Review of The Crossover

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Kwame. The Crossover. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. ISBN 9780544107717

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Josh "Filthy McNasty" and Jordan "JB" Bell are the most skilled players on their middle school basketball team. The twins love the game, but are super competitive on their court and with each other. When JB begins a relationship with Alexis, and develops priorities other than basketball and his family, Josh does not know how to deal with the change in their relationship and acts out violently, causing Josh to lose his spot on the team and risk everything he has worked so hard for. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Chuck "Da Man" Bell is raising twin 12-year-old boys, Josh and Jordan, in his basketball image of greatness. They love the game and are highly competitive players on their middle school basketball team, but the boys are growing apart, as Jordan begins to focus on girls in a way that Josh can't contemplate —yet. 

In this moving free verse novel, author Kwame Alexander introduces readers to what it's like when the main focus of play in childhood shifts and changes our peer and family relationships in the most uncomfortable ways. The novel is told from Josh's perspective. In his poetry, he and his alter ego,"Filthy McNasty," are unstoppable on the basketball court. He is the only member of his team that can dunk the ball. He has the fastest, most dominant moves. Off the court, the twins' mother has reinforced that education comes first because basketball can't last forever. The family understands this fact firsthand, as Chuck's promising career was ended early due to knee injury and now, in his late 30's, Chuck is trying to live his life with his boys while balancing a scary heart condition. 

The poetry in Alexander's story is sharp, moving, and rhythmically aggressive, like Josh's moves on the court. In the poem "Conversation" Josh is direct with his father about his health issues. "In the car/ I ask Dad/ if going to the doctor/ will kill him./ He tells me/ he doesn't trust doctors,/ that my grandfather did/ and look where it got him:/ six feet under/ at forty five/" (p. 123). 

Alexander balances many coming-of-age themes including: competition, romance, team work, practice, and independence throughout the book. He also addresses common issues with being black in America, like when Chuck is pulled over for a broken taillight while taking Josh to a basketball game. His fame makes the uncomfortable stop more tolerable, but for the reader it resonates with the fear African Americans feel when they are often pulled over for driving while black. 

My favorite portrayal of the book though comes from the way Alexander has Josh describe both his mother, who happens to be his assistant principal, and her no nonsense way of putting school, health and family before basketball, and his descriptions of Alexis, his brother's girlfriend, otherwise known as "Sweet Tea," whom he likes because she's a basketball junkie, but also hates because her relationship with Jordan has created an emotional distance between the brothers. In the poem "Things I Learn at Dinner" you can feel the apprehension Josh feels about disliking Alexis. "She knows how to do a crossover./ Her AAU team won a championship./ She's got game./ ... She smells like sugarplum. She has a sister in college. HER SISTER GOES TO DUKE" (p. 172). 

Most of the book is set either at the twins' home or at their school or on the court at local schools and the gym. Alexander focuses on what brings people to their "Tipping Point" when, as adolescents, they have difficulty regulating their emotions, and how the action they take after emotional faltering is an important part of learning how to grow up. 

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S) and AWARDS
Newbery Medal Honor Book
Coretta Scott King Honor Award, 2015
School Library Journal Best Book, Middle Grade, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Best Book
An ALA Notable Children's Book, Older Readers, 2015

From Booklist
"An accomplished author and poet, Alexander eloquently mashes up concrete poetry, hip hop, a love of jazz, and a thriving family bond." 

From Kirkus Reviews
"This novel in verse is rich in character and relationships. Most interesting is the family dynamic that informs so much of the narrative, which always reveals, never tells."

5. CONNECTIONS
Other novels by Kwame Alexander: 

• Booked. ISBN 9780544570986
• He Said, She Said. ISBN 9780062118981

Additional books by Kwame Alexander:

• Crush: Love Poems for Teenagers. ISBN 9781499364781
• Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets. ISBN 9780763680947
• The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life. ISBN 9780544570979

Kwame Alexander has been a lot of things in his career: a former high school English teacher, a former radio show host, a music producer, but foremost, he is a poet and a writer. According to his website, Alexander has written 24 books and his characters are often wonderfully smart, strong and represent the complexity of social issues surrounding being black in America.

The Crossover is a wonderful access point for middle grade and middle school readers to discover the power of poetry in contemporary fiction, as well as gaining insight into the American experience of diversity outside of what is typical in canonized literature. 

Alexander's books do something not a lot of other authors have done. They connect the past with the present. They link non-fiction with fiction, and they use both to inspire and tell stories without being preachy or righteous. They cradle humanity while confronting bigotry in a real and honest way. An author study on Kwame Alexander is a win-win situation for any classroom. And if you're really lucky, you may even be able to get him to visit... 

