p38-42 Collect Call

I think that so far this book has been good at demonstrating different customs of people that you would assume to be all of the same culture. The secretiveness of Cecile’s visitors is thrown in comparison to Big Ma’s generous openness while Cecile surprises the girls by eating with chopsticks. Even the lady in the airport at is noted not to fulfill Big Ma’s expectations of Black people working together and perhaps even is a class divder due to her dress. Children wouldn’t necessarily note these things but they add to the story by reexamining stereotypes. Also, in children’s literature we expect good characters to be “more” than the children reading about them. To make a good story, they need more agency than the average child and end up having more adventures and growing more than the typical person over a usually short period. They also portray characteristic of kids older than the child who is reading the story, as kids like to read “up” or ahead to stages of life they are about to experience rather than things they have already mastered. On a strange side note, in this way books are function in Vygotsky’s ZPD. In any case, these multiple stories presented could be seen as illustrating Apple’s ideas of conflict as well as providing “counter-memories” from Gay within this book that is a “counter-memory” in itself.