an atomic bomb was dropped on the ill-fated city. Raymond Briggs’ Where the Wind Blows, which was also adapted into a critically praised animated feature that examined the human devastation even more acutely, and a 1983 American film, Testament is an intimate story of a family that succumbs to radiation poisoning one by one.
A cautionary picture book, The Secret Project by Jonah and Jeanette Winter, (a son and mother team) is initially set in the first quarter of 1943, when United States scientists convene in a New Mexico desert town to engage in an ultra secret enterprise, one the government has requested be completed in short order. Though unsuspecting young readers can’t be expected to immediately identify the objective of this clandestine rendezvous in one of the most innocuous of settings, the book’s mysterious, almost sinister context is scrupulously unveiled much like the peeling off of wraparound gauze after a plastic surgery operation. The book is directly based on the real life “Trinity Test” which was conducted on July, 16, 1945 on land part of the White Sands Missile Range. The end payoff – preceded by a 10 to 1 countdown readers associated with a rocket launch is simultaneously spectacular and terrifying, and leaves no room to underestimate the destructive power of a mushroom cloud explosion that has long since become the physical symbol for complete annihilation. About two years after scientists began their work in the desert atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing Japan to its knees and ending the Second World War. Whereas Schlosser intimated it was only a matter of time before an accident will cause unthinkable devastation, Jonah Winter at the conclusion of his afterward offers hope that stockpiles of nuclear weapons will continue to erode as governments reject the dire effects tests will have on the environment and on health. Winter refers to a 2016 statistic that there remains around 15,700 nuclear weapons in the world presently, but that with world cooperation we can eliminate this very threat of our existence completely.
At the outset Jeanette Winter employs her magnificent digital paintings to accentuate the outdoor beauty of the southwest vistas, recalling some of the impressive monochrome line drawings Peter Parnall did for Byrd Baylor in the 1960’s, which won him several Caldecott Honors. Author Winter denotes a tranquil mountainous landscape in a vast desert while artist Winter’s arresting minimalism incorporates pink textures and a preponderance of plants to denote a spirited interval, a calm before the storm. Launching the narrative shortly before the sudden cessation of activities ordered by the government in a kind of eminent domain maneuver, middle-school age boys in this private institution are outside engaged in games. But the practically idyllic surroundings are soon abandoned after the school principal is given the bad news, and Winter addresses this unwanted intrusion with muted tones, nocturnal blues and a forlorn quality discernible by an open schoolhouse door, a pair of shoes hanging from a rope and a previously used ball left behind. At that point the book’s typography changes from green to black almost as if to thematically emphasize the terrain’s “loss of innocence.” Scientists begin to arrive by cars during a golden sunset, as newly employed workers who will serve food, clean and offer security are checked out and allowed entry, though of course they too aren’t privy to what will be going on. Illustrator Winter’s brilliant silhouette tapestries are introduced by one showing the nondescript experts working through the night. Cutting the tiniest particle in the world – the atom- in half is the first stage of one of the most complex scientific creations known to man. Cerebral contemplation of atom masses is realized firework-styled configuration, but then after the next turn of the page the artist in deliberate juxtaposition reminds the readers that the milieu outside the makeshift compound couldn’t be more breathtaking. Cacti are aplenty, coyotes howl, beavers explore and an artist creates on location. Brighter and more colorful hues and the liberating thrall of daylight seemingly allow for the aesthetic response to the shady machinations being engineered behind closed doors.
Perhaps the most ravishing canvas of all is the ornate one showing a Hopi Indian engaged in carving beautiful wooden dolls in a place author Winter tellingly denotes as “in the faraway nearby.” As if to point to the imminent danger of the surreptitious progress inside the now converted laboratory, the illustrator continues to paint this dubious activity as always cloaked in darkness and a serious threat to the passion and productivity still prospering all around. In a race against time these nameless figures, super intelligent mathematicians work on equations in another Jeanette Winter gem depicting frenzied activity around a chalkboard illuminated by a ubiquitous seedy overhead light. Two of the men are crafted as drab figures in an automobile entering a vibrant town. In a brief sojourn from their cloistered habitat they visit a small wooden park and a central stone monument, but remain incognito even while maintaining a friendly demeanor. But when the leave during the cloak of night their eyes are peeled in the rearview mirror, making sure they aren’t followed. But they too are subject to security gate scrutiny and must present their identification to the guard. Again in the laboratory the covert fraternity must sort out the never-ending entanglement of equations, the most vital component in this government sponsored mission. The Secret Project’s most emblematic and arresting illustration, the one superbly encapsulated within the borders of the letter “O” on the cover title, highlights symbols of atoms, neutrons and protons on the profile silhouette of a scientist’s head. Jonah Winter’s corresponding narrative thrust keys in to the point where research has latch onto what turns out to be the vital discovery:
Only a little more research is needed – research on a metal called uranium that can be turned into something with enormous power. And then:
After two years of almost constant research the “Gadget” is completed, ready to be tested. The great scientists gather around their creation in silence, wondering if it will work.
Of course the term used for what was the be the quirky most destructive instrument ever conceived in world history was to mask the severity, while trying to divert concern. The artist denotes the “miles and miles” of open space where they will conduct their test, even suggesting that it is raining in one section and is dry in another. The “Gadget” is hung from the top of a metal tower. But they must drive to a safe spot so they can observe without getting hurt or risk being adversely affected from the radioactive fallout. Under the cover of darkness they pack the “Gadget” onto a truck and drive into the night, even passing through some rain on a trek they fully expect no one will take notice of. The artist’s canvas here depicting a dark night in an off the beacon track under a moon-lit sky and then under the cascading rain is stunning They retreat to a distant bunker where they expect a thunderous explosion of earth-shattering proportions. They are shown again in silhouette and then looking out from a round window to witness this inconceivable test. After a double page spread features the countdown, with the size of the numbers decreasing, they are then seen wearing glasses as the nuclear weapon explodes. Ms. Winter’s art here is spectacular, especially as the force of the red-orange tornado like torrent rises and then, suddenly with one turn of the page all turns a terrifying black, which in this book represents nothingness in what can be seen as an end of the world scenario for people within range of the detonation. The ominous stark gray-black cover features bold, gravestone lettering and a back panel of the school before governmental intrusion.
The Secret Project introduces the most fearful of subjects to the youngest readers at a time of supreme urgency. Jeanette Winter’s resplendent minimalism compellingly establishes mood and mystery, while most importantly warns those who partake in such development risk our very existence. The intrinsic beauty of our culture and physical surroundings has rarely been presented in such fateful terms as those in this uncompromising work. This powerful picture book is one of the two or three greatest of 2017 and demands inclusion in the Caldecott committee’s winners circle.
Note: This is the fourth entry in the 2017 Caldecott Medal Contender series. The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running. In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration. It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 30 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender. Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end. The awards will be announced in mid-February, hence the reviews will continue until around the end of January or through the first week of February.
Sam, you have really outdone yourself with this impassioned and beautifully written review. Your many references enhance an already trenchant essay. Few children’s books could be as urgent as this. Without a doubt one of the best reviews I’ve ever read by you.
I don’t know if you have read any of the reviews on Amazon, or if you even make it a practice to do so, but I see that most annoying of whiners, Debbie Reese is once again playing the Native American card, as if this book had anything to do with her incessant pet peeve. I was tempted to comment there, but I wouldn’t even dignify that woman. I remember the stink she put up at your site two years ago, and I find her a bundle of misplaced negative energy. The book industry should distance itself from this woman. Even her lengthy complaint is loaded with false assertions. I just placed an order for the book.
