Nicola on Fulbright in Arizona

I had the great pleasure of a friend visiting from home recently. Jane and I did our honours degrees in linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington way back in 1989, and have maintained a firm friendship ever since, often going on adventures together, like tramping and canoeing. This time we drove to the Grand Canyon, on the way stopping to see Biosphere 2, now owned by the University of Arizona.   Much of the adventure of the 6 hour drive there and back was me driving on the right hand side for the first time! But all was good with Jane beside me, navigating and reminding me to keep on the right as I turned corners. The tour of the Biosphere was fascinating, learning about the group of people who were sealed in there for two years, and the many experiments being conducted there since, some of which are in partnership with NASA, looking at how food could be grown on Mars, for example. We arrived at the Canyon just after sunset, seeing some elk grazing and crossing the roa...

One of the highlights of my Fulbright has been the people I’ve met, and the opportunities to present in a variety of settings. I recently attended the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia to present a workshop about bilingual picturebooks as part of the JoLLE (Journal of Language and Literacy Education) Winter conference.  I focused on Māori-English bilingual picturebooks and the participants engaged well. My host while there was Dr. Petros Panaou who took this photo in which I look like I’m talking to Captain Cook as I gave a short history of Aotearoa New Zealand  prior to looking at the picturebooks.   The next day I had the great pleasure of attending a plenary given by Dr. April Baker-Bell (Michigan State University) talking about her framework of an Anti-Racist Black Language Pedagogy. It was inspiring. On the Sunday I was leaving from Atlanta, and Petros and his family took me to do some sightseeing before I left. We visited the National Park dedica...

The highlight of last week, well there were two actually. I began my data collection for the research which my colleague Kathy Short and I are conducting, looking at dual language picturebooks with pre-service teachers. It was very exciting to get started and to see the students’ reactions to the picturebooks. The second was my trip out to the Tohono O’odham College  on Thursday. My colleagues Dr. Duffy Galda Diona Williams who work at the College had arranged the day for, and I am so grateful to them. It’s about an hour and a half drive out of Tucson to get to the college which is on tribal land. There are two campuses near a small settlement called Sells with some beautiful new buildings all named in the O’odham language. My first engagement was a workshop held in the library with staff and students, looking at New Zealand bilingual Māori-English picturebooks, and thinking about how the languages are laid out in them. The participants were very engaged with the range of bo...

Today the university is closed because it is Martin Luther King Day, marked in all states in America to celebrate the birthday of America’s most important civil rights campaigner. Dr. King’s birthday was actually on January 15 th 1929 but is celebrated each year on the third Monday of January. There are many picturebooks about the life and achievements of Martin Luther King Junior as well as related history and values. A blog I found introduces 18 books which the writer, Chernaie Gordon, recommends, including a recent picturebook entitled   I have a Dream   which uses the text of the speech delivered by Dr. King on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. It is illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and includes a cd recording of the speech. In anticipation of an upcoming national holiday in New Zealand, I have worked on a display in the Worlds of Words library to mark Waitangi Day on February 6 th . I have included the several re...

Do all universities have a particular coffee shop favoured by many staff and students to work and/or meet others? I know for me at Waikato, it is Kahurangi, affectionately known as Stacy’s after the excellent and personable Barrista   who leads the team there. Stacy listens to people’s joys and woes as he makes excellent coffee, all with a smile on his dial. I go there in the morning to sort through emails, meet colleagues there for regular meetings, and sometimes just go there to write outside the four walls of my office. My café of choice here in Tucson is Bentley’s just on the outskirts of the University of Arizona campus. Most mornings I head there to sort through my email and do a bit of writing, before heading to the Worlds of Words library. As I am living on my own here, the buzz of human conversation, and the brief but pleasant interactions with the staff is a very welcome start to the day. I see some professors there every morning, probably doing the same as me- e...

And here we are in a new year! It was good to have a break and briefly visit family and friends for Christmas, and now we are at the start of a fresh new year, still having beautiful sunny days here in Tucson, although it is rather cold at night. The Spring Semester starts for students next week, so it is still quiet at the university. I am spending my time preparing to begin data collection next week. My colleague, Kathy, and I are preparing to work with a group of 8-11 year old children and a group of pre-service teachers across a 6 week period using bilingual picturebooks. After many years of analysing language use within bilingual picturebooks, this is the next step- seeing what children and pre-service teachers learn about language from bilingual books. Meanwhile in the Worlds of Words Library, Kathy and Rebecca (director and manager of the library) are preparing a new exhibition of the work of two Caldecott Honor illustrators - Juana Martinez-Neal and Molly Idle....

It has actually been cold here in Arizona the last few days- beautiful blue skies and sunshine, but a cold wind coming from somewhere snowy, I think! I have been wearing layers and wondering if I have enough warm clothes to get me through! I am told these spots of cold come and go, so soon I will be wearing my cotton pants again! The pool at the Recreation Centre is still a beautiful warm temperature so it hasn’t stopped me swimming. As I mentioned in my last post, it is the time of year when students are handing in their final assignments and I have been lucky enough to hear their presentations, taking copious notes as I go! One doctoral class I have been auditing is taught by my colleague here at Arizona, Professor Kathy Short, and is called ‘ Critical Content Analysis of Text and Image’. Last week the   11 students gave short presentations of their final papers (or assignments) which I have learnt a great deal from. To give you a taste of their work, I’ll present three ...

