Jamille Thomas, the media specialist at Marguerite Vann Elementary School in Conway, long lamented the lack of good books for boys.
After she shared her opinion at a conference, someone asked, “Why don’t you write a book for boys?”
“That was a challenge,” Thomas said.
She decided to write about “the most important boy in my life,” her father, Gary Rogers of Benton.
Thomas published Be Kind. Be Brave. Be A Hero. on July 16, his 70th birthday. The book is dedicated to him.
In 2016, she was one of 10 national winners of the I Love My Librarian Award, an initiative of the American Library Association. Her platform was “boys and books” and the Distinguished Gentleman’s Club, which she started at Marguerite Vann Elementary to help improve the achievement gap among boys and girls.
The book is geared toward children ages 8 to 12. It’s considered fiction, but it is the true story of her dad’s life with some names and places changed. He is called William Thomas Rogers in the book.
She said the themes of the book are kindness, integration, strong family values and how to handle bullying. She always considered her father to be a hero, but Thomas said that when she wrote the book, she found out more about her father’s life.
Growing up, he was bullied, primarily by white children, Thomas said, and he faced integration in the first grade. He didn’t want to go to an integrated school, and his parents didn’t make him. Rogers didn’t tell his children about his negative experiences until they were adults, Thomas said.
“He didn’t want us to judge people,” Thomas said. “He didn’t want it to influence our decisions.”
Rogers said he was “totally shocked” and touched when he received the book.
“She had been asking me questions about my growing up,” Rogers said. “I never talked about it a lot. I thought, ‘Why is she asking all this now?’ A lot of it wasn’t worth talking about. When you go through some rough stuff growing up, you want your kids to have it better.”
Thomas said she spent more than a year gathering information about her father. Her mother, an elementary school teacher, died of breast cancer in 1999, when Thomas was a teenager, and her grandmother, “who knew everything,” died the year before Thomas published the book.
Thomas said she could find only one childhood photo of her father. She found out that he was self-conscious because he was more dark-skinned than his six siblings, and he was the only one who wore glasses.
She also wanted a book where boys could see a professional black role model, not another athlete or superhero.
“I’m sure LeBron James wears a tie, but in the books, he’s not,” she said. “A lot of our boys don’t have males in the home.”
Thomas started the Distinguished Gentleman’s Club at Marguerite Vann Elementary School. It’s open to all third- and fourth-grade boys, and she brings in mentors from the community. The students wear shirts and ties to their meetings and learn etiquette and how to make good choices, she said.
“Throughout the book, kindness is showcased,” she said. “[My father’s] siblings are kind to each other; the teacher is kind.”
Her father had a first-grade teacher who was kind to him, and she is in the book, too.
When he was in high school, he worked at a drive-in, and every night when he walked to the bus stop after work, a yellow car with white boys in it would chase him. One day, Rogers bought a small pocket knife. When they started yelling at him and following him, he stopped, said a prayer for protection and put his hand in his pocket.
That scared the bullies, and they left, Thomas said.
She said her father continued to work in that situation because he was saving money for college.
Rogers worked at the Wrightsville Boys Training School, then the Alexander Youth Services Center, where he said he became the first black superintendent. He later opened a youth center in North Little Rock and retired in 2005 as personnel director for the Arkansas Department of Human Services.
While her father was working in Alexander, he met a young man named Sydney, who was there for stealing, and he is in the book. She said her father counseled the young man, and more than 30 years later, Sydney wrote Rogers and told him, “You changed my life,” and told Rogers he’d graduated from college.
Thomas said because it was her first book, she had no idea how to publish it. She was referred to the Conductor, a public-private partnership through the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and Startup Junkie Consulting. It supports innovation and entrepreneurial and small-business ventures, and through it she was connected with a free consultant.
Thomas asked Monica Garcia, a kindergarten teacher at Marguerite Vann, to do the illustrations. Thomas had noticed the drawings in Garcia’s classroom and asked who did them. She found out Garcia was the artist, albeit a reluctant one.
“I said I’d never illustrate,” Garcia said, sitting on the couch in the elementary library. “It’s a lot of work, and I’m slow.”
But when Thomas told her about the focus of the book, Garcia changed her mind.
“She told me the story, and it hit my heart,” Garcia said, “and I knew I could not say no to it.”
The self-taught artist used family photographs that Thomas gave her to create the detailed illustrations throughout the book.
“My favorite part about it was I got to have all her old family photos,” Garcia said. “I felt like I was part of her family. I was fully invested. My heart was in it.”
She said working on the book with Thomas “made me a better artist, and now we’re friends.”
Garcia, however, is critical of her drawings, “Overall, it portrayed what Jamille was trying to get at, and her dad loved it.”
Rogers said he was impressed with the artwork.
“Yes, that was wonderful. Monica, she did a wonderful job; she did,” he said.
Thomas said all the elementary school libraries in Conway will receive a copy of the book.
It’s her first book, but not her last.
Thomas said she and Garcia plan to collaborate on another book, this one featuring Hispanic characters.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.