Book Review: Ghost by Jason Reynolds

This book starts like this: 

"CHECK THIS OUT. This dude named Andrew Dahl holds the world record for blowing up the most balloons... with his nose....

But the main character, Ghost, soon shares, "I probably hold the world record for knowing about the most world records. That, and for eating the most sunflower seeds. 

This is a book about running. Ghost is running from his past (no spoilers) and toward a something new.  This is a book about new beginnings. About forgiveness and second chances. About moving on. AND it is a book about actual running - on a team. 

I love it when I find a novel about sports that is really about the sport, about more than the sport but a book in which the sport is featured - not just as an aside. And this is that book.

Grab some sunflower seeds (they have them at the dollar store - they even have different flavors) while you crack open the shells, crack open this book. 

You can find Ghost by Jason Reynolds on the shelves of both the Nashua Public Library and the Nashua South Library. Then read the sequels: Patina, Sunny, Lu

 

Book Review: Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Here we have a salmon salad and peanut butter sandwich (on gluten-free bread). AND Black Brother, Black Brother. How can life get better than this? You may not be brave enough to try my sandwich, but this book is worth tasting.

Black Brother, Black Brother is about biracial siblings who start attending a new school. However, their experiences are very different. Trey is the popular athletic kid but Donte is seen as a problem. What is the most visible difference between the boys? Trey is light colored, like their Norwegian-descended father,  Donte has his African American mom's coloring. 

One bully really makes Donte's life miserable. Alan is the captain of the fencing team and the bain of Donte's existence. Donte decides that the only way out of his mess is to get retribution and decides to beat Alan at his own game - fencing.

In the end notes of this book, Jewell writes that her own biracial children, one with light skin and the other with darker skin, have had very different experiences growing up in the USA. She says, "My grandmother taught me that everyone is a 'mixed-blood stew' and that diversity of appearance (skin color, hair and eye color) are to be celebrated. Everyone is human and everyone carries an ethnic heritage that results from the origins and journeys their ancestors made." 

Reading Black Brother, Black Brother reminds us that we need to celebrate our differences - it is those differences that make our world an interesting place to live. 

You can find this book on the shelf at the Nashua South library.

 

Book Review: You Should See Me in a Crown / Leah Johnson

This is one of the Flume nominees for the 2021/22 school year. The Flume award is a New Hampshire award in which teens in our state nominate books, a short list in created from those nominations, then teens vote for their favorite book. We have a display in the library of the nominees (though on August 25th many of the titles have yet to come in.)

I really liked this book a lot. Liz Lighty is black, poor, and awkward, but attends school in a mostly white, privileged community. She lives with her supportive grandparents and brother, her mother died when she was younger. Liz has a clear dream of her future - go to the college where her mother attended on a music scholarship, and study to become a doctor. She has an interest in hematology due to her brothers sickle cell anemia. And then she gets the letter from the school informing her that she didn't get the scholarship. Suddenly her life is thrown into disarray. How can she make her dreams happen without her grandparents selling their house to fund her education (which she knows that they will do if they learn about the missed scholarship and she does NOT want that to happen.)

Her friends rally behind her and they begin to scheme how she can become the Prom Queen which is attached to a $10,000 scholarship. However, this Prom Queen business is all about popularity and is a huge deal in her little town. There are petitions to get through, volunteer work to do, and she is one of those unpopular students on the edge of her school community. Toss into that mix that she has serious (vomit inducing) anxiety and she is learning that she is gay. 

This is a story about growth and learning, determination and grit, shedding one's skin to grow into a new person. 

Find You Should See Me in a Crown on the shelves at South. At Nashua public library you can find this book on the shelf, but also an audio version on Hoopla, and an ebook and audio book through Libby.

 

Book Review: Jackpot by Nic Stone

My mother always told me to not judge someone, that we must walk a mile in their shoes to understand what they are going through. And this is a story about that and about how hard that can be.

Rico works in a convenience store - making money to help pay the bills at home - to put food on the table and a roof over her family's heads.

Zan is the school rich boy - the guy with the "perfect life" with a silver spoon in his mouth - nice clothes, huge house, great car. 

(Here you need to imagine the sound car tires make when you hit the brakes suddenly)

But the truth here is that we need to understand each others' stories before we can understand each other. 

Circumstances throw Zan and Rico together after Rico determines that she sold a winning lottery ticket to an old woman who visited the store. The ticket hasn't been cashed in and Rico thinks that the woman's dementia is standing in the way of riches. Rico offers to help trace the old woman. 

As they work to find the woman, Zan and Rico learn more about each other -- slowly. And their preconceived notions begin to fall away. 

Assumptions are a perilous trap and one that we all occasionally fall into. You are young, I am old. What assumptions do you have about me? What assumptions do I have about you? How can we take off those blinders, learn each others' stories, and make our world feel like a safer place to be?

 

Book Review: Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America (edited by Ibi Zoboi)

First - let me say that today was an amazing day - April 10, 2021 and it was lovely, sunny, and warm. Lot of dog walks and some time to read - which is a good combination for an anthology. I need some time between each story to absorb its truth.

So about this specific book...

This is an amazing group of authors.
The stories are varied and all are good.
This is a fabulous way to try out the writing of different authors to see who you like.

The best way to share what this book is about it to share Ibi Zoboi's words, "What are the cultural threads that connect Black people all over the world to Africa? How have we tried to maintain certain traditions as part of our identity? And as teenagers, do we even care? These are the questions I had in mind when inviting sixteen other Black authors to write about teens examining, rebelling against, embracing or simply exsisting within their own idea of Blackness."

