Here are Antigone Books best-sellers for the week ending July 18, 2014:

























1. The Fault in Our Stars
John Green ($12.99)

2. The Silver Star
Jeannette Walls ($16)

3. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Ransom Riggs ($10.99)

4. Writing from the Senses: 59 Exercises to Ignite Creativity and Revitalize Your Writing
Laura Deutsch ($14.95)

5. Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn ($15)

6. Spider Woman's Daughter: A Leaphorn & Chee Novel
Anne Hillerman ($9.99)

7. Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist
Tim Federle ($15)

8. The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert ($17)

9. The Lowland
Jhumpa Lahiri ($15.95)

10. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman ($14.99)
— 

Antigone Books' best-sellers for the week ending July 11, 2014:

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou ($6.99)

2. Goldfinch
Donna Tartt ($30)

3. The Fault in Our Stars
John Green ($12.99)

4. Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist
Tim Federle ($15)

5. The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert ($17)

6. Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security
Todd Miller ($16.95)

7. Longbourn
Jo Baker ($15.95)

8. Hard Choices
Hillary Rodham Clinton ($35)

9. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman ($14.99)

10. The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon 
Kevin Fedarko ($17)

We are big fans of the Reading Rainbow. Naturally, we couldn't resist sharing the Funny or Die collaboration with Levar Burton. Burton shows us how books can make you a God that kills butterflies with one touch and book burning is essential for the good of mankind.  


Click here to help feed the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter project. Only 27 days left to hit the $5 million dollar stretch goal. It's for the children.

In 1990 Tom Walbank found himself, like so many bluesmen of lore do, at a crossroads. An aspiring cartoonist, he was immersed in the Scottish zine culture, with his eye on a career in comics. But he loved playing blues, too.

“I decided I would have to concentrate on one,” Walbank says from his home in Tucson, where he’s resided since 2000. He chose music, and since doing so he’s performed around the world and released dozens of blues recordings, often incorporating dub, punk, and rocksteady textures into his albums – many of which can be heard on his Bandcamp page. Still, his passion for pop art endured. Wanting to explore his dual interests together, he began drawing portraits of blues artists. “I started with one of Bukka White, and I kept doing them wherever I was,” Walbank says. 
In 2012, Walbank collected 250 of his blues drawings for a self-published tome called Picture the Blues. He laughs while explaining that though he put the book on the indie press site Blurb more than a year ago, he never quite found the time to properly promote its existence. No matter – the book has a timeless quality, a sort of catholic overview of the blues, featuring arresting black-and-white portraits spanning blues history, from legends like Muddy Waters, Charlie Patton, and Son House to gospel vocalists like Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rossette Tharpe. He includes lesser-knowns like Mississippi Hill Country queen Jesse Mae Hemphill and Jazz Gillum, jazz players like Charles Mingus and Miles Davis, and a section of pictures of modern raconteurs like Tom Waits and George Thorogood. Walbank’s unique style differentiates itself from blues comics like Robert Crumb and William Stout — his work owes as much to 1920s print advertisements and British artists like Mike McMahon and Kevin O ' Neill, famous for their work in violent pulp publication 2000 A.D, as it does Crumb’s distinctive crosshatching.

Divided into chapters featuring slide players, piano players, harmonica players and other blues distinctions, Walbank’s heavy black-and-white style is accomplished mostly by ink and brush, utilizing stippling – stabbing the paper and “ruining brushes” in the process – to build up grey effects. He applies correction fluid, too, to suggest the look of woodcuts.

“The heavy black-and-white kind of evokes heat to me, like the heat of Mississippi,” Walbank says.

Walbank admits that the book’s asking price, about $200, is hefty, but blues aficionados, the kind of guys forking out hundreds for rare 78s and blues ephemera, are still getting a pretty sweet deal. “It is a little pricey,” Walbank laughs, “but originals are about $400 bucks, so $200 bucks for 250 of them, it’s not too bad, you know?”

