Cart’s assemblage of disparate, original tales examines the indispensable—sometimes merely unavoidable—clamor and clatter of the first village. His longish introduction provides perspective on family life and the quirky power of family relationships. An odd assortment of relatives fights for its small-town family business in Joan Bauer’s story, the lightest of the lot. In Norma Howe’s, a skeptical young father stretches his imagination to admit his younger sister’s religious view of the world. The terrors of families gone wrong are here, too: there is Sonya Sones’s frightening look at a deeply angry and abusive teenager from the point of view of her principal victim—her younger sister. Joyce Carol Thomas’s mother-son voices, in her account of a young man’s schizophrenia, vibrate with hope. Six poems from Nikki Grimes retell a Bible story with contemporary echoes. Walter Dean Myers’s narrator is a father in conversation with his long-estranged son, a young man who is in his final hour on death row. A strong, challenging collection by the best in the field. (Fiction. 13+)