Brown Girl Dreaming Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Nancy Paulsen Books: New York, 2014. ISBN 9780399252518

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Author Jacqueline Woodson traces her childhood history moving from Ohio to South Carolina to New York City through a plethora of free verse poems that illustrate a beautiful narrative of personal experiences that molded her into a writer at a very young age. Young Woodson introduces us to the the south she celebrates, the influence of family on her growth and how she survived frequent separation from parents, siblings, extended family and friends. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
In Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodson's autobiography, written in free verse, illustrates common themes in the writer's life: transition, loss, and exploration. Woodson's writing flows from page to page like a perfectly profound diary of a young girl's experience growing up while her basic needs were often in flux and death and worry were frequently knocking at her door. Her poem, "One Place" expresses Jacqueline's worry that her young brother might never come home to live with them after suffering from lead poisoning. Woodson's verse elevates the reader's anxiety and fear for the young boy:

"For a long time, our little brother/ goes back and forth to the hospital, his body/ weak from the lead, his brain/ not doing what a brain is supposed to do./ We don't understand why he's so small, has tubes/ coming from his arms, sleeps and sleeps.../ when we visit him." The imagery paints a sad and upsetting picture of the very real frailties of her baby brother. As a reader, I feared for him, for her and what the loss of that child would do to her world.

In essence, Woodson spends her biography being pulled away from people she loves: her father in Ohio, her mother when she leaves the children with grandparents in South Carolina to look for work in New York, her grandparents, her Uncle Robert, her Aunt Kay, etc.

The only reassurance Woodson is able to give herself in these situations is that she is loved by each and every one of those people, but somehow life isn't easy for them. Her family's religion as Jehovah's Witnesses focuses on having faith through hard work and prayer. In the end, Woodson's experience lead her write the poem "What I Believe," which expresses how her experiences have allowed her to have faith in more than just religion and in the many people who have influenced her life. "I believe in God and evolution./ I believe in the Bible and the Qur'an./ I believe in Christmas and the New World./ I believe that there is good in each of us/ no matter who we are or what we believe in." The poem and the sound of the words brought me to a place of self-acceptance and inspiration to seek out a life that fits me rather than seeing myself as someone who needs a place to fit into.

The most affectionate portrayals Woodson saves for her life in South Carolina. Her descriptions of weather, smells, the neighbors and her life there, bring the reader back to an earlier time. It was for me, nostalgic for my own childhood spent in a slower-paced city, when children were allowed to roam free and explore the world unattended.

Jacqueline's portrayal of her interest and determination to be a writer and her complete success at the profession as an adult are inspiring. The author's note in the back of Brown Girl Dreaming focuses on the research and family who helped her to write the book, as well as her appreciation for the long history of storytelling within her family that helped her make connections between the past and the present as a woman and as a writer.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Newbery Honor 
National Book Award for Young People's Literature
Coretta Scott King Award
NAACP Image Award

From Booklist
"What is this book about? In an appended author's note, Woodson says it best: "my past, my people, my memories, my story." The resulting memoir in verse is a marvel, as it turns deeply felt remembrances of Woodson's preadolescent life into art, through memories of her homes in Ohio, South Carolina, and, finally, New York City, and of her friends and family." 

From Horn Book
"A memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author's childhood right along with her... Most notably of all, perhaps, we trace her development as a nascent writer, from her early, overarching love of stories through her struggles to learn to read through the thrill of her first blank composition book to her realization that 'words are [her] brilliance.' The poetry here sings: specific, lyrical, and full of imagery. An extraordinary -- indeed brilliant -- portrait of a writer as a young girl."  

5. CONNECTIONS
Other books by Jacqueline Woodson for children:

• Feathers. ISBN 9780142415504
• The Other Side. ISBN 9780399231162
• This is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration. ISBN 9780399239861

Other biographies told with poetry:

• Alexander, Kwame. Out of Wonder: Poems about Celebrating Poets. ISBN 9780763680947
• Katz, Susan. The President's Stuck in the Bathtub: Poems About Presidents. ISBN 9780547182216
• Shane, Ntozake. Ellington Was Not a Street. ISBN 9780689828843

It's true that many poems tell emotional stories, but some of them also share history in a vibrant method of storytelling. Introducing children to biographies through poetry is a novel way to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction and to illustrate writing style and methods.

