Davy Brown Discovers His Roots

[Newsroom]

Velani Mynhardt Witthöft and Keely Alexander, authors of Davy Brown Discovers His Roots will be signing copies of their book in Las Vegas on Wednesday, June 3, during the opening of the AILA exhibit hall and on Saturday morning, June 6 at the AILF booth.

"The story is a great way to introduce the concept of the many ways people come to the United States permanently and temporarily. It is going to be a perfect conversation starter for a family discovering their roots or for a classroom teacher starting a unit on immigration", said Claire Tesh, of the AILF's Community Education Center.

The authors not only wanted a partner who is dedicated to immigration but also an organization to which they could donate proceeds from book sales. AILF loved the concept of the story and the partnership, and after several drafts and decisions about illustrators, book covers and other final details the book is now in print and will be sold on-line, in book stores and at the American Immigration Lawyers Association's (AILA's) Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

An exciting angle AILF is taking with the book is to have sponsors purchase a copy of the book which will then be sent to a classroom or library in a "hotspot" region of the immigration debate. Along with Southern Poverty Law Center, AILF is putting together a list of communities who will get a copy of the book.

Synopsis of Davy Brown Discovers His Roots:
Davy Brown is a bright, all-American boy with some not-so-typical problems. His best friend may be leaving the country. His teacher has just instructed the class to describe their own immigration stories—but his family doesn’t have one! And if he fails the class, he may lose his spot on the baseball team. And if all that weren’t bad enough, the cafeteria is serving coleslaw again…

Join Davy and his friends Carlos, Erika, and Amit on their quest as they discover that even the most seemingly typical people have exciting immigration histories. Then, using the resources in this book, embark on your own voyage of discovery—what fascinating immigration stories will you unearth? How many flags adorn your family tree? The answers may surprise and delight you!

We have created a story that blends the historic with the current immigration story of America to convey the message that we are all immigrants, the story of us all and a story everyone can relate to. We wanted to create a children’s book that can be read on different levels - easy enough for children to understand, but also with more substance to make the adult reader think.

We feature various types of visas and immigration paths through the stories of the children. We included a reference guide for readers and educators who want to know more about the visas and paths to immigration featured in the book.
There are symbols pointing to famous immigrants in the text and some is through the illustration only [examples would be "Google" whose co-founder is the Russian-born immigrant Sergey Brin, Einstein (E=MC2) written in the classroom, Ichiro and Beckham, the Louvre pyramid that was designed by I.M. Pei, a Chinese-born architect and a Nordstrom shopping bag, founder John W. Nordstrom, a Swedish immigrant].

Our vision for the book is, not only to be an educational tool, but for parents and children to discover and celebrate their own unique family story. We hope to create more understanding that we all share a similar background with immigration being part of every single American’s history.

We also designed a family tree to go along with the book for children to create their own family tree of flags such as Davy’s.