I am writing this at a local café, near the university, as I hover over the Radio New Zealand website to hear news of the mission to retrieve the deceased from Whakaari White Island. News of this tragedy has really been affecting me, somehow the more so because I am so far away. I cannot imagine the pain of those in hospital and their families. Here at Worlds of Words, today we are preparing for an annual book sale where extra books are sold to staff. I have just been helping wheel out hundreds of books in preparation for tomorrow morning when the sale starts. This week is the last week of lectures for students who are all busy handing in assignments. My colleagues who are teaching are all busy marking portfolios and tests. It’s a busy and intense time. My main work at the moment is writing and preparing for data collection in the New Year. My colleague Kathy and I will be running two picturebook clubs, one with school children and one with pre-service teachers, using bilingual ...

I am now back in Tucson after the Guadalajara Book Fair. The rest of the fair was incredibly stimulating. I found a few more bilingual books to add to my collection, and was privileged to be able to meet some people using books to work with migrants moving through Mexico. One of my colleagues and I managed to take an Uber into central Guadalajara to have a quick look through a market, and to see the Basilica at the end of a day. Friday was a normal day back at my desk in Tucson, focusing now on writing a book chapter and planning for our research data collection which will begin after the university winter break. Yesterday was a special day for the Teenage Reading Ambassador Programme (TRAP) which is organised by Worlds of Words. I have mentioned it before, I think, but briefly, this is a programme for a group of teenagers who are keen readers from a range of Tucson schools. If they are accepted into the programme they are given a YA book. They read it and discuss it, and t...

Tuesday 3 December 2019 The Feria International del Libro de Guadalajara (Guadalajara Book Fair)   is the second largest bookfair in the world and has been running for 33 years.   It is being held in the World Expo Centre in Guadalajara from the 1-9 December and I am lucky enough to be attending this year with my host colleague Kathy and several of her colleagues who are here to meet Mexican publishers and work with their colleagues based in Mexico on a project. Our travel to Guadalajara took most of Sunday, one of the busiest days at US airports due to it being the Sunday of Thanksgiving when many people are travelling home.   Some poor people were stuck in the Phoenix airport due to snow storms in the East. We were not affected by that, but we did have to change planes before we finally set off from Phoenix. When we arrived in Guadalajara we walked down to the venue and got our bearings with one of Kathy’s former doctoral students showing us the way. And ...

The last day of the NCTE conference in Baltimore began with the Children’s Literature Assembly breakfast at which   Yuyi Morales gave a talk, sharing with us many of the techniques she uses for illustrating her books.  The Children's Literature Assembly is a group within the larger National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) organisation. As I lined up to get a copy of her book signed, I met up again with a colleague who had also been to the International Youth Library in Munich- not at the same time as me, but I remember her trip inspiring me to apply. As we waited in the line two more ‘Stippi’ came into view. Stippi is the name given to people who go to Munich to do research at the Youth library and are given a stipend- hence the name ‘Stippi’. Anyway, once we got to Yuyi and had our books signed we had a photo together.   Later that day I got to join in a dinner with the board of Worlds of Words, the library where I am based. This group of women are former...

Today at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference I went to some really interesting sessions, including a panel of female authors in the evening, including Newbery medal winner Megan Medina who chaired a session of three young female authors, including Brittany Luby, a Canadian writer of Anishinaabe-kwe heritage whose recent picturebook, Encounter , is about a first contact between an indigenous boy and a French boy on a sailing ship. I met Brittany after the session and was interested to hear more about her next book which will be bilingual. This linked to another session I had attended earlier in the day with four Native American authors entitled ‘Bringing indigenous voices into your classroom’. The chair of the panel was not American Indian, but a teacher who works in a school with Native American children. She began by quoting the data on books by and about people of colour and from First/Native Nations published for children and teens compiled ...

21 October This week I have decided to join Kathy and three of her colleagues in coming to a huge conference in Baltimore for the National Council of Teachers of English, known as NCTE. We set off at 6am and arrived in Baltimore around 3pm, to a somewhat cooler temperature than in Arizona. The plenary speaker I made it to today was George Takei who played Hikaru Sulu on the Starship Enterprise in the television series, Star Trek. George spoke about his family who were in an American Japanese Internment Camp during World War II. He also spoke very engagingly about his life, his belief in democracy, and about writing a graphic novel about his life. There are over 5,000 registrants, and at any one time there are many events on, including publisher events and meals. I was very lucky to be invited to the Chronicle Book Middle Grade Author Dinner featuring Jon Scieszka and Steven Weinberg (author and illustrator of  AstroNuts) , Kate Messner (author of  Insect Superpowe...

