Presents a description of contemporary life in the Appalachian Region of Kentucky while focusing on the home and activities of ten-year-old Joseph Ratliff and his family.

After rising from poverty to earn two Ivy League degrees, an Appalachian lawyer pays tribute to the strong “hill women” who raised and inspired her, and whose values have the potential to rejuvenate a struggling region. “Destined to be compared to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated.”—BookPage (starred review) “A gritty, warm love letter to Appalachian communities and the resourceful women who lead them.”—Slate Nestled in the Appalachian mountains, Owsley County, Kentucky, is one of the poorest places in the country. Buildings are crumbling as tobacco farming and coal mining decline. But strong women find creative ways to subsist in the hills. Through the women who raised her, Cassie Chambers traces her path out of and back into the Kentucky mountains. Chambers’s Granny was a child bride who rose before dawn every morning to raise seven children. Granny’s daughter, Ruth—the hardest-working tobacco farmer in the county—stayed on the family farm, while Wilma—the sixth child—became the first in the family to graduate from high school. Married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie a few months later, Wilma beat the odds to finish college. She raised her daughter to think she could move mountains, like the ones that kept her safe but also isolated from the larger world. Cassie would spend much of her childhood with Granny and Ruth in the hills of Owsley County. With her “hill women” values guiding her, she went on to graduate from Harvard Law. But while the Ivy League gave her opportunities, its privileged world felt far from her reality, and she moved home to help rural Kentucky women by providing free legal services. Appalachian women face issues from domestic violence to the opioid crisis, but they are also keeping their towns together in the face of a system that continually fails them. With nuance and heart, Chambers breaks down the myth of the hillbilly and illuminates a region whose poor communities, especially women, can lead it into the future.

In Hillbilly elegy, J.D. Vance described how his family moved from poverty to an upwardly mobile clan while navigating the collective demons of the past. The book has come to define Appalachia for much of the nation. This collection of essays is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Vance's book to allow Appalachians to tell their own diverse and complex stories of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. -- adapted from back cover

This comprehensive bibliography includes books written about or set in Appalachia from the 18th century to the present. Titles represent the entire region as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, including portions of 13 states stretching from southern New York to northern Mississippi. The bibliography is arranged in alphabetical order by author, and each title is accompanied by an annotation, most of which include composite reviews and critical analyses of the work. All classic genres of children's literature are represented.

In the compelling memoir, Rhoda Warren, whose father was a miner, introduces us to Letcher, KY in 1930. She takes us inside this isolated community, whose denizens lived difficult, poverty-stricken lives. This is the story of the Bailey family's escape from the grueling Corbin Glow mines to find a better life in Letcher--"The prettiest place in the world." Rhoda Warren's account is three-dimensional: with humor and warmth, but without sentimentality. She recounts the lives of these mining people whose religion and "family values" buttressed and sustained them.

It's about keeping the faith. Growing up poor in 1953 in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia doesn't bother Lydia Hawkins. She treasures her tight-knit family. There's her loving mama, now widowed; her whip-smart younger brother BJ, who has cystic fibrosis; and wise old Gran. But everything falls apart after Gran and BJ die and Mama is jailed unjustly. Suddenly Lydia has lost all those dearest to her. Moving to a coal camp to live with her uncle William and aunt Ethel Mae only makes Lydia feel more alone. She is ridiculed at her new school for her outgrown homemade clothes and the way she talks, and for what the kids believe her mama did. And to make matters worse, she discovers that her uncle has been keeping a family secret—about her. If only Lydia, with her resilient spirit and determination, could find a way to clear her mother's name. . . .

This compelling book emphasizes the critical role of quality multicultural literature and reader response in today's schools and libraries. All students need access to books in which they can see themselves—not just their physical appearance, but their culture and language, as well. Multicultural Literature and Response: Affirming Diverse Voices was written to help teachers and librarians find and use the best multicultural books in the service of reading comprehension and more. Underscoring the necessity of selecting quality literature that authentically, sensitively, and accurately portrays different groups, the book defines multicultural literature and provides a strong argument for its importance in schools and libraries. Expert contributors guide users to multicultural authors and illustrators who portrays U.S. ethnic and cultural groups, and they suggest ways to integrate this literature with writing, fluency development, storytelling, and audiovisuals. Extensive lists of books and websites that feature multicultural literature, as well as of authors, illustrators, and publishers of multicultural literature, make it easy to include such works in programs across the curriculum.