Reading Club: Teenage Literature | Chrysanthi Tsiambali, Rosa Parks: For a Place in the World

In January, the SNFCC Teenagers’ Reading Club continues its meetings, facilitated by comic book artist and translator Thanasis Petrou as facilitator. Books of his include: Giannoulis Halepas. The Myth of Modern Greek Sculpture (on a script by Dimitris Vanellis, Patakis Publishers, 2019); Gra-Grou (on a script by Tassos Zafiriadis and Yannis Palavos, Ikaros Publishers); At the Battle of Marathon (Patakis Publishers, 2015).

The book we will be reading together this month is Rosa Parks: For a Place in the World by Chrysanthi Tsiambali 30 Book Club members, aged 12 to 16, take a cue from this delightful mystery novel and engage in conversation, creating and discovering new worlds through the book's pages.

Don't worry if you haven't been able to read the entire book, or if you’ve missed our previous meeting. Each month, the Reading Club facilitator, Thanasis Petrou, will be giving us a new cue, announcing the book that we will all be reading together over the weeks to follow. At the end of the month, the group of people who have read the book (or at least half of it) will be meeting to exchange thoughts, impressions, feelings and concerns, triggered by what we have just read, whether we liked it a lot or not so much.

The plot

While Rosa Parks is growing up in Alabama, alongside her mother and grandparents, she keeps hearing the phrase: “keep away from White children.”

White kids can talk as bad as they want to Black ones; Black kids are not allowed to talk back. Rosa wants to be educated, because she believes this is how she can change her life.

Rosa must be constantly cautious.

She lives in a world that is cruel and unfair, full of bans for African-Americans. In a world where bus seats, toilets, lifts, libraries, even public water fountains are segregated, with Black people using different ones than those used by the Whites.

When in 1955 she refuses to give up her seat for a White passenger on a bus, she is arrested and imprisoned.

This refusal is only the beginning; her persistent struggle for civil rights will last her entire life.

The author:  

Chrysanthi Tsiambali was born in 1975 in Larissa, where she lives. She holds a degree from the School of Early Childhood Education of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The following books of hers are available from Psichogios Publications: Christmas Decorations and Mischievous Antics; A Mouse Like No Other (2009 “Penelope Maximou” award of the Greek IBBY – Kyklos Paidikou Vivliou); Vasilis and the Angry Paintings; and many more.
 

A few words about the Reading Club facilitator:

Thanasis Petrou was born in 1971 in Thessaloniki. He studied French Literature in Thessaloniki and Paris, and holds a postgraduate degree in Sociolinguistics. In 2002, he won the first prize in the comic book competition (“New Talents” category) organized by “9” magazine of Eleftherotypia newspaper in collaboration with the AKTO School of Art & Design. From 2002 to 2005, he studied on a scholarship at the Sketch, Comic Book & Cartoon department of AKTO. He has worked as a French teacher, a translator, an illustrator, a musician. From 2005 to 2011, he worked with "9" magazine of Eleftherotypia newspaper. Since 2012, he has been teaching at AKTO. From 2008 to 2022, 16 comic books of his have been published by various publishers, both on scripts of his own and on scripts by other authors (Dimitris Vanellis, Katerina Servi, Pavlos Methenitis, Tassos Zafiriadis, Yannis Palavos et al.). His latest book is: “1923: Hostile Homeland” (Ikaros Books, 2022).

Sunday 29/01
13.00-14.30

ΖΟΟΜ

For children aged 12 to 16
Free admission with online pre-registration

Pre-registration starts on 04/01, at 12.00

To participate in the Reading Club, it is necessary for those who hold a position to have read the book of the month. (It is also useful to have it with them).

Chrysanthi Tsiambali's book Rosa Parks: For a Place in the World is available in Greek by Psichogios Publications.

As part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center's collaboration with the National Library of Greece, the book for the Reading Club has been chosen by NLG staff members.