Creating a poetry-based free writing activity where children can focus on the lives of their heroes (living or dead) lets them be in the driver's seat to showcase what they know about poetry. Reading these biography books allows them to see and hear different ways writers tell historical stories about their lives or the lives of others and the people who influenced them.

What My Mother Doesn't Know Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sones, Sonya. What My Mother Doesn't Know. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2001. ISBN 9781442493858

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Sophie is doing her best to survive the ninth grade. She's wild about boys, but doesn't know anything about relationships: how to start one, how to maintain one, or what kind of person to have one with, so she's just following her gut instincts. She's also at odds with her parents, who are emotionally absent from her life, but with her two best friends by her side, a good heart, and a fierce sense of self-preservation, Sophie uses her poetry to keep herself grounded.

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Sonya Sones has written many young adult books using free verse to tell the teenage perspective on adolescence. What My Mother Doesn't Know focuses on the life of a girl in the ninth grade named Sophie. Sophie has broken up with her first boyfriend and is pursuing her classmate, Dylan. The physical attraction between the two is undeniable and sparks fly. "And it's true./ Dylan's kisses/ seem like something/ much better than kissing."

Sones allows the poetry to flow as if it comes directly from Sophie as a diary. It is as a first person not-often-rhyming, free verse narrative. She uses simple words that teenagers would use and that directness helps the language flow so that the words Sones chooses seem more like a teenager's stream of consciousness than an adult putting words to the page. Describing the way her mother's nervous reaction to her dating in "Mom's the Word": "she hovers in the hall/ and keeps wringing her hands,/ like she's scared that/ I'm going to get pregnant or something./ And if I ever did,/ which of course I won't,/ it would serve her right" brings out the rebellious words and emotions of a teenager whose mother, perhaps, stopped parenting too soon. The imagery is dry and caustic, and doused in vindictiveness, but spot on in accuracy.

The text also uses different font styles to illustrate online chatting when Sophie's infatuation with Dylan runs thin, and she is on the prowl for a new, more exciting relationship — online.

What is refreshing about Sophie is that she isn't soulless. She's struggling to balance social expectations with reality, as most teens do, but she also has a good sense of what is right and what is wrong, and she identifies that her parents aren't only not relating to her any more, they also aren't relating to each other. She observes their behaviors and how they often don't make any sense. Along the way she decides to stand up for herself by asserting her independence like when she decides to take herself on a spring break around Boston, her hometown, since her parents had nothing planned for the vacation time.

Throughout the book, readers are taken on a typical roller coaster of the teen years watching Sophie as she engages with friends, a depressed mother, an absent father, and boys. The only illustration used in the book, given its teen audience, is a small cartoon in the lower right-hand pages toward the end  that allow the reader to flip through the pages and see man and a woman holding each other and kissing. It is very indicative of some of the drawing you might find in a journal, but not overwhelming, so it doesn't deter from the poetry.

Sones' ability to juggle the difficulties thrust onto children as they enter the adult world are phenomenal. Her choice to use free verse makes the book an excellent read for teens interested in poetry or those who want a relatable storyline that is also easily read.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults 2002
ALA Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
Booklist Editor's Choice
California Collections
Iowa Teen Award 2005
Texas Lone Star State Reading List 2003

From Booklist
"The poetry is never pretentious or difficult; on the contrary, the very short, sometimes rhythmic lines make each page fly. Sophie's voice is colloquial and intimate, and the discoveries she makes are beyond formula, even while they are as sweetly romantic as popular song. A natural for reluctant readers, this will also attract young people who love to read." 

From Publisher's Weekly
"Drawing on the recognizable cadences of teenage speech, Sones (Stop Pretending) poignantly captures the tingle and heartache of being young and boy-crazy."  

5. CONNECTIONS
Other free verse poetry books by Sonya Sones:

• One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. ISBN 9781442493834
• Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. ISBN 9780064462181
• To Be Perfectly Honest: A Novel Based on an Untrue Story. ISBN 9780689876059

Other poetry books on the teenage experience: 

• Aguado, Bill. Paint Me Like I  Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps. ISBN 97800644723647
• Burg, Ann E. All the Broken Pieces. ISBN 9780545080934
• Franco, Betsy. Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls. ISBN 9780763610357
• Franco, Betsy. You Hear Me: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys. ISBN 97807636115990

In middle school and high school, teens are often told what to write. The population is overrun by typical writing assignments like 5-paragraph essays, research papers and poetry that is meant to emulate authors like Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

But what if teens were welcome to follow Sonya Sones' lead and write a book of stand-alone free verse poems that created a narrative about their own teen experiences? What would it look like? Would it have more illustrations? What ideas about parents, school, dating and identity would they be able to communicate channeling their inner thoughts into a journal-like book? Perhaps one of the strongest things connecting Sophie to the world was her ability to self-reflect, to wonder, to think without any kind of judgment. Would this connection also hold true for real-life teens the way it did for fictional Sophie?