Thanks so much for the very kind words and the heads-up Frank. As this all came to pass over the summer when I wasn’t following any of this closely I was completely unaware. However check this incredible response to Ms. Reese which I saw on Twitter. It was posted by the artist Marla Frazee, and written by Patrick J:
“Because Debbie Reese’s rather uncharitable and inaccurate review appears to be influencing other reviewers and dragging down the rating of this extraordinary and powerful book, I feel that I must respond to it directly.
Reese argues that the book erases Native peoples, particularly the Pueblo Indians who lived in the area. She begins by noting that “[t]he boys shown [at the Los Alamos Ranch School] are definitely not from the communities of northern New Mexico at that time.” Is this a criticism or merely a description? Reese might not like it, but the boys in the illustrations look like the boys who actually attended that school. See for yourself:
http://historicaltimes.tumblr.com/pos…
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/…
Now look at Winter’s illustrations: close enough? I should say so.
But Reese says that her “real problem” is that the book implies that there is “nothing” around the school. First, there wasn’t much in the immediate surroundings: The school was a ranch, and ranches tend to occupy huge tracts of land – for the purposes of, um, ranching. Should the illustrator cram in a few adobe houses at the margins to satisfy Reese? If Reese has pictorial evidence that the Winters deliberately erased Pueblo buildings, she should present it instead of making a baseless assertion. Second, the pages that follow this clearly show that the school was near a town (Sante Fe) filled with what look to me like Native people. So clearly there is something “around” the school, close enough for the scientists to visit.
Next Reese deliberately misreads Winter’s claim that “nobody knows they [the scientists] are there,” which again, she claims, erases the people who lived there. She claims that the people near the school knew “it” [the school] was there. Of course they did, but that’s not what Winter writes. He says nobody knew “they” (the scientists) were there. Now, as for “nobody,” Winter is clearly referring to everyone outside the laboratory, as the sentence explicitly states, not “citizens of the world minus those who lived there.” The only people who must have known the men were there were the people who were hired to cook, clean, and guard, who are mentioned on the previous page. And they’re not “outside the laboratory.” Now, were they Native people? Some of them certainly appear to be illustrated to look that way.
The Winters are not erasing anybody but the scientists themselves. This is the most deliberate and most brilliant erasure in the book: the scientists, who are normally valorized or at least not held to account for their activities. Tucked away in a school house – no longer the bright boys who played and learned as students but dark, anonymous, vaguely sinister, grown-up students, each of them a travesty of the stereotypically benign figure of the good student harmlessly pursuing knowledge for its own sake – these scientists are “students” who stay up all day and night, like machines, trying to solve complex, abstract, mathematical problems without any real knowledge of what their solutions will unleash in the real world.
Reese’s quarrel with the book is focused on the alleged failure to represent Puebloans. So she isn’t writing from a Native point of view but a specifically Puebloan one. This is why she simply doesn’t know what to do with the page about the Hopi Indian artist except to ask questions full of winking and innuendo. The Hopi are too far away, she claims, while the San Ildefonso Puebloans were just 17 miles away. She wonders why the Winters chose *them.* Regardless of why they chose the Hopi, it’s indisputable that the book represents Native people. Does Reese just think that the Winters are specifically anti-Puebloan and pro-Hopi? Does this seem plausible, given the rest of the book and indeed the rest of the Winters’ other books? Puebloans are not named explicitly – so what? It doesn’t erase them any more than it erases the non-Puebloans who lived in the area, who are also not specifically named. They are *shown*, correct? More generally, this criticism is just crazy if you know anything about the Winters’ work. The Winters have written and illustrated some of the most racially and culturally sensitive books in the history of children’s literature – books about Frieda Kahlo, the Negro Leagues, Sonya Sotomayor, Roberto Clemente, James Madison Hemings, Jelly Roll Morton, the Voting Rights Act, girls from Kenya and Afghanistan, Malala Yousafzai, and many other subjects – and now they suddenly have a vendetta against Puebloans?
Reese also has a problem with the use of the word “doll” to describe what the Hopi man is carving. Now, this might disgust you, but Winter uses the word “doll” because – wait for it – that’s what they are called. They are Hopi katsina figures or “kachina dolls.” According to Wikipedia: “Hopi katsina figures (Hopi language: tithu or katsintithu), also known as kachina dolls are figures carved, typically from cottonwood root, by Hopi people to instruct young girls and new brides about katsinas or katsinam, the immortal beings that bring rain, control other aspects of the natural world and society, and act as messengers between humans and the spirit world.”
Clearly the point of including these dolls is to show, at least in part, that there are better ways to use our imaginations than to invent world-destroying bombs. We should CREATE, like O’Keefe, like the Hopi sculptor, not DESTROY. These dolls might also represent a respectful, symbiotic way of relating to nature, as well as a kind of spiritual presence that exists beyond the nihilism of the nuclear arms industry.
Most ridiculously and embarrassingly, Reese claims that Jeanette Winter illustrates the road into Santa Fe as a dirt road, probably because it is a brownish color. But my God, it’s just HISTORICALLY ACCURATE to illustrate the road this way! That was the color of the road. Don’t take my word for it, just look at this postcard from 1945:
http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/sit…
Shouldn’t the Winters be praised for their meticulous accuracy?
It should be obvious that Reese simply doesn’t like any book about the development of the atom bomb that doesn’t talk about Pueblo people and culture explicitly. That they are represented in the illustrations isn’t enough. What specific role did the Pueblo people play in the development and testing of the atom bomb that should be told about? If nobody is aware of one, then how is it a valid criticism that Winter erases them from the story – especially if they’re not directly involved in it? Even if it were valid, I can’t see how much of it still stands once we clear away the inaccuracies and misrepresentations of Reese’s review.
I wonder if Reese did ANY research before trying to destroy this book. Maybe she should ask herself why she sees erasure and inaccuracy everywhere in this book when even the most casual Google search completely vindicates the Winters’ representations. At the very least she should retract her inaccurate statements and misleading intimations.
Sam, your review is tremendous! I am not familiar with Debbie Reese, but Patrick J.’s rebuttal sounds masterful. I must get a copy!
Thanks so much Ricky! The prices of the book on Amazon (now that I had reason to explore after this morning) are quite excellent I must say.
I’m frankly surprised there hasn’t been an open mutiny against her around the book community.
Sam, This is an excellent review. And thanks for your kind words about my review.
Many thanks Patrick! Your insightful review in the light of some pointed criticism remains deeply appreciated.
Do you have a link to the tweet by Marla Frazee? Thanks again.
Patrick I can’t seem to find a way to link to it, since I am not a Twitter guy and came across it after my daughter had see it on her own account. The date Marla Frazee tweeted it was June 7th. She urged readers who has been following the feedback to the book to make a point of reading it.
An amazing book, and your presentation, Sam, being very effective!
The graceful narrative and illustrations certainly distance themselves from the routine apocalyptic time-killers so many are addicted to. I’m trying to get a sense of how a child could assimilate this. Perhaps this is an especially interactive gift for parents who could more readily temper the seductive viciousness.
Thanks so very much for yet another fantastic response Jim! Yes when I first came upon the book I thought of the age of my students and realized I would need to spend time framing it in terms that wouldn’t be disturbing. No easy task. But my kids really loved it, and understood why the finale was so overwhelming. But yes this is an astonishly subtle work, and the art is wholly sumptuous.
