The Boy From Tomorrow

Description:

Josie and Alec both live at 444 Sparrow Street. They sleep in the same room, but they’ve never laid eyes on each other. They are twelve years old and a hundred years apart.

The children meet through a hand-painted talking board—Josie in 1915, Alec in 2015—and form a friendship across the century that separates them. But a chain of events leave Josie and her little sister Cass trapped in the house and afraid for their safety, and Alec must find out what’s going to happen to them. 

Can he help them change their future when it’s already past?

My thoughts:

The premise is interesting. A Ouija board found in an old house connects two children living in the same house 100 years apart. Once readers accept that part of the fantasy, then this book becomes a sweet adventure, a dark thriller and a tribute to friendship. 

I think the strength in this story is that the Ouija board is not used as the main mode of communication. This makes it stronger because of the negative, dark, occult reputation of the Ouija board. This is not that kind of story. 

Instead, our protagonist, Alec uses Google, the New York public library, microfiche and a little detective work to find letters hidden in the house. What makes it fun is that he is the one who tells Josie that she will hide these letters a hundred years later before she actually has written any letters. Without spoiling the story, just when I think the tricks of the book have been played out, the author brings in more surprises. 

A sweet, feel-good read.

Last sentences:

Their discovery, their secret, their impossible friendship: it was all still ahead of him. She raised the glass to her mouth, smiling to herself as she took the first sip.

Advanced digital copy provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review. 

The Sobbing School

Description:

The Sobbing School, Joshua Bennett’s mesmerizing debut collection of poetry, presents songs for the living and the dead that destabilize and de-familiarize representations of black history and contemporary black experience. What animates these poems is a desire to assert life, and interiority, where there is said to be none. Figures as widely divergent as Bobby Brown, Martin Heidegger, and the 19th-century performance artist Henry Box Brown, as well as Bennett’s own family and childhood best friends, appear and are placed in conversation in order to show that there is always a world beyond what we are socialized to see value in, always alternative ways of thinking about relation that explode easy binaries.

My thoughts:

March was African American history month and April is poetry month so this is both late and on time, however it is the poetry over the content that stands out for me. This is a mentor text that I can create lessons around just because of the craft of Bennett's words.

These words, the arrangement, the rhythm is best when he is talking about things that are very personal to the author.  It was a great read on the plane where I had to stay focused in a claustrophobic space so I could hear the voice in my head as I read.

For example, the way the words play on each other in "Taxonomy" makes what is dead (blank paper, blinking cursor, black letters arranged just so) look life like. And yet without the capitalization, there is just fake breath, transformation, but no real inhale, just hiccups like sobbing. 

as cormorant. as crow. as colon. as comma/as coma. as shadow. as shade. as show. 

I was almost finished with the book and still wondering why it was called The Sobbing School but the title poem on page 52 was so crafted that I lost the message and had to reread and reread. I got caught in the alliteration and could not focus on anything but how I could use this to teach breath and editing and intentionality of craft.

The Sobbing School

is where I learned to brandish the black like a club,/you know, like a blunt object, or cobalt flashes of strobe/dotting damp walls after dusk drops the dark motion/our modern world can't hold.

 Finally, I always wonder how to end these posts. I have more to say but don't want to say it. I continuously edit my thinking because certain ideas, like how exactly I would use something or what student by name needs to read this book are just my ideas. They should not add to or inhibit another person's reading. But somehow, I have an issue with closure, so I'm trying something new here. I just want to include the last sentence of whatever I am reading and maybe that will help. Maybe it will not, but I won't know until I try it on for size.

Last sentence:

Expect the flood.

Denmark Vesey's Garden

Like Sachiko by Caren Stilson, I have been on the hunt for a well researched multi genre mentor text on slavery. The introduction to this book promises just that:

Denmark Vesey's Garden - the first book to trace the memory of slavery from its abolition in 1865 to the present - offers historical context for this contemporary divide. 

This book, on the complexity of black history in America, uses  Charleston, South Carolina to tell a much larger story about race relations.  This extensively researched book covers both what is known and what is normally hidden (or forgotten).   Although this is not for my audience of middle level readers, this is definitely a powerful resource for my social studies colleagues who are interested in bringing into their classroom larger ideas around perspective, historic empathy and the grayness of cause and effect. 

An early digital copy was provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review.