Recently, Matt de la Peña came to SDSU to talk
about his book Last Stop on Market Street. You can find the full video here on YouTube. Within what seemed like a very short time, those of us in the audience were
given a brief history of what led him to write this story and what exactly this
book means for children. Last Stop on
Market Street is a picture book filled with pages of beautiful
illustrations by Christian Robinson and a story that carries with it the weight
of many large social issues presented in a way that allows children the
opportunity to explore their own perception of what is beautiful within their
daily life.
Listening to Matt talk about where he came from,
his family, the journey from machismo to literacy, the challenges he faced,
what inspired him, and how all of those things created a space for him to
become a Newberry Medal winner and Caldecott Honored author, was an experience
I won’t soon forget.
Matt and I come from very different sides of San
Diego; while he was raised in National City, I was raised an hour east in the mountains
of Pine Valley. In Pine Valley, there was only one mode of public transportation,
a small bus that only a few people rode with one stop forty-five minutes to the
nearest town. Even though country living is much different than city living,
there is much to be said about what The
Last Stop on Market Street gives readers—it transcends space and place:
finding the beauty in the things around you.
While I might not have been raised around tall
buildings or busy streets filled with people, I was still raised in a place
that was hard to see as beautiful sometimes. One might think that beauty in the
mountains must always exist, but it is a life lived far away from people, in
the dirt and wilderness, with a single high school for a hundred miles, a side
of the mountain that cannot be seen while driving by exists. Many families live
well below the poverty line, are often the first in their families to go to
high school, learn English as a second language, and the feeling of otherness
extends through these mountains and is absolutely undeniable within the
classroom. It has been a long time since I left my hometown, but after Matt’s
speech, I was left remembering my childhood in a very different way.
As Matt spoke of his father, I thought of mine.
A white male from the Midwest, with an affluent family that offered him job
security for the rest of his life, he chose to leave the suburbs of Illinois
and head for California. His first job in 1980 was teaching at a public
elementary school less than ten miles from the border of Mexico in the small
town of Jacumba. He taught there for his entire career. He didn’t know Spanish
initially. There was no ESL program, the students he served were almost
exclusively Hispanic and spoke only Spanish, and despite the barriers that
existed between them, my father was determined to teach and his students wanted
to learn. He didn’t have a budget; there was no funding. He used his paychecks
to buy books, pencils, paper, and provide lunches for his students. He was
never taught standard practices for this population, proven ways to increase
literacy and improve graduation rates. His degrees were in history and the
rigorous teaching curriculum that exist now for those in college to become
teachers did not exist then—he would have to work harder and get creative. One
year, they didn’t even have a classroom, so he taught outside and under the
shade of the trees. He wanted to give his students every chance at success, so
he fought an endless fight for funding, for books, but most of all he fought to
give them an opportunity to see the worth in themselves and those around them.
When he would talk about his days teaching in the mountains, he would swell
with pride. He didn’t resent the district for ignoring his students, for
leaving them outside in 100-degree weather, in the rain, in the wind, in the
cold of the mountains. He knew that learning about the trees and the mountains,
the geology and meteorology of the place that they lived, was a gift rather
than a curse. I can only imagine what he’d say about Last Stop on Market Street; he’d probably tell me he wished he’d
had this book when he was teaching; he’d probably remind me to stop and smell
the roses, to revel in the beauty that surrounds us all. I wish he could read
this book to my children. His students still remember him. When he died in 2013, my inbox was filled with condolences and memories from students he taught
twenty years ago.
 |
| Me reading Last Stop on Market Street to my twins. |
One of the things that truly hit home for me was
the idea that regardless of where you are, there is beauty to be found. During
his lecture Matt said that one of his goals as a writer has been to create
books with storylines that “had nothing to do, at least overtly, with race or
class,” so that young people can see themselves within his books, so they can
have empathy for those around them, so that regardless of what they look like
or where they come from, the people on the page are not so different from the
person in the mirror. Students who feel that his stories are their stories and
identify with his characters are given a chance to feel represented, empowered,
and this becomes something important, a tool for children to feel proud of
their experiences. These experiences provide groundwork for the future. If we
give young people an opportunity to see the beauty in their daily life, a
beauty that they can identify with, they have the potential to internalize
their surroundings with appreciation and acceptance rather than comparison and
shame. Last Stop on Market Street is
filled with images of the city, the places that carry with them the weight of
judgment, while many picture books for children take place in traditionally,
aesthetically pleasing places (think: forests, pretty homes, suburban America,
etc.). Last Stop on Market Street
highlights the beauty in what is right in front of us. The words on the page
move beyond the illustrations, beyond any one place, to the place of every
child who struggles to see the good and beautiful life happening right in front
of them.
Matt de la Peña’s lecture gave me an opportunity
to think about the world around me, the world around my children, the world my
father experienced and how different and yet equally beautiful each place
really is. It is easy to forget to stop and smell the roses, not the roses in
your neighbor’s yard or the roses down the street, but the roses, the life,
that surrounds you—here and now.
When
I think of ways that we can impact those around us, I think of my dad in the
same way that I think of Matt de la Peña: They are the bright spots for kids in
an otherwise dark and scary world. They raise questions in the minds of all those
they reach; they ask us to look around and figure out exactly how we can share
our light with anyone willing to listen. What tools do you have accessible to
you? How can you take those tools and make them accessible to others? How can
you share your experience, the things you are a witness to, in order to provide
others with a sense of empathy, identity, empowerment? How can you show people
that beauty is not only found in the perfectly clean, well-funded and tended classroom
or the ethereal forest but anywhere we are learning or living, even the
classroom in the dirt under a tree on a hot day? How do YOU use the gifts you
have been given to make the world better? I think CJ’s Nana said it best,
“Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ, you’re a better witness for
what’s beautiful.”