Sam, I logged into Twitter and found a tweet from Reese linking your review as “misguided waxing lyrical” or something like that. After reading how Patrick J. exposed her objections as fraudulent I have concluded we have a case of a bruised ego. She is basically complaining what she would like to have seen in the book, not what was actually written and visualized.
I wonder if she also thinks Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, The Horn Book and numerous other publications were just as “misguided” when they too waxed lyrical in no uncertain terms.
I wonder if she read Elizabeth Bird’s review, which like yours is extraordinary. She (Bird) states that it is probably Jeanette Winter’s best book of all, and ends up saying it is one of the most powerful non-fiction books.
http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2017/01/30/review-of-the-day-the-secret-project-by-jonah-winter-ill-jeanette-winter/#_
I hope the Caldecott committee shows a deaf ear to her bogus claims. This is a great book, (who can fail to be shaken after the ending) and you have written a tour de force of a review.
I think this woman owes the Winters an apology.
Peter, I’ve seen that indeed, as well as another new tweet stating that the book should “not” be honored by the committee. Yes the reviews have been as ecstatic as any book has ever received, including teh masterful essay from Betsy Bird. And the rebuttal to the charges seemed as definitive as one could read. I think the conclusion is pretty clear, but I’ll leave it go now. Thank you!
I know a lot of people dismiss Reese as a quack, but they are underestimating her clout. As a minority woman with impressive credentials she is admired as someone who will stand vigilant against racial stereotyping and slurs, even if unintended. The reason why she is losing respect is because she has overstepped her bounds, and is now expanding her agenda to include representation that isn’t supported by actual history. I thought her issues with “Tribe of Kids” were bizarre, but in the case of “The Secret Project” she has tested the reading community with just how much she could get away with. If they buy into her false allegations (and she did muff her defense badly) she figures she’ll instill fear so that others will cooperate with what she personally desires in some future books. She is a shrewd operator. But I am thinking her reputation is heading downwards.
What a fantastic review! I read this to my second graders, nearly doing a full unit. But I didn’t think it a good idea to over extend. So happy to hear it is being spoken about as a contender for the Caldecott. It is one of the most powerful and emotional picture books I’ve seen. In this way it reminds me of “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers”.
Ah yes, that Gerstein work is another masterpiece and also very emotional. Great to hear this was such a hit with your second graders Karen. Many thanks.
I’m a librarian and have checked this book out many times. The greatest I’ve seen on this subject. Your brilliant review should go further in explain why it is so invaluable. I’d love to see it win the Caldecott. It leaves you stunned.
Thanks for visiting Isabella. Much appreciate the very kind words. Yes it is quite a stunner, and has you thinking for days if not weeks afterward. I’m really hoping it is one fo the committee’s favored choices indeed.
If you are not part of these communities, then you cannot claim to be experts on representation of Indigenous or Native communities.
Laura, as far as what you say here I can’t argue with you. You are correct. I remain more than skeptical that some of the charges are valid to mitigate the greatness of this book, but I welcome ongoing discussion.
Sam — If you could see me, you’d see that you’re getting a STANDING OVATION for this review! Bravo!
Laurie, thank you many times over my friend!!! Deeply appreciated!
1. This is a remarkable book. If anyone had told me it would be possible to do a picture book for children on this subject, I would have said no way. The creators proved me wrong.
2. Laura’s comment that a person needs to be “of” a culture in order to critique its representations begs the question of what being “of” a culture even means, and is also counterfactual. The world is full of bona fide experts on cultures, ethnicities, and religions who are not of those identity marker areas. Profs. Arthur Spears, Paul Johnson, Eric Foner, and Amy Jill Levine all come to mind. Moreover, being “of” a culture does not ipso facto make a person an expert. I know little, for example, of the Roman Catholic code of canonical law, and I daresay that most Roman Catholics don’t, either.
2 Debbie Reese’s critiques remind of nothing so much as the astronomy of the late Percival Lowell. Lowell made important discoveries, but also claimed to see see canals on Mars through his telescope, and would not back down from the claim even given countervailing evidence. Reese often makes sense in her call-outs of racist and anti-Native art in old picture books. She often goes off track in her assessment of books like The Secret History, There is a Tribe of Kids, Ghosts, and The Hired Girl, to select just a few examples She spies canals where none exist, or recoils when the author’s thrust does not fit her socio-ethnic-political vision of what the thrust should have looked like. It’s too bad, because with each one of these misfires, her credibility diminishes.
The Secret Project dismantles assumptions and perimeters in thinking and storytelling around the creation of the atomic bomb. The art is breathtaking. Your review is spot on. I hope it wins at least a Caldecott honor.
Je Suis Charlie—-
Your insights are deeply appreciated. So pleased to hear you regard the Winter/Winter work as masterful. I also love your comparative analogy and feel you were very fair in your commentary!!
I was thinking the same thing. There are too many cases to mention of scholars assessing culture masterfully without having actually lived on the grounds in question.
Finally received my copy of the book. It completely blew me away. One of your best reviews Sam. Your passion and expert review should be seen by many. (I’me sure it will be). I’m also interested in Hiroshima No Pika.
Thanks so much Frank. I can lead you to a copy of the Maruki book.
I know you asked me and others to refrain from entering comments, but I just couldn’t remains silent. Hope you’ll understand.
btw a brilliant review, and that’s an understatement!
Well Tim, not actually a racist but a white supremist. But yeah, pretty outrageous and the complete opposite of what I am. Sam (Bloom) and I did exchange some seriously heated words indeed, but I really want to step back from all that. I’ve been his friend for a long time. I have stated my position on the book, and feel I was within my rights to point out why the still-questionable issues do not impact the book’s greatness. Thanks for the support and observations my friend.
Sam, I can’t believe some of the assertions made at the “Reading While White” thread on The Secret Project.
Why does Sarah Hamburg keep referring to the review that was re-posted by “Patrick J.” as an “anonymous review” when the person did identify himself?! Since when does “Patrick J” equate with being anonymous. I also see on this thread that he gave his full name, Patrick Jehle.
What you may have missed yourself in telling Hamburg and even directly to Reese is that the issue in Patrick’s many points indicate Reese incorporated resentment into her review of the book. These people who act like she is the final authority fail to grasp that she may be untrustworthy. After reading all the commentary I have come to the conclusion she resents that Pueblo Indians didn’t get more coverage, when this narrative doesn’t call for it.
She may be smug in thinking she is an expert, but she also has an AGENDA.
The stooges at Reading While White are caricatures. You tried being nice. It never works with people like this. If you have a different opinion you are wrong.
Thank you for your commentary Larry. Yes, I did indeed notice that Sarah Hamburg referred to Patrick J. (Jehle), a midwest schoolteacher as “anonymous” indeed.
Sam, I have read the entire thread at RWW as well as the one over here at Wonders in the Dark. Like some of your other readers I find it appalling. Reese oozes self righteousness and smugness. I have closely examined Patrick J’s argument point by point and found his work brilliant.
I find it odd that a good number of people have this hive-mind mentality about Reese, all of them saying the same things over and over on different websites and comment sections. Patrick asked if she knew what the roads and the ranch looked like in the 1940s and whether she’d read the text carefully enough or contradicted herself, etc. These have nothing to do with her expertise in children’s literature or her racial background. And I love how she thinks Wikipedia is a bad source for common usage! I mean, I’m not going to use Wikipedia for a dissertation on Dostoevsky or particle physics, or even for a journalistic piece about just about anything, but the question here is about common usage, and Wiki is as good a source as any. Just go on Amazon and type “kachina” and half the books have “doll” in the title, some of them very recent.
Reese’s tactics are clear: assert an almost medieval sense of unquestionable expertise and authority, both of her education and her racial background; attack the quality of sources; make non sequitors (she claims she saw Patrick J’s review and then another that claimed the book was inaccurate in highly technical ways that had NOTHING to do with her own attack on the book); and above all, avoid specific claims. To this point she has not been able to prove even one wrong. She continues to sidestep and create as she goes along.
I encourage others in the industry to speak out against this insanity, which gives social justice – WHICH I FULLY SUPPORT – a really terrible name. Especially when it’s just a bunch of mostly self-righteous white people sitting around calling people out for complete bullshit.
I hope the Winters get that Caldecott. And I’m glad you’re there to defend them.
Thank you so much Aaron! Your amazing insights are deeply appreciated.
Awesome, Aaron B. She sees herself as the end all. So pathetic.
Reese says she didn’t have a problem with the word “dolls.” This is what she wrote:
‘I wonder, too, what the take-away is for people who read the word “dolls” on that page?’
Hm, I guess she’s just “wondering” and not implying that people would take it the wrong way. Just wondering.
Man, I took a look at that RWW comment thread a bit more and I have to say: Ho-ly shit. I mean, it is utterly hopeless. Cut all ties with these people and never interact with them again. That’s my advice. They literally have brain parasites.
In what way did Patrick J. imply some sort of conflict between the Hopi and the Pueblos? He was clearly asking a question, not showing any ignorance about the relationship between Pueblo Indians in general and Hopi. Reese is the one who said the Hopi were nowhere near Los Alamos and “wondered” why “they” would get represented and not the Indians who lived closer by. All he was saying was that the this did not mean the Winters preferred Hopi to Pueblos.
I was thinking of posting on RWW but that would be like trying to talk about Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle to the guy who screams at pigeons outside my train station. It’s as if a white supremacist troll “created” these people.
Reese feels almost literally assaulted by criticism (“Oh, look at what I have to put up with as a Native Indian woman scholar,” and she quote tweets some anodyne criticism you made: hilarious) or even the smallest pinch of irony or wit. If the devil takes hold of you (and I hope he stays away) and you decide to comment again, ask her about the goddam ranch. She knows this place SOOOOO well, every inch of it, even though she probably wasn’t even alive in 1945, then tell me: how are the representations of the school and its students incorrect? How is the photographic evidence on the site dedicated to memorializing the testing of the first nuclear weapon wrong? She says she recants nothing – how can she not recant this at the very least?
Sam, I’m inclined to agree with Aaron B. I know you a long time and realize you hate disappointing anyone. Nice guys often finish last. These people are exactly what they decry. There is no room to compromise. Continuing a conversation with these glorified trolls is beneath you.
Aaron, that is quite a probing follow-up to say the least. I’ll leave it to the readers to absorb. Thank you!
Sammy, I’ve never seen a SJW back down on a single position, ever, especially in a conversation about children’s literature. Facts don’t matter, because any fact (or opinion, for that matter) offered for anyone white is tainted by privilege and whiteness, and any fact or opinion that runs against their cultural Marxist stance by someone who isn’t white is belittled as false consciousness. It’s lose-lose.
But still, I can hardly wait for Calling Caldecott over at The Horn Book. That will be on neutral turf.
Charlie, thanks again for the telling insights. I too greatly look forward to the hallowed grounds of The Horn Book, where fairness always reigns supreme.
Debbie Reese again? This woman has brought shame on the children’s book world with her over the top largely incompetent attacks on so many books that everyone else loves. She’ll try and invalidate consensus, but her reasons for dissent are always clouded by politics. She does have a circle of supporters, more of a cult-following who are pledged to support every word she utters and every questionable finding she makes.
Really great review Sam. I do so love this book too. Bold, innovative and unforgettable.
Thanks for the exceeding kind words Celeste. We’ll have to shoot the breeze soon!
This is an amazingly bitter attack on a scholar and Indigenous woman. Debbie Reese has been a strong advocate for inclusion and accurate representation of First Nations in children’s literature. I see no acknowledgment of that work here. It is truly unfortunate that this space is being used to lob personal attacks. Surely, this book has flaws like any other, and both flaws and merits can be discussed without vitriol.
debraj11, I appreciate your comments asserting that Debbie Reese is doing good and necessary work. There is no truth in the claims above that she is egotistical, or unfair, or uninformed, or that “her own people” dislike what she’s saying. Of course not every Native writer, librarian, teacher, or scholar is going to agree, just as not every reader or reviewer is going to find The Secret Project to be award material. I’m laughing out loud at the assertion that Debbie has a “cult following” — in fact, she has an ever-growing number of colleagues who understand, appreciate, and share her vision, her mission, and her methods. She brings a particular expertise to the work, and so do others who focus their efforts on ending misrepresentation and misinformation about other groups in US society (and the world). Most importantly, she seeks to learn from them/us, as they/we learn from her. As a parent, auntie, and grandparent of Native kids, I’m disgusted by the disparagement of someone who dedicates herself to shining a light on misrepresentations of Native people in books for children, and to showing authors, illustrators, editors, librarians, teachers and parents ways they can “do better.” There are always people who disparage such work, who fear criticism, who refuse to listen, who close ranks, who try to bury dissent in avalanches of words and double-talk. But thanks to the work Debbie has been doing (along with colleagues who have their own foci), the world of children’s books is gradually (glacially) moving away from chronic misrepresentation of and misinformation about people of color and Native people. Books that distort, erase, and misinform — even in small ways — harm ALL children who encounter them. If we believe that’s a bad thing, there is only one way to participate in ending it: pay respectful attention to people who are telling us where the problems are and what they are. Even if what they tell us makes us look askance at books and authors we used to love, we can use the information to make changes for the better.
You are tone-policing. Address specific claims, please. Otherwise, what is your point here – that Sam’s criticism was “bitter”? Please discuss one thing that you think was *wrong* about Sam’s review. Let’s all just agree that Debbie Reese is a scholar, an Indigenous woman, and one that has been a strong advocate. I have no problem with this. Okay, now address the issues at hand explicitly.
For me, one of several issues at hand is that a number of commenters feel they already know enough about Native perspectives that they can denigrate and dismiss the work of a Native scholar. I can’t tell you how many similar conversations have gone on with people who LOVE race based sports mascots, or The Education of Little Tree, or Cowboy ‘N’ Indian night at the frat house.
Seems like there are some smart and conscientious people here, so I want to invite you into a realm to which you may not have had the occasion to pay much attention. Here are suggestions for three concrete actions a non-Native person can take, that might be useful in future encounters with critiques of ways that Native people are (mis)represented in a book for children like The Secret Project:
1) Ask yourself, “What have I read that’s been created by tribally-affiliated Native people?” If the answer runs along the lines of “not much”, then I invite you to take on the challenge of reading 100 works created by tribally-affiliated Native people (NOT by non-Native “bona fide experts” writing about Native people). A serviceable, arbitrary breakdown would be 25 books for young people (from picture books to YA); 25 novels, novellas, and/or short stories; 25 books of poetry; 25 informational articles, biographies, essays, blog posts, etc.
2) Then ask yourself, “What are some ways these representations of Native people – children, adults, families, communities – differ from the ones I grew up with or am exposed to in other literature or popular media? What can I be learning from this?”
