Abdul's Story by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow

While that was gratifying, I thought a lot about other kids similar to H who don’t have empowering experiences with writing. He did something he thought he was incapable of and was smiling from ear-to-ear. Still, I pushed him to write much more and to see value in the things he wrote.Īt the end of our workshop session, H proudly showed his father the many pages he wrote that day. The more I talked with him about his story, the more I realized that H lacked confidence because he couldn’t write neatly and had trouble spelling words. It troubled me that a child so young could see himself as already incapable of doing something. When I encouraged H to write more, he gestured to the other kids busily writing at his table with full pages in their notebooks and said, “I can’t be a writer like them.” H was only maybe six or seven years old at the time. There, I met a student (I’ll call him H) in this workshop who wrote one sentence in his writer’s notebook and told me he was done. I once taught a workshop for children, called “Get Published, Kids!” The goal was to help kids write stories for publication in magazines. My main job was often to help kids see themselves as writers. The idea for ABDUL’S STORY came out of my work as a writer working in Mighty Writers community centers for kids. Abdul learns that the story he has to tell is valuable even if he struggles with writing, and even if his story is different. Muhammad, a writer who looks like Abdul and tells stories like Abdul’s, visits his class and helps him to change his view. On top of these struggles, he also doesn’t see the stories of his community as being welcome because the stories read in his classroom are about people and communities that are not like the ones he knows. Sometimes, he even writes some letters backward. However, during writing period in his class each day, he never writes these or any stories because he’s ashamed of how he writes. Hi Tara! Thank you for having me on your blog today and hosting the cover reveal of ABDUL’S STORY, a picture book written by me and illustrated by Tiffany Rose (with art direction by Tom Daly).ĪBDUL’S STORY is about a young boy who has many stories to tell about his community in Philadelphia.

Abdul's Story by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow