your name is a song by jamilah thompkins bigelow

Names that might seem simple to some may be challenging for others. I appreciated how each name in this story had its pronunciation in parentheses after it. They make a way out of no way, make names out of no names - pull them from the sky!' It was poignant to see Trayvon's name woven into the story to honor Trayvon Martin's legacy. Thompkins-Bigelow expressively writes, 'Made-up names come from dreamers. Their real names were stolen long ago so they dream up new ones. Joyful illustrations by Luisa Uribe round out the story giving it vibrant color and movement. The author Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow touches on multicultural names in a rhythmic and lyrical fashion. The character's first words to her mother are how she never wants to go back to school again because when her teacher tried to say her name, 'it got stuck in her mouth.' Her wise mother reassures her with a beautiful saying, the title of the book, 'Your Name is a Song.' This important book is a love letter to all those children whose names get stuck in their teachers' mouths and for all of us who have ever had trouble pronouncing the names of others. I sincerely recommend it to parents, teachers, and librarians everywhere. The picture book can also be used as a springboard to discuss racism in language and in a context younger kids can understand. It will be wildly popular during storytime once storytimes are back. YOUR NAME IS A SONG deserves to be read out loud, to be sung, with claps and trills. The art is beautiful and the language is alive. It shows the bond between a parent and child and it addresses pertinent issues a POC child might be going through.

YOUR NAME IS A SONG is lush, poetic, and profound. This book will make two kinds of people very uncomfortable: those who intentionally disrespect names and those who can't be bothered to look up the pronunciations of names because 'they're too hard.' If you've read my first book, you may realize how much I revere the power of names. The picture book is an homage to names and to the cultures these names honour. When I read YOUR NAME IS A SONG, I thought of 17 year old Nafiza who grimaced her way through that first class. So I allowed them to make fun of my name. No language in which to express the hurt I felt. I'm ashamed to say that at that moment I laughed because what else could I do? I had no confidence to assert myself. He grinned as if he had told a marvellously funny joke and looked at me as if expecting me to partake in the hilarity. Unsurprisingly, everyone in the class laughed at my name. I was in grade twelve, completely out of my depth in a new country among strange people, thousands of kilometres away from everyone and everything familiar to me.

On my first day in school in Canada, the teacher told the kids in class that my name was 'Napija' despite me telling him my name very carefully before class started.

Your name is a song by jamilah thompkins bigelow