3) Ask yourself, “Do I know any actual Native people? Have I sat at the table with them, talked about our work, our kids and grandkids, the weather, the lacrosse team, the aquifer, whatever? If not, why not, and what can I do about it?” BTW, Native people often encounter non-Natives who start conversations with An Agenda. My husband, for example, has had a number of “talks” with people whose only interest in him was their hope that this one Native person they spotted would bolster their arguments about casinos or race-based mascots. So I don’t recommend approaching, say, a Native librarian you don’t really know, hoping to find out what they think of Debbie Reese. The BS detector will be instantly activated and the needle will zoom to Opportunist or Kinda Creepy on the Unwelcome Intruder dial.
Meeting these 3 challenges might, maybe, who knows, enable you to recognize how important subtext (even the seemingly tiniest detail) can be in Native peoples’ encounters with elements of popular culture (e.g., picture books). As a non-Native person, you won’t have become a bona fide expert, but you will have started down the same road that any outsider to a group has to take if they want to be knowledgeable. You will have looked at and listened to people who are insiders to that group. Maybe you will have empathized. You will have some substantial information, and won’t find yourself flailing around with comments about whiskey, the white man’s burden, cult followings, and the like. At least, we can hope so.
Jean Mendoza, I hope and expect Patrick J. to respond. Getting over here before Sam I saw only one single comment that used the terms “whiskey” and “white man’s burden” and it was in the same comment. But other comments I thought were masterful (Michael, Aaron B., Jennifer, Je Suis Charlie and of course Patrick J. and a few others) I’d think the implications of those comments would need to be addressed and not the small number that apparently exhibited deliberate sarcasm.
For me, one of several issues at hand is that a number of commenters feel they already know enough about Native perspectives that they can denigrate and dismiss the work of a Native scholar.
Jean, I think all of us can appreciate the work and studies of a “Native American scholar.” But it a faulty position to continue to use her prominence as a buffer against disagreement. If I have said on this and other threads once I’ve said it a thousand times, my position on this book remains that is massively successful at what it set out to do. You seem to to accept Debbie’s issues with the book as the final judgement and also in effect you are basically saying by implication that everyone should adapt her incontestable application of invalidation because of her issues. Debbie has made her problems with the book as strong enough to give this cathartic work one-star. Not one single reviewer anywhere has reached such an unfair and uncharitable conclusion. If she is going to go the overkill route, then you know what? I have difficulty buying into anything she says. There are many other scholars who have praised the book. (Michael is a PhD and Professor) and his expertise goes well beyond Debbie’s (misguided in this case) vigilence for Native Americans. In his brilliant assessment it gets to the root of how and why Debbie’s mode of thinking epitomizes what is lacking in analytical thought, not to mention in artistic appraisal. Anyway, since Patrick did call for your eloboration I’ll let him respond here if he wishes. Thank you for being polite, civil and understanding throughout.
Jean, While I appreciate the misguided intent behind your response, there is nothing to respond to here because it does not address specific claims that Sam or anyone else critical of Reese and the RWW commenters have made. You’re simply trying to “educate” us, persons about whom you know nothing, and I would invite you to think about how presumptuous this is. Ask yourself: Am I writing to a Native person? If so, how do I know? If this person is not Native, is he perhaps married to a Native person? Was he adopted by Native people? Does he have Native children? Friends? Does he work for causes associated with Native people? And so on.
One reason you need to address specific claims is that you can’t know the answers to any of these questions. (It doesn’t matter, but I can answer “yes” to three of these questions.) So instead of addressing the claims that people MAKE, you try to undermine them by focusing on who they ARE (which, again, you don’t know). You would run into problems if you found a Native person who didn’t agree with Reese, no? Having similar backgrounds and experiences, they would therefore both have equally valid responses, and then where would you be?
By not engaging with specific claims but attempting instead to educate us, you are simply espousing a kind of hermetic gnosticism, implicitly asserting that there are those who possess the requisite knowledge to see the truth in Reese’s critique and those who do not. You seem to imply that opinions among Native people are monolithic, and this seems highly problematic to me. It certainly doesn’t sound like something a Native person would say. In which case I would invite you to “meet your own challenges.”
Gentlemen (that would be Sam J. Patrick, and Peter, at this point): First, a gentle reminder that like anyone else who comments here, I’m under no obligation to address any points that anyone has tried to make. Greater minds than mine have invited you to entertain (or at least respect) perspectives other than yours regarding this book.
I’m responding instead to the way you all, and a couple of other folks here, seem to be conducting the business of discourse — specifically, disagreement. I recognize in many of the comments here a desire to seem erudite, or at least damn smart. Great. Erudition can be refreshing in the right dose.
It also seems to me that you (Sam J as keeper of the blog, with support from Patrick, Peter, and some others) like to see yourself as demanding intellectual rigor. That can also be refreshing in discussions of children’s literature. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work if you also tolerate (and perhaps even even enjoy or encourage) gossip. At least two comments in this lengthy thread have contained unsupported allegations along the lines of “Some important person I’m not going to name said this or that about Debbie!”, implying that it’s reasonable to dismiss what she says because some unnamed “professor” or “librarian” supposedly said something negative about her sometime in some hinted-at location. That’s not erudition or intellectual rigor, or even fun. Debbie did nothing like that regarding the creators of this book, and she does not do that on her blog, or in her responses to comments on her blog.
I’ve been otherwise occupied for long enough to hope that when i did visit here again, the gossipy comments would have been removed. But it appears they are still there.
The three suggestions in my previous comment are not accusations (and only one of them involved yes/no questions). They’re tools that over the years, I’ve found useful for self-interrogation and self-directed learning, for folks like me or like my students, who aren’t citizens of a Native nation or otherwise tribally connected. You can pick the tools up or leave ’em in the box they came in. It’s possible that if you do use them, you might eventually come to a different way of thinking about some of the turns this whole conversation has taken. It’s also possible that you would hold to the same approach. Just as there’s no monolithic Native experience or perspective 😉 , there’s no uniform reaction to self-interrogation about one’s own level of knowledge about and respect for Native people generally or specifically.
Fair enough Jean, I think your request should be honored. No actual proof was offered in the three instances so they should be rightly eliminated. The comments about another “Native American librarian”, “the librarian from the county” and the one about the Professor with the notes will be deleted now. I haven’t a quarrel with you, nor with Dr. Reese or others who have spoken in support for her at other sites, just a differing view on a single book. Please let me know if the three comments in question are gone.
People here at Sam’s site agree with his review. I offer a different perspective. I’m a bit reluctant to post it here because I can’t do much follow up if there’s questions or comments. Anyway–here’s my review. https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2017/10/still-not-recommended-secret-project-by.html
That’s fair enough Debbie. Thank you for posting it here.
The Secret Project introduces the most fearful of subjects to the youngest readers at a time of supreme urgency. Jeanette Winter’s resplendent minimalism compellingly establishes mood and mystery, while most importantly warns those who partake in such development risk our very existence. The intrinsic beauty of our culture and physical surroundings has rarely been presented in such fateful terms as those in this uncompromising work.
As an elementary school teacher (3rd grade) of eleven years, I feel the issue of educating children at an early age about the disaster that may befall the human race as a result of scientists uncovering the means of our destruction is an issue that supercedes any problems about dirt roads, a few implied but unfounded anachronisms and a cryptic meaning of dolls that seemingly isn’t known by 99% of the readers and those who wrote the book. I find the criticisms a massive stretch and self-serving. Children have never been given a book like this and the community at large should be giving it their full support. Thank you Sam and to all who have given your energies to bringing light upon Jonah and Jeanette Winter’s transcendent work. This beautiful and passionate review is a gift to us all.
Thank you so much for stopping by Terri. Your astute observations and emotional plea is not falling of deaf ears I can promise you that. Your kind words too are deeply appreciated.
