PBB: Keep Your Head Up

Keep Your Head Up by Aliya King Neil
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

KEEP YOUR HEAD UP

BY: ALIYA KING NEIL

PUBLISHED BY: DENENE MILLNER BOOKS/ SIMON & SCHUSTER

YEARY: 2021 

GRADES: P-3

AGE: 4 - 8

PAGE: 32

    I'm not a big fan of the art of some (not all) of the pages of this book.  Let's take out the pictures and see how the story holds up with just words alone.  

    This story starts with it's inciting incident. The main character, whom we only call D, is off to a rocky start and the very beginning of the day and the story. Nothing goes right for the entire morning. It's something I think anyone with a daily routine that they have to stick to can relate to.

P3:  

I wake up with my head down.  No one said, Good morning, time to get up!  So I overslept.  I’m kind of awake, but mostly not.

P4:

Dad tells me to hustle.  That uses to be a dance and now it means move fast.  But I can’t move fast.

Because my sparkly toothpaste with the not-too minty taste is missing.  

P5

My sister used it to make slime.  Toothpaste doesn’t even go in slime.  

P6

I walk to school with my head up even though I feel a little scrunchy.  It can be a good day.  

Any day can be good if you try.  

    The introduction of a new word should make this book a timeless classic.  A word for describing it feels when you know you're stuck in a funk and you don't know how to get out of it.  Also here we have the introduction of the theme.  "It can be a good day if you try."  I know how true that is, but it's good to give the children hope.  

We move on and learn that his boy's bad day is happening on the worst part of the week.  

P7

But as soon as I get to school I am so mad.  It’s Monday.  I’m supposed to have on my gym uniform.  

P8

Now I can’t play kickball!  And I’m the best kicker in my class.  

    I love how part of the reason he feels bad about not being able to kickball is that he's letting the class down.  But he doesn't know.  Also being able to play might have brightened his mood a little.  I really wish the teacher could have over looked this, but I don't work in education.  If you do please comment below, what is the policy on PE at your school?  Is it once a week?  Do you need to have special cloths to play?  

author Aliya King Neil

    The following I think is an issue with black culture, especially black boy culture.  The young men know that looking angry makes them look like a thug.  They are trained from the earliest age to keep their face straight no matter how they feel.  The result however is making it adult hood and being unable or un willing to express how you really feel about anything.  This makes it hard to date, marry, or empathise with black men sometimes.  To make it worse, I've worked with black men who have adopted the calm look in moments of stress only to have our white bosses decided that he was just lazy and didn't care about his job.  There really is no winning for brothers out there.  I've also been a victum of them.  People expect black women to act a certain way when they're angry.  The fact that I don't must mean that I don't really care about my job.  Tsk, tsk.  What is a girl to do? 

P9

I try not to scrunch up my eyebrows tight.  Or stick out my lips.  Or cross my arms over my chest.

P10

But my “Bad Day” face slips out.  

P11

Maybe today I will be the Recycler.  

That’s a class job where you get to go for a long walk.  I like long walks.  I can take my time and stop and say Hi to Miss King.  She always checks to see if my head’s up.  

P12

There is no long walk for me today.  Mia gets to go.  I just know she’s stopped at the cafeteria.  I tell the teacher Mia should be back but the teachers just says, “Stay on task D.” 

       That long walk might have just been another opportunity to brighten his day. It could have also been another opportunity for his day to get worse. Many black boys in my schools were expelled just for walking too slowly in halls during class hours even when they had permission to be out. There is a lot of skipping classes, but this story had me wondering if maybe there were other reasons for them to be "dragging" as the teachers used to say.

    Meanwhile, I was written up a few times for completing my tasks and coming back too quickly. "You just wanted an excuse to be in the halls!" They'd say.

Anyway....

P 13

In writing class, I get the last laptop the open with the sticky space bar.  Mia put a little dot with a marker on the bottom so she knows not to pick it.  But I always forget to check.  

P14

In math, I say the answer before the teachers calls on me.  The teachers says my answer is right, but I am not right.  Because I didn’t raise my hand.  Raising your hand is not math.  Now I’m scrunchy again.  Miss King would say, D.  Keep your head up.  So, I do.  

P15

It’s Noah’s day for show-and-tell.  He has a rocket made out of water jug.  I try to help him bring it to the front .  But then the whole thing gets smudged.  I get paint on my uniform and the teacher’s desk.  

P16

Now I feel like the thing that comes after scrunchy.  Because Noah is mad at me.  My uniform is ruined.  And the teacher is upset about the mess.  

P17

My mom and dad always talk about meltdowns.  A meltdown is when you want to keep your head up, but it won’t say.  A meltdown is when your face is wet and your body is hot and your throat is scratchy and you can’t see well.  

P18

I have a meltdown.  

    Enter the Third Act. Poor kid.  He didn't stand a chance.  I really wonder what form his meltdown took and what he did to get sent to P.O. Surely the teacher didn't just send him for the accident.  Must have said something, or laughed . . . . And how could the teacher have empathy for his bad day if the teacher doesn't know he's having one.  

P19

The teacher sends me to the principal’s office.  

I see the eighth graders.  But they don’t even wave at me and ask how my brothers are.  

P20

I walk through the cafeteria, but it’s empty.  

I stop at the nurse and she won’t even take my temperature.  So, I walk to the office with my head down.  

P21-22

Miss King doesn’t say anything about the meltdown.  I always think she will look scrunchy when the teachers me to her office.  But she looks like her everyday self.  She had books and things to look at, so I just do that.  

P23

She has smooth round records and real turntables, too.

Miss king always says records are just like me: they seem complicated .  But they’re not really.  You just have to be gentle with them.  

P24

You have to hold them the right way.  If you don’t, they get scratched.  And the scratches are hard to fix.  

    In the comments please tell me what do you think about Miss King's metaphor here? Kids are complicated. What does getting scratched mean in this context?

    I think it's telling that Miss King, the principal is the only teacher/person named in this whole book. She's also the only one to treat him with any compassion and advise him to keep his head up.

P25-26

My mom and dad come to pick me up.  They look at Miss King and they all have the same expression.  “Can I go outside when I get home?” I say.

My mom says no.  We have to go to my brother’s soccer game.

“Can I use my tablet when we get home?” I say.

My dad says no.  It will be time for bed.  

P27-28

“So, this day won’t get any better?”  I say. 

“It might.  But if it doesn’t get better what can you do?”  Mom says.  

    Geeh thanks Mom! Am I wrong that could throw the kid a bone here? Probably. Let me know in the comments!

P29

I still feel scrunchy.  But not too much.  “I keep my head up”  I say it, but I tell my mom and my dad and Miss King that I don’t really want to.  Miss King says that’s okay.  

P30

I just have to want to try.

    Bless his heart.  They still managed to end on a slightly uplifted note.  So they sent him home early for the meltdown.  Must have been a fight.  I'm so caught up in the story that I forget to critique it every time I read it and that is the hallmark of good writing!  Excellent book!

    Empathy, sympathy  . . . kindness.  I need soo many people to read this book.  So very many people.  And yet, from my experience the people who need the message of this story will do their best to miss the point. 

    Please read this book, and if you or someone you know has a son, especially a black son, please support the author and buy this book! It's a great one to have on hand when someone is having a bad day.

    Aliya King Neil is a author and a senior editor with Simon and Schuster. Learn more about her here.

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