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. (And it is always nice to have a reading partner.)
 

Book Review: This is My America by Kim Johnson

Depending on your perspective a book can be either a window or a mirror.

We all walk through our world with different expectations and realities. My white skin makes my walk pretty easy - people generally expect the best from me. They see me as grandmotherly and not particularly threatening. I once had a police officer apologize for giving me a ticket because I was "such a nice lady."

Contrast that to the experience of an African American walking through the streets of our country. It just is not the same - and this novel illustrates that beautifully.

Tracy Beaumont has been writing to the Innocence X Headquarters regularly for years. You see, her father is sitting on death row, waiting for execution for a murder he did not commit. Tracy hopes that Innocence X will take his case an appeal his conviction. Soon enough, Tracy's brother Jamal also finds himself running from a crime that he did not commit. Tracy is concerned that her brother, just like her father, won't get a fair shake from the police or a fair trial. 

Read this book - if you are a white person - Tracy's "Know Your Rights Workshops" will give you a glimpse into a world that might astound you. You might find a window, you might even find a mirror.

Read this book - if you are black - you may see some of your own experiences between the covers of this book. You might find a mirror, you might also find a window.

Here you will find history, empathy, self reckoning, introspection, love, family, caring and a whole lot more. This is one big adventure that will have you walking in someone else's shoes - no matter who you are. 

 Make sure that you read the Author's notes at the end of the book. These notes will add additional perspective.

Book Review: Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam

 

This book tells the story of Amal, a young black teen who finds himself in the middle of a fight. The victim of the fight is seriously injured and Amal is arrested for the crime.

Things to know:

• Amal is black
• The other kid is white 

This is the story of inequality, the school to prison pipeline, about expectations and assumptions, about art and literature and poetry and family and friends... about life inside black male skin. 

This novel in verse not only punches the air, but is a punch in the gut. It is so good and will leave you thinking. 

You can find this book at the Nashua Public library or it is available through Libby or SORA (if you have attached your Nashua Public Library card.)

Before you start, watch this video about The Story Behind Punching the Air

Book Review: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness / Michelle Alexander

Alexander shares how our black and brown men are being rounded up and placed in prisons for drug offenses that are not violent, often for long prison sentences. These criminal experiences and the resulting disruption in life, along with all that comes with having a criminal record - creates an underclass that not only hurts people of color but society in general.

The author believes that we need to listen to what Martin Luther King, Jr proposed - the end of a civil rights movement and the beginning of a human rights movement. 

Book Review: How it Went Down / Kekla Magoon

Imagine witnessing a murder. On a street, in your neighborhood, right in front of you. Imagine that it was a white man and that the person killed was a black teen. What did you see? What happens next? What are the ripples?

This book begins with such a murder then each subsequent chapter is from the perspective of someone touched by this experience. What do witnesses see? What is going on in their heads? How does this impact each character?

Why read this story? Stories are complicated, people see different things. Black boys are too often killed by white people. Black Lives Matter.

Book Review: Things that Make White People Uncomfortable / Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett has a lot to say about using the athlete's voice to make this world a better, fairer, place for black people, women, and other oppressed minorities. This book is a bit of a curvy path - talking a lot about football, being a man, being human, forgiveness, the N***** word, and taking a stand by raising one's voice and through activism.

"Just because people don't eat what you eat, just because they're not from where you're from, just because they don't pray to the same god you pray to, just because they don't love who you love doesn't mean they should be treated like they are less than human."

Book Review: Monster by Walter Dean Myers

So why am I on a Walter Dean Myers kick? Myers wrote over 100 books, many about living black in urban areas. He died in 2014 but many of his stories are still relevant today.

Monster is about a 16-year-old Steve Harmon who aspires to be film producer, but finds himself locked up, among many black and brown teens, at the Manhattan detention center. He is on trial for murder after a store owner was killed during the course of a robbery. Steve allegedly made sure that there was no one in the store before this robbery took place. But is he guilty? Steve narrates this story through a film script that he writes as the plot develops. The title? The prosecutor calls Steve a Monster, and begins to wonder if that is true.

Book Review: When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele

My mom always told me to "walk a mile in their shoes". This books offers the perfect way to walk a mile while being black - something that I can't experience in my own life - this is the power of reading - it offers the impossible.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors founded Black Lives Matter. Here is her story.

Book Review: The Beast by Walter Dean Myers

"Spoon" grew up in Harlem, but due to his desire to attend an Ivy League college, he enrolled in a prep school. While there he works hard both in his academics and at his job. When he finally goes home for the first time, during Christmas vacation, he finds that the Harlem he knows is not the same. His friends have changed and not in the ways that he anticipated. Seeing these changes among his old friends, and the observing the lives of his predominately white prep school friends really highlights how the privilege that we have or do not have impacts each person's life.  This is a slow read, not a fast-paced plot driven book, but rather a quiet knitting together the beginning of a new kind of understanding.

Book Review: This Promise of Change by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy

Jo Ann Allen lived in a small community in Tennessee. There were both African American and caucasian people who lived there, but they followed very different rules. The library was for whites only as was the lunch counter. Many jobs were only available to white people. AND the schools were segregated. Jo Ann spent the first 9 years in schools for Negros (the word used at the time) before schools in Tennessee were ordered to integrate. Jo Ann and 11 other students were the first African American students to enroll in Clinton High School. Jo Ann tells her story in this memoir in verse.