Sam, and Wonders in the Dark readers I’d like to cite the last part of Elizabeth Bird’s wildly appreciative review, which has published at her home website, the School Library Journal. It addresses some issues that have been debated and I believe it renders a definitive perspective:
It’s not just for younger kids, in spite of its packaging. This book could be read by older readers as well, and it will be. They’ll come into their libraries asking for books on the bomb and the librarian will hand them this book. They’ll scoff at first. A baby book? But the fact that it’s supposed to be about the creation of the atom bomb will suck them in. And if they sit down to read it, they will comprehend it. They may even comprehend what it is that Jonah Winter and Jeanette Winter are trying to tell them. Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll walk away thinking the bomb is beautiful. The author doesn’t have ultimate control over the reader’s experience. They can guide you in the right direction, but the reader is the ultimate judge. Still, the Winters manage to stick to the facts and comment without shoving a message in your face. That alone makes the book more interesting and more powerful than all the polemics on all the Facebook feeds in the world. One of the most beautiful nonfiction picture books on a too little covered moment in American history I’ve ever seen. Chilling, in the best sense of the word.
Wow Aaron, this is indeed an excerpt worth re-printing here. I had read the review, but with all the crossfire had forgotten the scene-specific points of that last paragraph, which I think I will share on FB. Thanks so much!!!! Awesome.
Aaron, I will add this. I do remember Debbie (Reese) citing some comments under Betsy Bird’s review, and that Bird herself according to Reese said something along the lines that she “didn’t know that.” This would seem to indicate -and I did mention this at RWW that Bird -a fantastic writer/critic and one of children’s literatures real treasures- may yet change her position. If so that is fine. I understood from the start of this bruhaha that some would side with Debbie. Some others will not. And that is fair enough methinks.
Somehow I had forgotten that interchange with Debbie at RWW.
Rather than write my own review — Patrick J. has done that well enough already — I want to weigh in on his dispute with another reviewer over the content and worth of this book. Essentially, I want to argue that Patrick J.’s review constitutes a legitimate engagement with the text, and that Debbie Reese’s signally fails to engage with it.
In the latter’s review we see, once again, the strange fruit the replacement of critical thinking with ideological cant has borne in the humanities. Research, of course, is hard. Especially nowadays, when everything is available at one’s fingertips. And thinking? Whew. The utterance of the very word enervates me.
Debbie Reese’s review is emblematic of a systemic rot in what was once the bastion of intellectual culture in America. The Winters, here, show how well literary culture has, in fact, responded to multiculturalism, and yet Reese, a virtual caricature of the results of a pedagogical model that teaches only finger-waggling and what the mandarins nowadays call “virtue signaling” instead of historical self-consciousness, analytical rigor, and, heavens forfend, aesthetic appreciation, demonstrates the built-in weakness of every lesson she was taught: nothing, no level of sanctimony, no amount of circumspection, no depth of human sympathy or fellow-feeling, no effort to imagine alterity — or teach our children to embrace it — is ever enough. Something is always being erased, effaced, stripped of agency or presence. What can this book’s representation of a particular place, and of Native peoples, matter if it excludes Puebloans? What do those Hopi matter? Something is missing. A crime has been committed against some impossibly rarefied species of political correctness. I am reminded of would-be literary critics whining about Milton’s “L’Allegro” because it did not choose to represent, in a poem about mirth, the grunting and sweating of field laborers. If the poet doesn’t look just there, at just that, the whole work must founder; seventeenth-century failure to acknowledge the means of production must stop — now!
The fundamental problem, the “built-in” problem to which I refer above, is that these forms of cheapjack ideological nitpicking do not acknowledge that the only satisfaction such critical modes can find is in a work that represents, quite literally, everything, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. The fact that this surpasses what human minds are capable of encompassing, and is, a fortiori, impossible to achieve in a coherent fictional representation of reality with a narrative focus suitable for children, seems to readers like Reese no stumbling block to understanding.
With friends like that, fiction — or multiculturalism, or pluralism, or efforts to embrace difference — hardly need enemies.
Thanks to Patrick J. for his potent corrective. I hope that, even in the age of “alternative facts,” his preference for text-based truth claims over unsubstantial quibbles about imagined “erasures” committed by malevolent hegemons will convince at least some sentient humans to read the book, and to form their own, and, one hopes, better conclusions.
Thanks for the extraordinary review.
Michael, this is absolutely brilliant. Talking about adding to a discussion?! Wow. I don’t know where to start – I am in school right now- but I want to thank you for post and like so many others here moving forward in the name of -heaven help us- facts, and not the misguided application of political correctness that in the case of THE SECRET PROJECT has been achieved with textual distortions and false application. Thanks again! I am hoping many read your comment! Thanks for visiting Wonders in the Dark.
I don’t remember who said it despite reading through the comments at RWW, and at the American Indians site, but I found the statement that “the Winters will be all right” to be blatently insensitive to the truth. These children’s book writers and illustrators are good people. The best. They are dedicated to educating children about the most difficult subjects. They are gifted writers and artists. They live hand to mouth, waiting for the next contract to come through. They have no health care, no safety net. This sense that Jonah Winter, and people like him, will be “just fine” no matter what befalls their books or reputations is totally absurd: librarians, teachers and tenured professors are the only ones who will always be “fine”. In life amidst economically challenging times all authors and illustrators have to scrap for pennies. Just ask many out there in the literary trenches.
I am also in disbelief that someone would deem it a “stretch” to call someone out on a provocative statement like “I don’t think they are racists.” What if she were to say something like “I don’t ‘think’ they are murderers’ ? Why in this discussion did the issue of racism, which was never implied or alleged be woven in the narrative in any form?
For a group who operate under the cloak of political correctness, they have succeeded in instilling fear in editors and the publishers who musst finalize contracts.
This goes way beyond the Caldecott Medal, awards or even modest recognition. These self-righteous, self-anointed judicial arbiters have instituted the worst kind of autocratic thinking and decision making. And beyond they gang up at people who are not “listening” to them.
Jennifer, thank you so much for the revealing commentary about the state of affairs out there with the authors and illustrators. Very sad. Your other observations are much appreciated as is your appearance here at Wonders in the Dark.
***Learning about our own ignorance is unsettling.***
Debbie Reese said this in her review. It is about the nastiest contention I’ve read anywhere in the reviews or on this comment thread. She is probably the only person who dismisses contrary views, and holds herself as the supreme authority. She has worked hard to fabricate in her effort to provide meaning to what she originally said, but anyone could do that with a little time. The ability to spin and furnish pictorial evidence is limitless. For all her time and effort she still hasn’t refuted even a single point made by the person who called her out.
Thanks so very much for the comment “Librarians Against Parochialism.”
This statement was dreadful.
Yes it was indeed Peter.
I haven’t had a chance to explore the controversy Sam, but just want to tell you that this is one of your greatest reviews over the years you have written this series. Your insights are impeccable. NOBODY puts words together quite like you. And it is so poignant. Is Amazon the best place to order it? I want to use it with my 6th graders even if the reading level is several grades lower.
I have an extra copy which was gifted to me Maxine!! Can I get it out to you? Thank you so much for the kind words!
TheFountain26@aol.com
As always Margaret, thank you for commentary. Trust all is well with you, and have missed hearing from you.
I snickered when I read what Beverly Slepin advised: “Pull back. Stop. And listen. You may learn something.” These grade school tactics give progressive thinking a pie in the face. Never deal with issues, just “indoctrination””.