Walbank says the goal of the project isn’t to serve as a historical text; it’s strictly art. “There are plenty of great blues history books out there, and I’m a sucker for those,” Walbank says. “But this is just a plain art book. You can do your own research if you come across a picture and you like that picture, but this would be too large if I did historical pieces of writing about each artist. Sometimes, doing your own research is half the fun. You find your own past, if you know what I mean.”

Order Tom Walbank’s Picture the Blues via Blurb.

Details are a little sparse still, but hey, when a Pulitzer Prize/MacArthur "Genius" award winner comes to town, that's notable. Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and more recently, This Is How You Lose Her, will be speaking at the Fox Theatre on April 23. No ticket prices yet, but check the Tucson Pima Arts Council website for more details as they are solidified.

When Arizona's fine crazy-land legislature passed HB 2281 in 2010—the anti-Mexican-American studies law that targeted Tucson Unified School District's Mexican-American studies program—their handiwork did more damage than hurting some of our city's students and ending a successful program that was increasingly reaching more students at its height with a proven track record helping students graduate and move on to college.

Left behind in the rubble is a community and school district torn apart, as well as friendships and organizers who once stood together only to breaking each other's hearts. However, right now there remains work to do while we wait for a Ninth District Court of Appeals decision on a failed lawsuit against the state that will hopefully strike the law and for TUSD to stop fighting the implementation of a court-ordered desegregation plan, which includes full-implementation of culturally relevant curriculum with Mexican-American and African-American studies classes.

And that's why a new book published by University of Arizona Press, Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution edited by Augustine Romero and Julio Cammarota is needed. It tells the program's origin story without malice or pretense or even hiding from its ties to the UA's Social Justice and Education Program. Really, we've had so many outsiders come in, interfere in the movement, try to take some ownership over what was built, dismantled and fought for, seems like a book with truth behind it is need now more than ever.

This book is exactly that—an attempt to tell the story with truth and not just through Romero or Cammorota's perspective—albeit their part of the story is very important. Romero currently works in TUSD as director of the Department of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Instruction and is co-founder of SJEP. Cammarota is a UA associate professor of Mexican-American studies, and the author of Suenos Americanos: Barrio Youth Negotiating Social and Cultural Identities.

The book serves as both history and how-to guide that illustrates the importance of critical multicultural curriculum and education. Inside are chapters by Nolan Cabrera (Cabrera report was presented to the TUSD governing board, administration and State Superintendent John Huppenthal's office multiple times. The report explicitly showed that the classes did increase test scores and graduation rates), Andrea Romero and Anna Ochoa O'Leary looking at resiliency and stress faced by undergraduate students in the face of the anti-ethnic studies laws (pay attention, Texas.)

I'll be moderating a panel with Romero and Cammarota at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend, Saturday, March 15, 10 a.m., at the Nuestra Raices tent off the mall. But we are going to get things started a little early with an Q&A.

See you on Saturday, you and all those wonderful, wonderful books:

There's always been a lot of discussion in the background or claims on how Raza Studies/MAS began in TUSD, was it important to either of you to explain SJEP's part in the development of the program?

Augustine Romero: Mari, the discussion around this question did not start until the start of the SES (Save Ethnic Studies) the help of Julio and our students established the foundation and structure of the MAS program. Yes, when I came aboard in 2002 the department existed, but was a shell of a department, and for all intents and purposes existed in name only. For instance, there was no theoretical framework, there was no vision, and there was no mission. All of those things plus much more were created after I took over the program. More reality is the fact the Sean Arce was very rarely part of the discussions I was having with confidants, as I was theorizing the development of the department and all of its projects.

Julio: Well the SJEP added the action component to Paulo Freire's notion of praxis, which is critical reflection and action. There was reflection going on in MAS classes prior to the SJEP but the SJEP really added the action component, which helped students grow intellectually. When the students were engaged in praxis, the SJEP and MAS really took off. Students were connected to their learning, and word got out that this was the class to take if you wanted to make a difference. You would be surprised but a lot of young people want to improve the world in which they live. The SJEP became the opportunity to make that possible; it empowered young people to voice their concerns about education and society. However, the SJEP students not only voiced their concerns but actually took action to bring about change.

When did you start working on putting the actual book together?

