How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford Kara Forde Weatherford, Carole Boston How Do You Spell Unfair?: MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee; illus. by Frank Morrison. Candlewick, 2023 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536215540 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 2-6 As a smart kid whose idea of fun was reading the dictionary, MacNolia Cox excelled at spelling, and after winning her school spelling bee in 1936, she advanced to compete at the city level. She correctly spelled words like brusque, felicitate, and voluble to become the first African American to win the Akron spelling bee, which came with a prize of twenty-five dollars and a trip to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC. However, at the event, MacNolia, her mother, and the only other African-American contestant were segregated from the white participants. In the final rounds, MacNolia misspelled a word that her supporters contested was not on the official list, but the white, Southern judges disagreed. Weatherford cleverly structures this picture book biography around the repetition of the question "Can you spell…?" to highlight words and themes germane to young MacNolia's experiences with the fame, pressure, and racist discrimination of the spelling competitions at every level. Smooth oil and spray paint illustrations emanate the characteristic warm richness of Morrison's art, and a balance between the neutral color palette and pops of jewel tones at key moments guides readers' emotional journey through the narrative. A foreword frames MacNolia's story with information about the racist ideas that underpinned the segregation of Black and white kids in spelling competitions, and an epilogue briefly describes MacNolia's later life and chronicles the efforts to integrate spelling bees, followed by a select bibliography. Despite stylistic similarities to Weatherford and Morrison's other biography collaboration R-E-S-PE-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul (BCCB 07/20), this story is superb in its own right, and would complement The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus (BCCB 11/14) in a social studies lesson that explores words through a human lens. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois