Black Tween Girls with Black Girl Power: Reading Models of Agency in Rita Williams-Garcia's

Teachers think a lot about transitions- proceduralizing them, cutting them down, making them more efficient. Changing from one thing to another takes time and effort, and the time when students are between tasks or rooms or activities can sometimes feel chaotic. This is often the same kind of energy and upheaval reflected in the life transitions of upper elementary and middle grades students as they live between different contexts, developmental stages, and versions of themselves. Even within the larger journey from youth to adulthood, these 9- to 12-year-olds are classified as "tweens," indicating this transition period between childhood and adolescence. This sense of "betweenness" also characterizes the needs of tween readers. As Lesesne (2006) discusses, students at these ages are at a place "between children's books and young adult novels as reading fare; they are between dependence on parents and educators and self-direction in their lives and their learning" (p. 9). It can be difficult to find engaging texts for students in this age group because tweens will often reject books for younger kids while they may not be developmentally ready for young adult novels (Faris, 2009; Lesesne, 2006). But, of course, tweens are also a diverse group. Or, said another way, not all tweens are "between" the same things. Tweens of color face additional challenges as they learn to navigate life across a range of contexts structured by racism-challenges White children do not have to deal with. Think, for example, of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old killed by police as he played with a toy gun in a park in front of his home in Cleveland. While much attention has been given to the plight of Black boys, many Black girls also find themselves navigating racism, violence, and criminalization, both in schools (Morris, 2016) and out.These tween years, therefore, become an important time for Black youth to build a racial identity and view of oneself as a Black person. Some developmental theories suggest that during the tween years of preadolescence and early adolescence, Black children's racial development involves a move from their parents' perspectives on race to their own racial self-concept and an authentication of their own beliefs. Cross and FhagenSmith (2001) suggest that Black youth who learn the value of Black culture at this stage are the most likely to develop positive self-concepts related to their Black identity, even as those self-concepts are redefined throughout later adolescence. In this way, tweens of color generally-and Black tweens specifically-can find themselves between various perceptions of themselves as racialized people as well as between their views and others' views on their race. They are in a stage where they learn from those around them but where those lessons can be continually reformulated and revised as they participate in ever-widening social circles.Books can play a role in this continuing development. More than 25 years ago, Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) suggested the importance of texts that function as mirrors for minority children's own identities and windows for all children to learn about lives different from their own. The potential for readers to benefit from such windows and mirrors, however, relies on having titles available that tell stories of diverse children's lives (Bishop, 2007; Hamilton, Anderson, Broaddus, & Young, 2006; Larrick, 1965; Sims, 1982). Unfortunately, diverse stories remain significantly underrepresented in children's book publishing. For example, the Cooperative Children's Book Council (2015) found that only 3% of the books they reviewed in 2012 were about African Americans, thereby limiting what children of other races can learn about the experiences of Black people and the ways that Black children can see themselves represented in the pages of a book.The number of representations of Black girls in books is even more limited. In keeping with scholars like Patricia Hill Collins (2000) and Kimberle Crenshaw (1991), Rountree (2008) acknowledges how African American females are more likely to have to contend with societal struggles relating to the intersectionality of race and gender, and she has analyzed how these overlapping identities are portrayed in young adult literature. …