If something is your bag, you are interested in it and do it for pleasure: Tennis isn’t really my bag, I’m afraid. SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases. Making people excited and interested.
This book is the other meaning of “This is My Bag” and in the understatement of the year is: This is My Bag: A Story of the Unhoused is a difficult read. However, as the authors note at the end says, it is a way to have a conversation starter for you and your child. Or it might even work for a classroom setting, especially if there is a person or community in your neighborhood who is/are unhoused.
Why did Roxanne Chester use the term, “unhoused” and not “homeless”? Well, I cannot answer that exactly but I would assume it has to do with some of the situations we find our narrators in. They do not have a “house” but they have a tent, or they have a couch so a place to stay the night. There are shelters and other situations you could find a person unhoused in. We see the people who help and those who look.
This is shown in illustrations by Abe Matias. As I read this currently available book via an online reader copy, I did not notice the style Matias used, but it is clever, and terribly simple, but far from simplistic. The basics are there and the colors run towards more earthy tones, keeping it somber. Yet, it is not unhopeful. This probably could be attributed towards the fact that the faces are usually neutral or positive. Light and colors that are used does not “dim” but can actually freshen a scene that is less than ideal. The text and art do not “bring things down” but just show “as it is” in this situation.
Overall, know your reader, read the book first and the extras as well. These are questions that you can ask to the child/children you are reading it too, plus the inspiration of behind Chester’s wanting to write their book. |