Julio: We started about four years ago. Right about the time HB 2281 was passed.

How did you pick the different academics and writers who contributed? By topic or request?

Julio: We sent out a call to many different folks, academics, educators, community members and youth. Most people were interested but the academics were better situated to take advantage of the opportunity. They were more prepared to actually write something.

Augustine: It is important to note that the SES teachers were invited to contribute and most had originally agreed to participate. However, over the course of time they on their own accord withdrew from the process.

The past couple of years have been difficult for the community, do you see this book and its message being helpful in moving us forward or more of an academic example of how to put a program like this together?

Augustine: Both, the truth is a powerful tool, and it is only challenged by those who have something to gain by the spreading their lies. The book is based upon the truth. If someone wants to understand how to develop a similar program Raza Studies can help them do that. If people want to move forward let’s do so from a position of truth versus the mythologies that have been constructed by various groups of people.

One of the chapters ends with a section asking Forward, how?, where do you see TUSD, CRC and SJEP moving forward? How?

Augustine: MAS’s theoretical framework known as Critically Compassionate Intellectualism is ground in many of the same theory within the culturally relevant and culturally responsive frameworks. For intents and purpose if we follow the tenets of these frameworks we will ground ourselves in many of the same principles and ideal regarding our newly created lens of what is consider equity and excellence in education. In fact, what has been lost in this debate is what is best for our historically underserved and oppressed student groups. We had some very powerful and effective answers, but these answers actually answered the question. There are a lot of people who want to credit for asking the question, and who are simultaneously looking for the same old wrong answers that have been packaged differently or have been given a new and clever name. However, they are not seeking real answers. If they were seeking real and honest answer our program would have never been eradicated. In fact, the reciprocal would be true. There would be a similar program in every school in Arizona. That’s the truth!

Finally, what is the most important message that both of you want and hope to convey with the publishing of this book?

Julio: The important message that I hope to convey is that education should be way more than learning about facts, figures and concepts. Education also should be about accessing freedom, reinforcing self-determination, engaging one's community, uncovering lost or stolen histories, and forming a critical consciousness in which students know the true causes of oppression and know how to address these causes.

Augustine: I would add that the dream of academic equity and excellence is possible for our historically underserved communities. Today, more so than ever we know this to be true! We must recognize the reality that our historically underserved students are not inherently “at risk.” Rather, our systems; especially the educational system inherently create risk for these students. This is a historical fact! We need to flip the paradigm upside down, and ask how the system creates risk for these children. From this point, we then start the structural transformation and transcendence's that are needed to create a structure of equity and excellence for our historically underserved student populations.

I got an email from Rep. Andy Tobin last night. He’s running for congress in CD-1, and he has to earn the right (emphasis on “right”) to challenge Ann Kirkpatrick by getting through a crowded primary. His favorite email tactic is to tie Kirkpatrick to Nancy Pelosi, but hey, it was State of the Union night, so an Obama-Kirkpatrick link was low hanging fruit. “Sometimes I wonder if Obama and Kirkpatrick have even ever seen a copy of the United States Constitution,” he wrote, continuing, “because they sure don’t respect it.”

Gotta give Tobin some credit. He didn’t mention Kenya, Muslim, Socialist or Benghazi once. Gotta give Obama some credit too. If he managed to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago without ever cracking the cover of the Constitution — wow, that man is good!

Tobin went on to say, “So we’ve decided to send both of them copies of our country’s supreme law.” Apparently he needs to raise some money to do it. “Help us send Obama and Kirkpatrick copies of the Constitution. Donate $5 today!”

Image Comics' Ron Richards shared David Lapham's infamous Stray Bullets logo on the publisher's website and various social media outlets earlier today. The award winning black and white noir masterpiece has been been out of print for many years, and goes for big bucks on eBay and Amazon. The series was originally self published under David and Maria Lapham's publishing company El Capitan Books.

Legendary civil Walter Echo-Hawk will be making an appearance today at 6 p.m. in Room 164 of the James E. Rogers College of Law, 1201 E. Speedway Blvd., and is free and open to the public.