Sparkle Schoolhouse

Sparkle Weekly Wonderings:

This past year, 2017, has highlighted an American practice that is central to who we are as a country: activism. This nation was born out of activism. Every major transformation of our country has had activism at its root.

This week we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of our most prominent and influential activists. We wrote a story in honor of him that is featured in my favorite collection of stories for older children: FIFTY: The Stars, the States, and the Stories. Initially, this collection was created to better understand our country — to explore the lesser known corners of our past and get to know some very important but relatively unknown figures in our history. But I found that each story had at its root some kind of activism: stories of brave people stepping forward and deciding to do something to make their country a better place.

There is the story for New York in which a little girl confronts her father’s ingrained racism as a canal boat driver on the Erie Canal.
There is the story for California in which a Mexican-American high school student joins his Japanese-American friends in an internment camp as an act of solidarity.

And there is the story for Michigan in which a visit from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspires a hotel clerk to step forward and try to make life better for her Detroit community. This week we posted the final state story in the collection — a story of politics, country music, and the “common man.” Plenty of activism there!

The stories have conflict, it’s true, but all of them are ultimately about the connection that comes when someone is willing to expose the walls that separate us.

Every one of these stories is about acknowledging the challenges of our past and embracing the opportunities that are born out of those challenges. As a storyteller, it doesn’t get any better than that.
This is deeply exciting for us and is the focus of many of our planned stories for 2018.

So as you look back on 2017, we’d love to know what you see. Where have the challenges been and what opportunities have bubbled up from them? Do let us know — because, very likely, there is a story there!