Making Good Trouble with a Middle School Book Club, a guest post by Tanvi Rastogi

A few months ago, I facilitated a conversation about Hope in the Valley by Mitali Perkins for Good Books Young Troublemakers (GBYT), a middle school book club I host at an indie bookstore in Iowa. In the book, set in 1980’s California, Pandita is mourning the loss of her mother and regularly slips away to the derelict house next door where she and her mom often spent time together. When she discovers a local nonprofit’s plans to purchase and demolish the sprawling property in order to build low-income housing, Pandita joins the fight to save it–along with her treasured memories.

Hope in the Valley is a sweet and surprisingly delightful story. It was also a terrific vehicle for challenging my readers to think critically about real-world issues and questions like: in what ways are many of the arguments we hear against low-income housing rooted in prejudice? How have attitudes towards immigration changed–or not–over time, and how can past attitudes help us understand current perspectives on immigration? How can this story help us understand the ways certain groups of people are spoken about–and targeted–today in both casual, everyday conversation and in political debate about who belongs in our communities? And finally: how can and why must we speak out against anti-immigrant rhetoric when we hear it?

That last part is tricky–how do we speak out as allies and advocates? How do we use our voices against the xenophobia, anti-Blackness, transphobia, fatphobia, ableism, and more that we encounter in our classrooms, school hallways, friend groups, and third spaces? Especially when even small acts of allyship can be stymied by our own uncertainty about what to do, what to say, what the risks are of speaking up, how to recognize what harm even looks like, and what our role is in disrupting it?

A word we use almost religiously as people who work with kids and books is empathy. We use it when expressing concern over banned books and when championing the freedom to read. We use it when crafting talking points that justify our inclusive programs, collections, and displays. We use it when discussing the importance and impact of our work. And I agree: connecting kids with books that entertain, affirm, and foster empathy isimportant. But I’m less clear about what we expect kids to do with that empathy–if we believe they should inherently understand how to put that empathy into meaningful action.

After many years working as a teen librarian who was often approached by kids seeking guidance on what they should’ve done when a friend used the n-word or a teacher made a transphobic comment or someone in the hallway said we should build a wall to keep “those people” out, I realized that it’s naive to assume that our kids (or, really, people of any age) know how to turn empathy from some abstract ideal into active practice. So, we’d talk, and I would ask questions like: why was it important to have said something? What were you afraid would happen if you did say something? Why didn’t you? What can you still do now, even though the incident has passed? What will you do or say when this happens again? Let’s figure it out now so that next time you’re prepared.

Libraries are miraculous places, largely in part because of our field’s dedication to creating space: to learn, to grow, to be challenged, to be affirmed, to feel dignity, to feel belonging, and to be safe. Library workers are committed to curating spaces, collections, programs, and services that help our patrons experience a genuine sense of belonging in our communities by doing the work to cultivate the emotional and physical safety that genuine belonging requires. It’s necessary work—but work that I believe can be taken one step further. We use our skills and institutional power to foster safety and belonging by putting the right book in someone’s hands or connecting them to the right program. What if we could also guide our community members–in this case, kids–so that they, too, can learn how to do the work of creating spaces in which all people can exist and thrive? As librarians, we connect our community members with information–and my library kids were sorely lacking in information about how to effectively disrupt harm.

Those conversations (along with the late Congressman John Lewis’s call to make good and necessary trouble) eventually became the impetus for Good Books Young Troublemakers, which was founded in April 2021. GBYT uses carefully curated middle grade stories and associated discussion guides to help kids develop the skills and confidence needed to speak out and shape their communities into places in which all people can belong.

How? GBYT discussions encourage the development of empathy, but the book club also provides opportunities for participants to build–and, over time, strengthen–allyship muscles. The club is founded on three ideas: that empathy is a prerequisite for using our voices to disrupt harm as allies and fight for meaningful change as advocates. That speaking up is a skill that can be practiced just like any other. And that we can strengthen that skill through regular practice to become more confident, effective, and aware allies.

We’ve read Saadia Faruqi’s Yusuf Azeem is Not a Hero and discussed how to stand in solidarity with Muslims, how we can personally counter Islamophobia, how bigotry spreads in increasingly dangerous ways the longer it remains unchallenged, the risks that come with “making waves,” and the more consequential danger of not making waves.

We’ve read Karina Yan Glaser’s A Duet for Home and discussed the experience of homelessness–the myriad ways people (including those who are our own classmates and neighbors) can become unhoused, the dehumanizing stereotypes surrounding unhoused people, how these stereotypes make receiving care and services more difficult, and how they also hinder attempts to pass policies and legislation that meaningfully address poverty and homelessness. (We revisited this book when discussing Hope in the Valley as we contended with the idea that many people support housing for low-income people–as long as that housing is in someone else’s community or “not in my backyard.”)

This November we’ll be reading A. J. Sass’s Ellen Outside the Lines, and our conversation will center around how we can be allies to autistic and nonbinary people by being prepared to disrupt ableism and transphobia/enbyphobia, as well as how we can advocate for accommodations that make the spaces we occupy inclusive and accessible.

This might sound like a lot. It’s true that tremendous effort is poured into creating discussion guides that distill complex issues into something middle schoolers can digest and grapple with, that help them recognize the power and necessity of using one’s voice rather than remaining silent in the face of injustice, and that provide opportunities to practice speaking up so that they’re better equipped to do so in real life when it counts. 

But the payoff is enormous. After three years of hosting GBYT, my book club kids have become exponentially more skilled at knowing when and how to responsibly and safely use their voices, they pay closer attention to current events, and they are beginning to comprehend the reality that unchecked intolerance and injustice don’t diminish over time but instead become more destructive.

And they all have examples of having put the skills we learn into practice in real life: in letters to school admin, to the editor, and to legislators; and, perhaps even more courageously, at family gatherings, in the classroom, in dance class, in gym class, on the bus.

There’s also, selfishly, a personal payoff: it’s easy to look around and feel despair over the accelerating attacks on BIPOC and queer stories (and people), public schools and libraries, accurate and expansive history, equity and inclusion policies and programs, our fundamental rights, and our very democracy. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless to do something impactful.

But every month at my book club I feel joy and hope in abundance–joy because my book club kids are inquisitive and passionate and hilarious, and hope because my kids and I are actively, doggedly doing real, hard work. We’re growing. We’re fighting. We’re out there calling out harm and calling in others to do better. We’re looking towards, instead of away from, the issues impacting us and our peers, our neighbors, our local and global communities–and learning how to be strong and confident allies and advocates, now and through adulthood. GBYT is raising kids who are aware, savvy, and kind, who understand that caring for one another is an ongoing, active process–and that neglecting to do so has consequences. In other words, the kind of kids who will grow into the kind of adults our future needs.

It’s really amazing what we can do with middle grade books. They open doors through which empathy can be ushered—but when used with deep intention, these books can also become tools for strengthening our voices. Empathy is good; action kindled by empathy is vital.

Meet the author

Tanvi Rastogi (she/her) is the founder of Good Books Young Troublemakers (GBYT), a nonprofit organization that uses middle grade books to help kids develop the skills necessary to be strong allies and advocates and make “good trouble.” A former Youth Services and Teen Services librarian, Tanvi currently works at Dog-Eared Books in Ames, Iowa, where she has been hosting the founding chapter of GBYT since April 2021. You can learn more about GBYT, its mission, and how you can get involved at www.gbyt.org or follow us on Instagram at @gbytbookclub.

Filed under: Guest Post