Category Archives: .Poetry

March 25, 2013 · 9:43 am

The Language Inside by Holly Thompson

Language InsideThis might be a spoiler of sorts: The advance galley is printed with a March 12, 2013 pub date, but when I went searching for an image of the book’s cover to load here, online bookstores list a May date. Hmmm … if the latter is correct, then let this post serve as urgent advice: pre-order this book now.

I don’t know what makes my usually poetry-resistant brain so appreciative of novels-in-verse, but they definitely provide moments of blissful delight. And I’m growing rather partial to Holly Thompson‘s ethnic-blending, boundary-crossing, expectation-defying titles for young adults (check out her Orchards here).

Meet Emma Karas: while her name and face might suggest otherwise, Emma is Japanese. Culturally, anyway: she’s lived most of her life there, speaks the language like a native, and has a preference for miso and ramen over hamburgers and pasta. When she’s unexpectedly uprooted to Lowell, Massachusetts, all she wants to do is go home – to Japan.

Emma’s mother has cancer. Her treatment means Emma, her brother, and their mother will live in Lowell with her father’s mother. Emma’s father visits as often as he can from his job in New York City. Emma is torn between being the supportive daughter to her suffering mother, and feeling disloyal to her Japanese friends and their families who remain in shock and mourning less than a year since the devastating 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and earthquake.

To fill some of her longing-to-be-home hours, Emma volunteers at the Newell Center for Long Term Care, where she’s assigned to work with Zena, a stroke victim who can only communicate through her eyes. Zena is a poet, and her silent words which Emma helps put to paper have a healing effect on them both. The Newell Center is also where Emma meets Samnang, a fellow high school student with a troubled past, who works with two elderly survivors of the Cambodian killing fields.

Emma and Samnang are both cultural anomalies as defined by others’ assumptions: ” … when the language outside / isn’t the language inside,” Emma writes in a poem. Emma can’t be Japanese and yet she’s not quite American. Samnang is American and yet his Cambodian features make him forever other. Could such teenagers be anything but destined for each other?

As lyrical and effecting as Language is, it’s not read without questions, specifically about narrative choices. Why did Emma’s mother need to have her treatment in the States? Surely a country as advanced as Japan would have equivalent treatment options; additionally, given how long the family has been based in Japan, close family friends seem to be abundant in Japan, and virtually nonexistent Stateside. Why would Emma’s mother choose to stay with her mother-in-law instead of her own parents in Vermont? Why would Emma’s father work in New York when his wife is so seriously ill? As kind and thoughtful as she is, why is YiaYia so resistant about the foods that might comfort her extended family most?

The questions go on, but eventually such logistical details pale as Emma and Zena’s tender relationship develops, and as Emma and Samnang tentatively fall in love. ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,’ actually comes to mind. Yes, questions linger, but ultimately, those moments of blissful delight extend … and win out.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Poetry, Cambodian American, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific

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February 27, 2013 · 9:09 am

Odette’s Secrets by Maryann Macdonald

Odette's SecretsI’m compelled to start backwards with a number: 84. As children’s writer (more than 25 times over) Maryann Macdonald explains in her ending “Author’s Note,” 84% of French children survived the horrors of World War II; in fact, “more children survived in France than in any other European country.” Macdonald, rightfully asks, “How did this happen?” When she happened on a copy of Doors to Madame Marie, the autobiography of Odette Meyers, one of the French children who managed to survive, at the American Library of Paris, she knew she had a story to tell …

“My name is Odette,” Macdonald’s compelling novel-in-verse for younger readers begins. “I live in Paris, / … My hair is curly. / Mama ties ribbons in it. / Papa reads to me and buys me toys. / I have everything I could wish for, / except a cat.” Odette is just 8 when “[a] funny-looking many with a mustache / shouts a speech. / His name is Hitler” – and war begins.

Life changes quickly, as Jewish homes are raided and destroyed, Odette’s father joins the French Army, and all Jewish people over the age of 6 must prominently display the yellow star on their clothing. “‘What makes us Jews?’ / I ask Mama one night,” for Odette’s family doesn’t go to synagogue, and “Mama and Papa don’t believe in religion.” The best answer she can understand is that “All our relatives are Jews, / so we are Jews.”

