Book Review: Shining Bright, Shining Black

Kids and adults alike need more stories of Black excellence all year long, but especially during Black History Month it’s a great time to focus on current and historical figures whose stories should be shared.

Shining Bright, Shining Black from Jamia Wilson and Andra Pippins has 100 brief biographies of Black figures well known and less so from around the world and throughout history. It draws on material from their previous books but is expanded with a timeline, additional information about Black trailblazers and discussion questions for classroom and home use. The idea is for kids to think about how they are inspired by the stories and how they might seek to change history with their lives and ideas.

The book covers a lot of African American figures whose stories are pretty well known, including Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nina Simone, John Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, Prince, Serena and Venus Williams and Simone Biles, to name a few.

But there are also plenty of lesser known figures from around the world. The book opens with Juan Latino, the first Afro-Spaniard to publish a book of poetry in Latin who also had one of Spain’s first legally recognized mixed race relationships; and Queen Nanny, who helped formerly enslaved Africans in Jamaica fight for their freedom from British rule.

Other stories focus on Yaa Asantewaa, an Asante warrior queen in what’s now part of Ghana, who fiercely resisted British occupation of her lands; Moses and Calvin McKissack, who established the first Black-owned architecture firm in the United States; Albert Luthuli, winner of the Nobel Peach Prize in 1960 for his nonviolent campaign to end apartheid in South Africa; Bertina Lopes, a Mozambique-born artist who used her work to fight colonialism and discrimination; Thomas Sankara, a progressive president of Burkina Faso; and Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee.

Each biography is presented on one or two pages with large drawings of each person included. At the back of the book a trailblazers section notes the firsts of the people represented in the book (example: Charles Drew was the first African American to earn a doctorate of medical science) and a glossary of professions the people held. There are also discussion questions related to different stories in the book to get kids talking about perseverance, setting goals, making change and helping others.

It’s a colorful book full of brief and accessible biographies of people we should all know, and a good jumping off point for discussion of Black history and changemakers any time of year.

About the book: 128 pages, paperback. Published 2024 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $15.99.

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

Have you read?

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