URBAN PLAYGROUND

An unusual collection offers interviews with California schoolchildren.

In her unconventional nonfiction debut, Burke compiles interviews with a group of San Francisco school kids on a broad array of subjects. The author presents these interviews as fleshed-out profiles, providing readers with short biographical details about each of her interviewees, stitching their responses into a conversational narrative. Burke follows each piece with a selection of discussion questions clearly aimed at children roughly the same age as the kids described in the book. Readers meet youngsters like 9-year-old Silas, who likes living in San Francisco but thinks parts of it are a bit “sketchy.” He appreciates the fact that the city isn’t “cold” like Washington, D.C. (readers from the Midwest and New England will wince a bit), which prompts the discussion question: “Would you rather visit a hot or cold weather place, and why?” The author also presents 9-year-old Lilah, who lives in the Castro District and loves soccer (her favorite thing about the sport is the teamwork). This sparks the discussion question: “If you play soccer, or if you ever did play, do you think it would be more fun to run around or defend your team’s goal, and why?” And readers encounter 6-year-old Eliza, who likes San Francisco, particularly its birds—she loves to chirp to them. (“Do you talk to birds?” the discussion question goes. “And if so, do you tweet at them or say something else?”) These enjoyable profiles are uniformly charming and unguarded peeks into the worlds and minds of kids in one city, and the discussion questions are general enough to be very useful in leading to fun conversations with similarly aged children. But by restraining to such a marked degree from editorializing, Burke misses an opportunity to make the lively book even more captivating for her adult readers, many of whom will want more context about the kids’ lives and environments. Still, the direct voices of these children are quite intriguing in their own right.

An engaging series of glimpses into the minds and priorities of kids in San Francisco.