While living in constant fear, Odette and her mother’s greatest ally is Madame Marie, the apartment building’s caretaker with her husband, Monsieur Henri. The couple will save mother and daughter from the middle-of-the-night round-ups, protect Odette when her mother must flee, then securely deliver Odette to the messenger who will take her to shelter in the French countryside.

Safety for Odette comes at the cost of her very identity. No one can know that she’s Jewish, and so she must learn to be just like the other village children – by reciting the same prayers, invoking the same saints, going to Mass every Sunday. For a young child who grew up without religion, her new exposure to Catholicism brings her both comfort and conflict. “I know the reason I feel safe in the country. / It’s because here, / I am not a Jew. / In Paris, I am a Jew.”

Hidden in plain sight, Odette survives war, although she can never wholly escape its horrors. She is bullied and attacked by the same children who were her friends, and she falls silent from the relentless fear and trauma. She will not know who – or what – she is, living a lie, in order to live.

Like The Hidden Girl‘s Lola Rein, Odette’s survival depended heavily on the assistance and protection of non-Jews; unlike Lola who was forced into hiding – much of the time buried in a dark hole – only Odette’s identity was shrouded while she lived openly, attempting to be just like any other village child. Only when the war finally ends can Odette reclaim her true self: “Secrets stand in my way. / They stop me from knowing who I am. / I am a Jew. / I’m sure of it. / And I will always be one.”

Truly, the courage of children knows no bounds.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Poetry, European, Nonethnic-specific

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February 21, 2013 · 12:05 pm

Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet by Andrea Cheng, woodcuts by the author

Etched in Clay Absolute details surrounding the life of Dave the Potter are limited and uncertain. What remains of his life story almost two centuries later, is scattered with uncertain words, including ‘sometime,’ ‘about,’ ‘believed to be,’ ‘might,’ ‘possibly,’ and other such noncommittal qualifiers. The few surviving documents prove an enslaved teenager was bought by the Drake family, co-owners of Pottersville Stoneware Manufactory in Edgefield, South Carolina, in whose service he became a talented potter whose creations have survived, in small numbers, and become museum-worthy art pieces.

As if paralleling the sparse details of Dave’s life, Andrea Cheng replicates that sparseness in her slim novel-in-verse; she echoes the poetic etchings Dave added to his pottery by enhancing her verse with etched woodblock prints of her own. The result is a gorgeous, contemplative, artistic memorial to a creative life that survived unspeakable hardship while creating lasting, even subversive, beauty.

Dave’s considerable skill – recognized and lauded … and exploited – cannot save him from the horrors of slavery. His first wife was sold, and later his second wife and her two sons taken from him, as well. He himself is bought and sold within the Drake and related Landrum families. And yet, although literacy is illegal among slaves, Dave is taught to read and write, which enables to etch his name (his objections, his miseries, his screams) into the wet clay and the guarded words he can never say out loud: “horses mules and hogs – / all our cows is in the bogs – / where they will ever stay – / till the buzzards take them away =.”

As much as I’ve appreciated, learned from, and enjoyed Cheng‘s titles over the years (I think I’ve read all but four of her almost two dozen books), this, her latest, is clearly, undoubtedly, most definitely my favorite thus far. Here’s the irony: the subject of Etched in Clay just might be the furthest from her personal experience. Cheng has written numerous books inspired by her Hungarian heritage (Marika, The Lace Dowry, The Bear Makers), although she’s better known for her titles highlighting the Chinese American experience (she’s been part of a hapa Chinese American family since college) including The Key Collection, Shanghai Messenger, Only One Year, and The Year of the Book; Clay is definitely her first, and thus far her only, book with the history of American slavery at its core. So much for ‘write what you know.’ Every so often, talent just trumps all.

Tidbit: In the ending “Author’s Note,” Cheng credits Leonard Todd and his book for adults, Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of Slave Potter Dave, for sparking her initial interest in Dave’s story, and later for “helping me so much with this project.” For interested readers, Todd’s website is a treasure trove of further information. The Smithsonian, by the way, owns two of Dave’s pieces (!); click here to see one of his poem jars collected by the National Museum of American History.

