Last week I learned that some Global Read Aloud classes are doing service projects after reading Dragons in a Bag. After learning more about homelessness, students in OH learned that food banks need supplies to bake birthday cakes—so they raised funds for the pantries in their community! Right now Madagascar is experiencing drought in the southern part of the island; I made a donation to Doctors Without Borders and then wondered if students might want to do that same…I want to be careful because it seems most of the kids participating in the GRA are White and middle-class. Book #3 talks about the difference between serving someone and trying to swoop in to save them, but no kids have read The Witch’s Apprentice yet. And I realize that I need to say more about gentrification because it can lead to displacement of folks who were already paying reasonable rent. I think a lot of folks assume Jaxon is poor but he comes from a middle-class family; his mother’s a paralegal and his father was a sports journalist. Gentrification floods neighborhoods with tenants who have the means to pay a lot more for rent, and landlords sometimes try to force the former out in order to replace them with the latter. You can be working full-time in this country and still wind up on the street or living out of your car. So many veterans are homeless…it’s frustrating and heartbreaking. In my own neighborhood there’s a woman living at a bus shelter. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that. Kids sometimes ask me about Ambrose and why I chose to make him invisible. Adults don’t need to ask; they know that most of us have learned to walk past the homeless and avert our gaze to avoid taking responsibility for a major injustice in our society. Every person has the right to be housed, yet here in Chicago there are tents in many of the parks that line the lake. When I visited Seattle last year, there were streets lined with RVs because many people can no longer afford to buy or rent since Amazon came to town. As a nation, we haven’t built enough affordable housing. I’m trying to figure out the best way to help the woman living at the bus shelter. Every time my radiators start clanging, I think of her outside, buried under blankets. I’m painting and perfecting my apartment, proudly posting updates on social media, and she’s just a few blocks away with only two sheets of plexiglass to block the wind. I took some hand warmers along with a hot meal today. On Thanksgiving someone else pulled up and dropped off food as I was leaving; I’m guessing that was a church group or nonprofit so donating to those organizations is a good option. She’s clearly on folks’ radar but I’m not sure that’s very reassuring. She’s not invisible, but she’s still living outdoors. How many bus drivers pull up to that shelter day and night, see her, and then move on? The shelter is across the street from the AKA headquarters so I reached out to them today. They have a housing fund so maybe their sorors will have suggestions on the best way to help. I have a lot to be thankful for as we head into the holidays but it’s not enough to just count one’s blessings. Last weekend I was interviewed for a TV report on youth activism. Kids are already leading the way when it comes to climate change and gun violence, and children bravely faced police dogs and fire hoses during the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s. I’m not going to tell my young readers what to do, but I’m definitely going to make them aware of some problems that need solving…