16 November Quite regularly, the Worlds of Words Library hosts authors and illustrators, and on Thursday this week I heard Isabel Quintero speak. She has recently had published a picturebook, simultaneously in Spanish and English called ‘My Papi has a Motorcycle/Mi Papi tiene una Moto’ which is based on her memory of her Dad taking her out for rides on his motorcycle after work. Quintero is a Mexican American author who has written a YA novel, a graphic novel, as well as poetry. She is very versatile, and was a delightful speaker to listen to.  The text for her latest picturebook is beautifully written, with one of my favourite phrases about the smell of sawdust on her father, a cabinet maker, when he came home from work. Isabel explained the ways in which she and the illustrator worked together to make the illustrations of Corona in Southern Arizona where she grew up, authentic to an era before present day gentrified Corona. The colours of the illustrations are sensatio...

I spent my first weekend on my own firstly finding my local laundromat, and learning how to work the machines, and then visiting the Arizona State Museum which is on the university campus. This museum, in contrast to its very colonial red brick appearance, focuses almost exclusively on Native American stories and knowledge. One of the ongoing exhibitions concerns  woven textiles  and another 2,000 years of pottery tradition among local Native American groups. There is also an exhibition of Pahko’ora/ Pahk’ola  masks from the Mayo and Yaqui people. These masks have deep ritual significance for the Yaqui and Mayo people of Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico. I read that when a person wears them they take on an animal spirit.   A temporary exhibit is one named  Sorting Out Race: Examining Racial Identity and Stereotypes in Thrift Store Donations , in which items from  Thrift stores are used to exemplify stereotypes concerning racial identit...

At the end of my second week at the University of Arizona, I am starting to settle in. I now have a staff ID number and a Staff ID card which has allowed me email, library and internet access, and I have joined the university recreation centre where I am able to swim and attend yoga classes.  I am really enjoying these facilities! While here I have the opportunity to sit in on a couple of courses. I have already mentioned the one called the   Critical Content Analysis of Text and Image. This last week we used some of the techniques we’ve learned to examine some of the books in the U.S. IBBY Outstanding International Book Awards. This award has been awarded since 2006 in an effort to encourage US publishers to publish books published outside the United States, thus allowing US children to develop global awareness. One of my favourites from last week comes from Tara Press in India. It’s called   Hope is a GirlSelling Fruit by Amriti Das.  Not only is the art ...

6 November As we left the elementary school where my colleagues are running a Global Cultures Club in an after school programme, using books to develop global awareness, everyone breathed deeply and said it smelled like rain. When we got to the car we could see it had indeed rained, and I realised that I could smell the scent they were referring to. I guess when rain doesn’t come often the scent is very distinctive. It reminds me of one of my favourite Hone Tuwhare poems: Rain by Hone Tuwhare. I can hear you making small holes in the silence rain If I were deaf the pores of my skin would open to you and shut And I should know you by the lick of you if I were blind the something special smell of you when the sun cakes the ground the steady drum-roll sound you make when the wind drops But if I should not hear smell or feel or see you you would still define me disperse me wash over me rain And then the following morning as I walked to the...

4 November 2019 Well, it’s been a very cultural experience for me over the weekend. First on Saturday I attended a Homecoming Football match between the University of Arizona Wildcats and the Oregon State University team. It was a very interesting spectacle with a huge brass band, cheerleaders and ceremonies to honour military service people, first responders and university staff at many times during the game. The Cats lost, but had some moments of brilliance, and it was a   very rich experience for me. Even before we got into the stadium, the university was filled with tents for every department, welcoming alumni who were visiting for homecoming .  Then on Sunday, quite a different experience when I was invited to attend the All Souls Procession , a community event to remember those who have died.  I had my face painted and   joined in with a colleague to have dinner with friends. There was a mixture of emotions during the procession: It was very moving t...

October 31 It’s Halloween today and it has been fun seeing people out and about wearing, if not full costume, then a bit of makeup, some cats ears or a pumpkin earrings. Even university students have come to study wearing some costume, and when I entered the lift this morning there was cobweb with spiders display! After completing final sign of my grading for Semester B courses at home, I have enjoyed a day of starting to give my complete focus to thinking about my work here. I have been working on my talk for next Tuesday here at the University of Arizona and for a workshop I have been invited to give at the University of Georgia in January at their Journal of Language and Literacy Education conference. I’ll be talking about ‘Bilingual Books’ Why Layout Matters’. My host and colleague, Kathy, talked me through some of the resources Worlds of Words lend out from the Worlds Of Words library, including Global Story Boxes for K2 (kindergarten year 2)  classes, and Lang...

30 October 2019 Kia ora   koutou Yesterday was my first day at Worlds of Words , the center for global literature where I am visiting for the duration of my time here. It is a beautiful facility with a current exhibition of Visual Narratives (also known as silent picturebooks or wordless picturebooks). Given that this is the topic for next year’s WaiPRU picturebook seminar, I am looking very closely! Worlds of Words is a beautiful space including a large library area, desks for students to work at, exhibition spaces, conference rooms, offices, a classroom and a presentation space where I will be giving a talk next Tuesday 5 November .   In the afternoon I had the opportunity to travel to a local school with my host Kathy where she and her colleagues run a Global Cultures Club as part of the after school programme. In this they use children’s literature to open discussions about the world, raise global awareness,   and develop intercultural skills. It...