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Biography, .Nonfiction, .Poetry, African American, Chinese American

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January 1, 2013 · 12:13 pm

America the Beautiful: Together We Stand by Katharine Lee Bates, illustrated by Bryan Collier, Raúl Colón, Diane Goode, Mary GrandPré, John Hendrix, Yuyi Morales, Jon J. Muth, LeUyen Pham, Sonia Lynn Sadler, and Chris Soentpiet

America the BeautifulReady to ring in the new year? Sing with me now – I’m pretty sure you know the words to this one: “O beautiful for spacious skies …” Yes, the patriotic classic gets a brand new kiddie book … with phenomenal illustrations created by a long list of award-winning artists who each command a line of the 1893 poem by pioneering poet/professor Katharine Lee Bates.

Every illustrated-stanza-double-paged-spread also includes a pithy presidential quote, from George Washington to Barack Obama. No worries – the choices are most definitely non-partisan: Jimmy Carter, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, FDR and his (fifth) cousin Teddy Roosevelt, and George H.W. Bush, all get a say. And, just in case you’re feeling like you’re missing a favorite president, the whole book cover cleverly opens up on the other side to showcase all 44 POTUSes!

The awe-inspiring result might represent a rather different U.S. of A. than perhaps our forefathers envisioned centuries ago, but America the Beautiful is nothing less than stupendous. Take that cover, for instance: the always-delight-inducing LeUyen Pham‘s vision for ” … with brotherhood …” couldn’t be more inclusive, not to mention accurate for what 21st-century America looks like. And, call me crazy (many have), but I like to think that’s young Sasha Obama reaching for the stars! Go, girl, go!

To quote our favorite peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter: “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” The perfect words to start a thus-far perfect, brand new year. Here’s to a happy, merry, healthy 2013 to all indeed!

Tidbit: Can I just say that certain folks in the publishing world had major faith in Obama’s re-election??!! The book (which pubs today) arrived in my mailbox quite a bit before November 6, 2012. The bottom right picture on the POTUS  grid of the inside-side-of-the-cover – specifically the spot for the current president – just happens to be none other than Barack Obama … leaving no room whatsoever for anyone but. I’m just saying …

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, .Poetry, Nonethnic-specific

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December 3, 2012 · 8:02 am

Publisher Interview: Sunyoung Lee and Kaya Press

Early this year, at almost 18 years old, Kaya Press flew the nest. Leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of New York’s publishing world, the non-profit indie specializing in “books from the Asian diaspora,” moved offices across the country to Los Angeles. Now comfortably ensconced in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity on the University of Southern California campus, Kaya has a new address, new community, new books, new staff, and is definitely basking in new energy.

With all the latest changes, the one Kaya constant is Sunyoung Lee… although she does have the fairly new title of “Publisher and Editor.” Founded in 1994 by Soo Kyung Kim, a postmodern Korean writer, Kaya was originally intended to house a journal of Korean literature-in-translation, which eventually morphed into Muae, a spirited anthology highlighting the newest in Asian Pacific American writing that Library Journal named one of “The Best Magazines of 1995.” Muae fell victim to the Korean economic collapse of 1997, but under the bolstering management of Juliana Koo and Lee, who took over that year as managing editor and editor, respectively, Kaya managed to survive – and thrive – living up to its namesake: “Kaya was the name of a tribal confederation of six Korean city-states that existed from the middle of the first until the sixth century CE,” their website officially explains. “Although the Kaya kingdom was an iron-age culture, it is remembered as a utopia of learning, music, and the arts due to its trade and communication with China, Japan, and India.”

Kaya Press channels that international history, feeding its artistic vision by regularly pushing the boundaries of the Asian Pacific Islander (API) diaspora through the titles the tenacious press has published thus far. A small sampling might include an enhanced reprint of the groundbreaking 1937 classic East Goes West by the first Korean American novelist Younghill Kang; American Book Award-winning The Unbearable Heart by Japanese German American poet Kimiko Hahn; Chinese Australian Brian Castro’s already-major-award-winning-in-Australia novel, Shanghai Dancing; the lauded Commonwealth Prize-winning Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel, which was the first novel by a Samoan woman to be published in the United States; and Migritude by Kenyan-born, South Asian-descended, citizen-of-the-world performance artist Shailja Patel.

The word “kaya” echoes the diversity of its authors: in addition to its ancient Korean representation, in Japanese, Kaya is also “summer night” or a type of yew tree that withstands harsh environmental conditions; in Malay, kaya means “rich”; in Indonesian, “prosperous”; in Tagalog, “to be able”; in Sanskrit, “body”; in Turkish “rock”; in Zulu, “home.”