I’ve actually had some nice talks with Beverly in the past. She is a fellow liberal-progressive, but whoa be the person who would tell her that they agree with every word she utters and every positions she espouses.
In a further attempt to investigate anachronism issues made by Debbie and corroborated by children’s book luminary K.T. Horning, I am going step by step here in a post also sent on to Debbie’s site where the raised was raised in the comment section:
1. “In the beginning….” at the start of the book. It is an obvious callback to the most famous “in the beginning” of all time, at the start of the biblical Book of Genesis. The Winters are telling an origin story, just like Genesis. Theirs ends in ‘let there be light’, but in a different way from the biblical narrative, as light of destruction. To see it other way needs funhouse mirrors.
2. The painting woman as Georgia O’Keefe. The text says artists. It doesn’t indicate O’Keefe. To say it is definitely O’Keefe and to call it an anachronism again takes funhouse mirrors.
3. The “dirt” road into Santa Fe. The text doesn’t say the Plaza. A little research in the local New Mexican newspaper from 1943 (just completed) makes it clear that some Santa Fe roads were unpaved in that era. To say it’s the Plaza and that the road should be paved, and this an anachronism, yet again takes funhouse mirrors.
4. The “nobody” knew it was it there. To read this literally, in light of the fact of all the people working there, is inexplicable. Los Alamos mail had a post office box in Santa Fe at the time, Box 1663. Obviously, the postal service people knew something was going on up there. As did the food suppliers, etc. “What” was going on, though, was magnificently hidden.
5. To say there was no “experimentation” with fissionable material on the hill is to funhouse mirror reality. If there was no experimentation, then there wouldn’t have been the need for the Alamogordo test..
6. As for the Kachinas, I’m not really sure what the review’s point is. If it is that no one outside a culture should reuse or reinterpret the sacred objects or stories of from different cultures in their literature, then much of world religion would have to throw out its core texts and self-destruct, especially Islam and Christianity. Count me out. The use of the kachina dolls as I have contended repeatedly was to denote Native American creativity during one of the white man’s darkest periods. A negative interpretation here takes tortured logic and goes against the grain of what this book is really about.
Yes. Winter is nothing if not careful. There had to be a reason for the Hopi reference and focus. I’m not sure of what it is, but it is obviously not an accident. As for the spirit of the Hopi kachina over the site at night, spread, it reminds me of nothing so much as the sprit of God over the earth during the flood story of Noah — as if in the making of the Gadget, people were dangerously getting close to the wickedness depicted in that section of Hebrew bible (which, coincidentally, Jews are all reading in synagogue this Saturday)
What is most disturbing is that she doesn’t just set her opinion out there but actively tries to determine what you can read or see, based on her idea of how “pure” it is when it is tested against her ideology.
She’s an ideological censor and denies it by saying “I am arguing against racists and so you must be racist to not agree with me.”
What I find saddest of all is that politics has dictated the way a review has gone. None of the objections hold up. And the charge of anachronisms has been proven completely false. I think Debbie Reese should retract her review and apologize.
Thanks Celeste. An apology will never happen. Not ever. Debbie Reese feels she is right and will continue to stand by her position. And that’s fair enough.
How did Reese get this observation:
“I think the text and illustration on the right are a tribute to Georgia O’Keeffe who lived in Abiquiu. I think Jeanette Winter’s illustration is meant to be O’Keeffe, painting Pedernal. That illustration is out of sync, timewise. O’Keeffe painted it in 1941, which is two years prior to when the scientists got started at Los Alamos.”
From this:
“Outside the laboratory, in the faraway nearby, artists are painting beautiful paintings.” -what Jonah Winter actually WROTE on the page
This is a clear case of twisting something NOT WRITTEN and then using this false assertion as an anachronism!
Pretty unbelievable Celeste. That was part of my most recent analysis. Jonah Winter said NOTHING about O’Keeffe. Because the background bore some location similarities Reese took it often herself to claim ANACRONISM without the Winters having offered any identification to the scene which is shown in general terms.
Sam, did you know that the link to your review at Debbie Reese’s site does not lead back to Wonders in the Dark? It leads instead to a page on Hopi Indians. She states that it leads here though.
LOL Ricky! No I did not know that. Ha, I give Debbie credit for that.
Good morning,
Which one, Ricky? When a link is not correct, I make corrections and thank the person who noted the error. This one is correct (the link to the words ‘his review’ come here, to Sam’s review):
In his review of The Secret Project, Sam Juliano wrote that this take over was “a kind of eminent domain maneuver.”
Good morning Debbie. Sorry if I had you thinking that the wrong link was from the actual review. The wrong link is under the review in this section:
If you’ve submitted a comment that includes a link to another site and it didn’t work after you submitted the comment, I’ll insert them here, alphabetically.
Caldecott Medal Contender: The Secret Project
submitted by Sam Juliano, who asked people to see comments, there, about me.
When you click on “Caldecott Medal Contender: The Secret Project” it goes over to a Hopi Indians page on policy. I don’t think it is any big deal, but I just thought I’d mention the link was misleading.
This matter is insignificant as Debbie did link in the body of her review. Even if she had not the cross references between us were more than enough for the fair representation. Thanks Ricky and thanks Debbie.
My thinking is that the controversy encircling the book means it will never be considered for the Caldecott awards. Would you say that is correct Sam?
Ricky, that’s an interesting question in view of the fact that I wrote this review as part of a “Caldecott Contender Series” though as always it is an opinion. In any case, after following the committees for years it is usually true that they would want to stay away from books tarnished by debate, so yes THE SECRET PROJECT at this point is indeed a long shot. But I felt I needed to draw some attention to the book and argue for its artistic integrity. I do consider it one of the five best of the year. There are some other books this year I REALLY love like WOLF IN THE SNOW, CROWN, MUDDY, HER RIGHT FOOT, OUT OF WONDER etc, but THE SECRET PROJECT is quite a unique piece of work. It is possible the committee wasn’t going to honor the book even without the dispute, but we’ll never really know for sure. There is still the tentative qualification review in Calling Caldecott at the Horn Book, and the final lists of some important writers, so we really have no idea for certain.
Newsflash!!!
This isn’t a book about Pueblo people but the creation and explosion of the first atom bomb. Just because it happened in Los Alamos doesn’t mean it needs to talk about Pueblo people and culture any more than it needs to talk about the Mexicans who lived there. Mexicans aren’t mentioned – what do we make of that??? Moreover, she (Reese) kicks up a big stink about the word “dolls,” which is exactly what the Hopi dolls are called and even claims THE ROAD into Santa Fe isn’t illustrated properly (and therefore gives people the impression, somehow, that nobody of any importance lived there) when it totally is. I hear a lot about Reese and how everybody in the publishing industry is terrified of her – just look at some the poor people who’ve changed their reviews once they read her parboiled hodgepodge of vague suggestion and outright distortion – and it’s really time people stood up to this nonsense. Just take a gander at her website full of books with big X’s through them like she’s trying to prevent the angel of death from visiting your house. Really just infuriating. Thank you everyone at this site for bringing sanity back in book reviewing.
Thanks so much for the newsflash and insights Jay! And thank you for stopping in at Wonders in the Dark.
This was very funny, but so true. Her lack of subtlety suggests a planned desire to dictate curriculum.
A shattering work and in this day and age a miracle of book making. Thank you for such a keenly observant, eloquent and well-referenced review. I’m a librarian from Arkansas, and I haven’t seen an audacious picture book of this caliber in a very long time.
Thanks so very much for imparting those most welcome insights Marissa! Always thrilled to get the input of librarians here.
