BELFORD INSPIRES YOUNG READERS

by Christina Clark

Writing and teaching are in Bibi Belford’s blood.

Her father was a professor, and her mother held a teaching degree. Belford, herself, spent 35 years in classrooms as an educator, spending many of those years teaching kids to read and working as a literacy coach, coaching teachers to improve their skills in teaching reading, writing and comprehension.

Though she’s now retired, Belford is still inspiring school-aged children to devour books—by writing ones that they can relate to. Her students expressed frustrations about not seeing themselves portrayed in books, so she made it her mission to change that. And now, she’s published four books for middle school readers. Belford wanted to write books for children who did not see themselves in their schoolbooks.

Inspiration

“They say, ‘if a kid can walk through the door, you can teach them’,” Belford says, while talking about a former student. “But honestly, [this student] crashed through the side of the door.”

She says the student, who she worked with from kindergarten through third grade, was full of energy and had difficulty focusing. She taught him reading from kindergarten to third grade.

“By the end of third grade, he was the best reader,” she says. “The student went from needing reading help to needing none.”

But, when she ran into him in the hallway at the beginning of his fourth-grade year, he told Belford that he wasn’t reading anymore; he hated reading because he couldn’t find any books about boys like him. So, she asked him, if she wrote a book about boys like him, would he read it? And, of course, he said he would.

Belford’s journey into novel writing began. She pitched her partial manuscript at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writers Institute the following spring, and an editor picked it up. She worked on the book all summer. As chapters came back from her copy editor, she says, “I would send them to [the student’s] teacher and she would read them out loud to the class. They didn’t know who wrote it.”

That book, “Canned and Crushed,” was published in 2015. The book’s protagonist, Sandro Zapote, has parents who entered the United States illegally. Sandro has to help them save up for his younger sister’s heart surgery.

After Belford finished the book, she came to the student’s classroom and read the final chapter aloud, revealing that she had written the book.

“Crossing the Line”

Belford has since published three more books, including “Crossing the Line,” which was awarded a Christopher Award in 2018.

Belford splits her time between Chicago and St. Joseph, Michigan, and says that Lake Michigan is a source of inspiration and respite. “Crossing the Line” was written while Belford was in Chicago.

Walking along the Lake Michigan coastline, she passed a historical plaque commemorating Eugene Williams, who died in 1919. He the first victim of race riots that year. He was 16 years old and Black. His raft had drifted across the invisible line in the water into the “whites only beach.” People on the beach threw rocks at his raft, and he drowned.

Belford was intrigued by Eugene’s sad story and started to learn more about the violent riots. This inspired “Crossing the Line,” a book about two friends, boys of different races and backgrounds in Chicago during that time period.

“I’ve always been inquisitive and wanted to know more about things,” Belford says. “I remember being told as a child that certain things were not something a child should know about.”

She wanted to ensure this history was presented in a way that would demonstrate the magnitude of the events, while being appropriate for her readers’ age.

Belford takes the reader by the hand at the beginning of the book, introducing the time period and the many events occurring all at once: World War I had recently ended, gangsters were roaming Chicago, and the influenza epidemic’s deadliest waves were beginning to ebb.

The cover art represents a bridge that exists in real life and in the book. “I wrote that chapter [where the bridge is most relevant] while on the bridge,” she says.

The two boys in the novel are easy to relate to. They share a love of baseball and are at an age where they are just beginning to understand how the world works. They navigate homework and learn how to make friends. “To me, that’s what makes history come alive—the people in it,” says Belford.

She plans to keep bringing history alive through future books. She’s working on additional manuscripts, all featuring characters of diverse backgrounds and storylines