For Lee, home is where the press is. In order to sustain it, she’s worked endless day jobs and freelance gigs – from Billboard magazine to Publishers Weekly – in addition to teaching the requisite composition classes, to pay the bills so she could nurture Kaya well into its teenage years. Now that she’s settled into rooms of her own at USC, Lee’s ushering out the next set of Kaya titles: Lament in the Night, which includes two 1920s Japanese American novellas by Shōson Nagahara, translated by Andrew Leong; The Hanging on Union Square, an experimental novel originally published in 1935 by H. T. Tsiang; Water Chasing Water by Seattle-based poet Koon Woon; and Korean American adoptee Nicky Sa-eun Schildkraut’s debut poetry in Magnetic Refrain.

It’s been a full decade since we officially talked about Kaya. So, what’s your latest, greatest news?
The biggest news, as you know, is that we moved to LA this year. We’re publishing a bunch of new books, and a lot of wonderful new people are working with us. This is the largest group of people we’ve had involved with Kaya. USC gives us funding to pay for two part-time grad students – they’re 25% part-time – and we also get a lot of volunteers. Their involvement – both undergraduate and graduate students – means while they learn hands-on about the publishing process, I’ve been able to do more strategic work, to put more energy into Kaya, and that’s been really gratifying. [... click here for more]

Publisher interview: “Feature: Sunyoung Lee and Kaya Press,” Bookslut.com, December 2012

Readers: Adult

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Filed under ...Author Interview/Profile, ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Poetry, .Translation, Chinese American, Japanese American, Korean American, Pan-Asian, Pan-Asian Pacific American

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November 8, 2012 · 12:19 pm

The Revolution Happened and You Didn’t Call Me by Maged Zaher

For those of you who know me, this is no surprise: poetry is my literary Achilles’ heel. But my contrary nature occasionally gets brave enough to try again, and the few times I eke out some level of comprehension, you’ll read about it here. [Any illumination offered will be much appreciated and, even more so, encouraged: Please don't make me beg.]

So a (renowned) poet friend alerted me to this slim collection when I mentioned that contemporary Egypt was my latest literary destination for my other major project, 10×10: Educate Girls | Change the World. The tiny book itself is an exquisitely bound creation – designed by Allison Hanabusa, a just-out-of-college artist clearly talented far beyond her youth – that is as much about its sparse content as the experiences not included, missing, forgotten, overlooked. I’m still not quite sure if I should read it as one epic piece or many related snippets … I decided (perhaps because of my penchant for prose) to go with the former.

Defying categorization, Revolution is part travelogue, part mocking commentary, part surprised questioning, part cultural rediscovery. Over not-quite 70 pages, the Seattle-based Maged Zaher journeys twice to his native Cairo, his travel commencing six months after the Egyptian Revolution initially erupted in January 2011. “The revolution happened and you didn’t call me,” he expounds.

Like most of the world, Zaher’s revolutionary participation happened virtually, from a great distance: “if you follow the attached link / The state will happily deliver its violence to your computer screen.” Zaher seems to both channel and contrast the oft-cited 1970 poem by Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which demands immediacy: “You will not be able to stay home, brother / You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out / … The revolution will be no re-run brothers; / The revolution will be live.”

Zaher’s transnational identity makes him both insider and other in both the U.S. and Egypt: “It is Cairo,” he writes during his first return. “So I am up all night / Texting flawed translations.” His multi-lingual, postponed participation of what happened in his homeland is both privileged and distanced, as he questions, “What would it look like without this second language”? He watches with sharp eyes the latest mutations of “a city under heavy rebranding,” complete with “bearded men / And lovers / Walking to McDonald’s / (The one next to the armored vehicle).” He finds himself in a “coffee shop,” “[s]urrounded by judgmental cops / And fear of imagined violence / … As I am watching the world go digital.”

Fear looms. Uncertainty remains certain. But that ubiquitous digital connection will make sure that the next revolution, every revolution, will be televised, an infinite loop playing over and over again, live participation ever optional.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Poetry, Egyptian, Egyptian American

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September 30, 2012 · 12:09 pm

B by Sarah Kay, illustrated by Sophia Janowitz

Although spoken word artist Sarah Kay‘s TED debut was over a year-and-a-half-ago, her video seems to be in the midst of re-discovery. Via email, listservs, and (dreaded) Facebook, her poetry kept appearing in my daily life this last week, which (of course) prompted me to buy her book (which led me to discover quite a unique publishing endeavor called The Domino Project, brainchild of Seth Godin – yes, the Tribes dude).