Does Debbie Reese EVER like a book? Is there ever positivity in her reviews? I have discovered her on blogs because of her negative comments to all book reviews.
Thank you for your observations Susan!
I think the funniest aspect of this entire affair -though I can only offer up a measured snicker in view of the all-embracing hypocricy- is that these people who call themselves progressives and the guiding light for minority misrepresentation are nothing more than despots who reach draconian judgements that are a throwback to the McCarthy era. I’ve been following this website for almost seven years now, and the writers over here are far more “progressive” and “liberal” than those who can’t see beyond the tip of their nose. They don’t represent liberal thinking at all. There is little difference between their mentality and that of Donald Trump. They are always pointing fingers in response to disagreement. Everyone is persona non gratta to this clique.
Thanks for your observations John. There are certainly others who have made the same contentions.
Patrick Jehle’s response TODAY to a comment placed under his review at GOODREADS (from Melissa G.) which addresses the issue of alleged improper use and proper acknowledgement for Jeanette Winter’s time with Hopi creators:
Re the school: I understand this perfectly. My question is: Did the Winters represent a place and its inhabitants accurately enough for a work in a children’s book? The answer is yes. Reese’s problem is that they were represented *at all,* presumably because they weren’t from there (ie, they were wealthy and white). As for other images in the book, clearly we can assume that the people are from that place. Or at least we have no reason *not* to assume this. So did the book represent people from around there? Yes.
Re the Hopi kachina doll imagery: Okay, so you don’t have a problem with the use of the word “doll,” evidently; why don’t you push back against Reese then? She has excoriated me and Sam Juliano for citing wikipedia for the use of the word “doll.” Okay, how about the very site you link to? Reese has backpedaled on this, but the implication of her question in her initial review is clear: that people unfamiliar with the phrase “katsina/kachina doll” will think a “doll” is something frivolous, and that therefore this is “problematic.” Had they called them katsina statues the Winters would be criticized for using terminology from the Western aesthetic tradition.
As for the site you link to, please show me where you see anything in there that applies to *paintings/illustrations of dolls and dollmakers*. Their legitimate concern is with pictures of actual ceremonies and with the use of the actual dolls without permission, not with artistic representations of what Hopi artists do. In fact, by showing the artist Jeanette Winter is clearly giving credit to these creators and not simply placing this amazing image of the doll in the book as though she had invented its wonderful design. And she didn’t *invent* her own type of kachina-like doll, or do any sort of embellishment. She shows a meticulous respect for the actual dolls and the artists who make them. Jeanette Winter knows more about kachina dolls than any non-Hopi artist, having visited the places where they are made many times and learned from the artists themselves. She has a large collection of books about kachina dolls and has studied them for virtually her entire adult life. The fact that readers are not giving her at least some benefit of the doubt here is infuriating.
But obviously this concerns you, so why don’t you contact the HCPO and see what they say about paintings of a kachina doll used to convey the positive image of creativity in opposition to the destructive use of scientific knowledge?
Patrick/Sam, that is how I read that Hopi statement as well. Sounds like a major stretch to include illustrations, and as you note one that cheerily points to the matter of creativity vs. destruction.
Considering Jeanette Winter’s interaction with the Hopis you think that alone would validate her artistic interpretations meant in this instance to celebrate their culture.
Thanks Peter. Yes, the time Jeanette Winter has spent with Hopi artists seems to me a kind of bombshell in this discussion.
The Secret Project is an extraordinary achievement – brilliantly conceived, beautifully written and illustrated – that my kids and I learned from and enjoyed immensely. It is possible that there are some historical realities that are so monstrous that they can only be represented truthfully in the form of a fable. Jonah and Jeannette Winter have done just that: They have taken a subject that is simultaneously impossible – and yet absolutely necessary – to tell children about and managed to find the perfect way to tell about it. Instead of sanitizing history and turning the scientists into heroes, Jonah Winter chooses to narrate the story as a kind of dark fable, full of “shadowy figures” inventing something they call the “Gadget.” The choice to narrate the story this way is worthy of Kafka. A harmless piece of technology being developed by faceless nobodies: What better way to illustrate the banality of evil? In the end we are left with the explosion of the bomb itself – and silence. It is in that silence that we must face our children and talk to them about the world in which we live. And given the insanely cavalier way in which the prospect of nuclear war is being treated by many world leaders today, including our own, it is incumbent upon us to raise children who are aware that the threat of nuclear war is very much still with us. So every time we are unfazed by yet another report of a “nuclear test” somewhere in the world, we should think of the explosion near the end of this book and the blackness that follows. We should think of how we could possibly explain to our children how we could live in a world in which such things routinely happen. Luckily, the Winters have shown us how. I could not recommend this book more highly.
Thanks so much for the fabulous capsule J.P. I am of course in full agreement.
I am adding Good Reads dialogue here from Patrick Jehl who has responded to Debbie’s two queries about Jeanette Winter’s extensive kachina dolls and book collection and a further elaboration on the use of the word dolls:
1. I know a lot of people in publishing who know Jeanette Winter, and everyone who knows her knows about her extensive library of books on kachina dolls, her love of these dolls, her vast collection of these dolls, and the fact that she takes them very, very seriously and has met the carvers. It’s just common knowledge among people who know her.
2. I have seen your second post. The implication of your question in your first post about the word “dolls” and how non-Native people would understand it is fairly clear, though. In fact, you reiterate your concern in the second post. You worry about the non-Native reader’s inability to interpret this story and its images properly. You criticize the Winters for leaving lots of gaps, but the fact that you had to write another review about this book shows that you left, or rather generated, a number of gaps, which you multiply by asking even more questions about the book that aren’t justified by the text. Anyway, I am glad you are now saying you don’t have a problem with this word.
One concern of yours is that the Winters left readers with a sense that these dolls were toys. What justifies this concern? Dolls are shown as they are being made, and one doll is shown hovering over the laboratory, an image which has been praised by some reviewers as being the most powerful one in the book, an act of the imagination which goes far beyond the text to show the presence, not erasure, of the surrounding Puebloan culture in relation to the horrors being concocted by the scientists in the secret laboratory. You mentioned the use of kachina in video games in your previous post, but nothing could be further from the way the Winters have represented the dolls here. The Secret Project is the furthest thing from a frivolous book; it is in deadly earnest about a subject of utmost urgency and seriousness.
Debbie Reese said this in her review:
Would a Hopi person use a kachina that way?
Which kachina is that? On that first page, Jeanette Winter shows several different ones, but what does she know about each one?
What is Jeanette Winter’s source? Are those accurate renderings? Or are they her imaginings?
Why did Jeanette Winter use that one, in that ghost-like form, on that second page? Is it trying to tell them to stop? Is it telling them (or us) that it is watching the men because they’re doing a bad thing?
It seems clear now that Jeanette Winter’s “source” is her own dedication to her own kachina dolls holdings and her past interation with Hopi carvers. The earlier criticism did not even consider this possibility.
It seems to me that if the criticism of how the kachina dolls were illustrated had taken into account the artist’s skills developed over time with Hopi doll makers, there wouldn’t have been the kind of questions that were asked. Yes, Jeanette Winter did “mean well” but she also carried the illustration off successfully.
These are scary times in the publishing world — and in the world in general.
The scariest part is not knowing how far all the madness will go, and how much power these bullies will ultimately gain over the publishing companies and the press (not to mention, social media). The profound irony is that a bunch of bullies are presenting themselves as “victims”.
As someone I know put it, they are “weaponizing compassion.”