An ambitious invitation for young readers that delivers promise for all.
Wes Henderson wants to focus on championing his swag in middle school but instead confronts a larger challenge as his neighborhood is threatened by the forces of gentrification.
Giles debuts with a novel that provides a probing look into the complex topic of gentrification and its ever present reality for low-income urban Black neighborhoods. Wes, a Black boy and the only child of two community activist parents, would rather spend his time getting fresh to defend his fifth grade Best Dressed title than be out every weekend protesting in the hot sun. However, he’s beginning to notice the accumulating effects of neighborhood shifts; his longtime friend Kari’s family was just pushed out of their home, and there’s the arrival of new stores that ask you to “build-your-own burger” and “grind-your-own coffee.” The tensions are even beginning to affect his longtime crew as the friends navigate their own different positions. What shines throughout the book is the power of intergenerational community organizing, as the text does an admirable job of highlighting the practices and networks for defending one’s home, chosen family, and history. Younger readers may require support in decoding and connecting some of the complex concepts in this book; it could sit at the center of a transformative collective reading experience. The story echoes contemporary realities that, as its culmination indicates, take an entire community to confront, and it will undoubtedly push readers into action.
An ambitious invitation for young readers that delivers promise for all. (author's note) (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-17517-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Problem-solving through perseverance and friendship is the real win in this deeply smart and inspiring story.
Leaving Brooklyn behind, Black math-whiz and puzzle lover Bree starts a new life in Florida, where she’ll be tossed into the deep end in more ways than one. Keeping her head above water may be the trickiest puzzle yet.
While her dad is busy working and training in IT, Bree struggles at first to settle into Enith Brigitha Middle School, largely due to the school’s preoccupation with swimming—from the accomplishments of its namesake, a Black Olympian from Curaçao, to its near victory at the state swimming championships. But Bree can’t swim. To illustrate her anxiety around this fact, the graphic novel’s bright colors give way to gray thought bubbles with thick, darkened outlines expressing Bree’s deepest fears and doubts. This poignant visual crowds some panels just as anxious feelings can crowd the thoughts of otherwise star students like Bree. Ultimately, learning to swim turns out to be easy enough with the help of a kind older neighbor—a Black woman with a competitive swimming past of her own as well as a rich and bittersweet understanding of Black Americans’ relationship with swimming—who explains to Bree how racist obstacles of the past can become collective anxiety in the present. To her surprise, Bree, with her newfound water skills, eventually finds herself on the school’s swim team, navigating competition, her anxiety, and new, meaningful relationships.
Problem-solving through perseverance and friendship is the real win in this deeply smart and inspiring story. (Graphic fiction. 10-13)Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-305677-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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