“B” is a love poem Kay wrote for her as-yet unmet child: ”If I should have a daughter, / instead of Mom, she’s going to call me Point B. / Because that way she knows that no matter what happens, / at least she can always find her way to me.”

Click here to witness Kay in vibrant motion, complete with standing ovation. Then click here to order the book, because both experiences are so very different, even as they are inextricably linked.

The book (it’s always about the book) is filled with magical wonder. Watch the video first and you’ll hear Kay’s expressive voice on every page as you hover over whimsically blended, black-and-white watercolor illustrations that are in such perfect synch with Kay’s words that they could only have been created by someone who knows her deeply, soulfully, eternally. Indeed, Sarah Kay and her illustrator Sophia Janowitz met when they were three months old, and are bound together by a renegade history that began with a time-out they shared at age 4 “for finger-painting all over the white wall of Sophia’s bedroom. It was worth it.”

As Janowitz’s slender brush dots the page, Kay writes, “And I’m going to paint the solar systems / on the backs of her hands, / so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, / ‘Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.’” In all her efforts to protect her, Kay is no Pollyanna-delusioned mother; she knows that “this life will hit you / hard, / in the face” but she also promises her daughter that “the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman / isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows / she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself.” Kay will be waiting with chocolate (even if “there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix”) and rain boots (“[b]ecause rain will wash away everything, if you let it”).

Kay shares her own mama’s wisdom with her daughter-to-be, wrapping her in confidence and renewal (“You will put the wind in win(d)some, / lose some. / You will put the star in starting over and over”). And whenever things might get to be too much, “when they finally hand you heartache, / when they slip war and hatred under your door, / and offer you handouts on street-corners of / cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they / really ought to meet your mother.”

Presented with breathtaking power, “B” is a three-generational celebration of mother/daughter-hood. Perhaps I’m stretching a bit, but surely Kay chooses the letter B for a reason. Here’s the way I see it … the top loop is the mother, the bottom the daughter, and the line is each woman who connects the generations before and after her, not to mention … well, the letter B bears a certain resemblance to body parts that distinctly say ‘woman’ … Be a mother, be a daughter. Be both. Be all.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2011

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Poetry, Hapa, Japanese American

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April 9, 2012 · 3:33 pm

Sông I Sing: Poems by Bao Phi

April is National Poetry Month. Every once in a long while, even a poetry-dullard like me has a poetic WOW!-moment. Certainly I’m not alone … Bao Phi is a nationally-lauded performance poet, twice winning the Minnesota Grand Poetry Slam and twice winning poetry slams at Nuyorican Poets Cafe in NYC. He’s appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry (season 3, episode 6), and was a National Poetry Slam finalist in 2000. His poem, “Race,” was selected in The Best American Poetry 2006.

Given his credentials, that Sông I Sing is Phi’s first collection is somewhat surprising, as welcome as it is. [He did previously debut three chapbooks Last Name First (2005), The Way We Pay (2004), and Surviving the Translation: Collected Poems from 1993-2002 (2002).] Dedicated “for my Asian American people,” Phi’s work is racial, historical, political, sociological … most of all, even when he’s subdued and thoughtful, Phi is angry – powerfully, elegantly, justifiably angry.

Of the four sections, each prefaced by the words of a fellow ethnic writer (Lac Su, Julie Otsuka, Pablo Neruda, Joy Harjo, David Mura), the second and longest proves most resonating for its simplicity and complexity both. Titled “The Nguyễns,” Phi opens with a quote from Julie Otsuka’s astonishing When the Emperor Was Divine: “Who am I? You know who I am. Or you think you do … I’m the one you call Gook. I’m the one you don’t see at all – we all look alike …”

In the section’s 14 poems, all share the common Vietnamese name Nguyễn, they might have had a few similar experiences, but none of them ‘look alike’: Vu Nguyễn from Sacramento wants his revenge against Chavis Johnson “for pushing me down in ninth grade / and calling me gook”; Kaylee Nguyễn from Chicago who, as a chef, wants to tell you “that when I see the wilted attempts at vegan Vietnamese cuisine / made by white people in co-ops / I think of Britney Spears in an áo dài”; John Nguyễn who is serving out his ROTC in Iraq who insists, “let no one say I fought this war to make a better world / for our unborn children”; Katrina Nguyễn from New Orleans who “never heard my own name more often … [b]ut no one sees me”; Dotty Nguyễn from Dallas who pleads “Ask me anything, just don’t ask me / To stop calling you my mother”; and Vinh and Linda Nguyễn sharing a fire escape reminisce about going “to that f**ked-up poetry show / even when I told you I felt like watching spoken word / was like paying five bucks to get punched repeatedly in the face / and say thank you – .” Despite the anger, Phi surely knows how to laugh, too …

This week in DC is not unlike a Bao Phi-celebration. With the annual AAAS (Association of Asian American Studies) Conference in capital residence, you’ll have multiple public opportunities to see, hear, experience Phi in livetime:

All you need to do is choose one … or more.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2011

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Poetry, Vietnamese American

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February 24, 2012 · 9:37 am

The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan, illustrated by Peter Sís

“On a continent of many songs, in a country shaped like the arm of a guitarrista, the rain drummed down on the town of Temuco [Chile],” the invitingly dreamy Dreamer begins. Neftalí Reyes, the eponymous dreamer, is most content to live in a world of stories, ideas, and the smallest things that seem to overtake his never-resting imagination.

He lives in constant fear of his overbearing father, who seems to have nothing but hurtful insults and disappointed impatience for his younger son. Thankfully, Neftalí finds emotional shelter with his nurturing stepmother Mamadre, and his younger sister Laurita. But even they cannot guard against Father’s rants against anything but the practical: he’s already forbidden a music career for Neftalí’s talented older brother Rodolfo, trampling his soul. And Father is scathingly clear about the little regard he has for the brave journalism of Mamadre’s brother Orlando – whom Neftalí idolizes – with which Uncle Orlando is tirelessly fighting for the rights of the abused, indigenous peoples.

In spite of his father’s bullying, Neftalí manages to find moments of grace. He befriends a widowed swan, experiences first love, finds purpose in his first job helping his uncle in (and out of!) his newspaper office. He finds his own voice as a writer … and claims his identity as separate from his father when he names himself Pablo Neruda, “to save Father the humiliation of having a son who is a poet.”

Yes, Neftalí Reyes is the real name of the legendary Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. With spare evocative prose from Pam Muñoz Ryan and whimsical pointillist illustrations by Peter Sís, the dynamic duo use Neruda’s haunting, formative years to create a gorgeous biographical novel of remarkable depth. Young readers will surely experience Neftalí’s fear, his longing, his joy, his aching, his gratitude, his unconditional love … and, most of all, his hope that his words would eventually make “hearts eager to feel all that he could dream.”

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2010, 2012 (paperback reprint)

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Fiction, .Poetry, Latino/a, South American

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January 16, 2012 · 9:33 am

Freedom’s a-Callin Me by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Rod Brown

From the power duo who created We Troubled the Waters comes another memorable volume detailing the African American experience – this time, re-imagining the death-defying, life-saving journey from slavery to freedom along the Underground Railroad.

Combining powerful verse and richly textured paintings, Ntozake Shange and Rod Brown begin in the fields, where the horror of “that whip bouncing off somebody’s back” means a momentary “chance to get / right out of here” while the brutal overseer is otherwise engaged. In spite of attack dogs, hunger, and exhaustion ahead, the mere possibility of “ah may may be free” drives the dangerous journey onward.

Season after season, brave souls attempted freedom by “followin the north star,” relying on “this one good white man [who] got a clue for me,” choosing “death or freedom,” outrunning the slave trackers, mourning the “one of us [who] didn’t make it north,” and doing anything and everything possible to get to “freedom’s land” … until “finally ah am ridin through free air.”

From the legendary Sojourner Truth to “treacherous” slave hunters, to a wealthy abolitionist who may “look jus’ like mastah / oh but he aint,” to all the brave heroes – black and white – who never gave up on the promise of freedom regardless of personal cost: “Lawdy Lawdy we been blessed / Glory Hallelujah”!

As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. today, we must also remember the heroes whose names did not survive history, but whose selfless deeds helped ensure a better future. Freedom’s a-callin’ us all: listen carefully and ensure that the courageous, all-too-often anonymous struggle for equity and justice continues throughout the world …

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Poetry, African American

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