Poems in the Attic Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grimes, Nikki. Poems in the Attic. Lee and Low Books: New York, 2015. ISBN 9781620140277

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
A seven-year-old girl stays with her grandmother while her mother is away for three days. She finds a box in grandma's attic that contains several short poems her mother wrote as a girl. Her mother's family moved a lot because her grandfather was in the military, and the poems reflected her mother's thoughts about every city they lived in during her youth. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Nikki Grimes does an extraordinary job using poetry to share life experiences from mother to daughter in Poems in the Attic. On the left-hand page, the daughter writes free verse poems in response to her mother's Tanka poems (featured on the right-hand side page) written about experiences she had living around the world as a girl.

Elizabeth Zunon provided the illustrations for this book, and they do a great job of linking the time jump between the present and the past and giving depth to the mother's history. What I found interesting was that illustrations of the daughter's experiences and thoughts are often inside while her mother's exploration of each place she's lived are primarily outside in nature. This is likely because the girl admits that she has always lived in the city, but it also represents a modern generational difference.

Grimes uses very carefully chosen words to paint pictures of each "home." "As we watched/ this dancing rainbow/ shimmy 'cross Alaska's sky" is a wonderful portrayal of the northern lights. But even more importantly than the vivid and colorful memories are the emotional depths that both mother and daughter feel about the experiences in the poems. Grimes sets the mood and tells a story with just a few perfect words, "I don't know how she did it,/ moving all the time./ I get dizzy thinking about/ all those goodbyes," depicts the daughter's empathy for her mother's constant change and the emotional upheaval she must have felt. The last poem she reads propels the daughter to action. In response, the daughter decides to record her own thoughts and create her own book of poetry interweaving her thoughts with her mother's work, and she presents the homemade book to her mother as a gift.

In the author's note Grimes said she moved a lot as child, although her parents weren't in the military. So when writing this book, she was able to channel that emotion into the poetry along side the experiences of those who grew up moving from one U.S. Air Force base to another.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominee 2016
Arnold Adoff Poetry Award Honor
Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year 2016
CCBC Choices 2016
LA Times Summer Reading List
NCTE Notable Poetry List 2016
New York City Department of Education National Poetry Month Recommendation

From Booklist
"A book about discoveries, this celebrates poetry and the quixotic life of a military family. A young girl response in free verse to the poems she uncovers in the attic, poems her mother wrote in tanka (a form of Japanese poetry) about the wonder of her experiences living throughout the world." 

From School Library Journal
"Sweet and accessible but never simplistic, this collection captures the experience of a military childhood with graceful sophistication. Grimes uses different styles of poem for each voice (free verse for the daughter and tanka poems for the mother), a choice that she discusses in an explanatory note on poetry forms that will serve budding poets and teachers alike. Rendered in acrylic, oil and collage, Zunon's warm, vibrant illustrations complement the text perfectly. Readers with an especially keen interest in the locations highlighted can look to a complete list of Air Force Bases appended. VERDICT A gem of a book." 

5. CONNECTIONS
Other books by Nikki Grimes:

• My Man Blue. ISBN 9780142301975
• One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance. ISBN 978161963548
• Welcome Precious. ISBN 9780439557023

Other Poetry Picture Books relating to historical topics: 

• Hughes, Langston. I, Too, Am America. ISBN 9781442420083
• Weather ford, Carole Boston. Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer. ISBN 9780763665319
• Wilson, Edwin Graves, PhD. Poetry for Young People: Maya Angelou. ISBN 9781402720239

This selection of recommended poetry picture books for children all relate to American history, particularly the Civil Rights movement. Too often, Grimes notes on her website, children are exposed only to humorous poetry. Grimes has spent her life creating poetry that illicit deep emotional connections and can both stand alone and serve as a broader narrative, and she is not alone in this mission.

The books above present American heroes like Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Maya Angelou in presentations welcoming to children. Thus, making one of America's greatest struggles and the emotions of the Civil Rights movement accessible to our youngest citizens.

Beautiful Blackbird Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bryan, Ashley. Beautiful Blackbird. Atheneum Books for Young Readers: New York, 2003. ISBN 0689847319

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
In this version of a Zambian tale, there are many birds of many colors, but only one Blackbird. The colored birds envy Blackbird for his color and his individuality. The birds take a vote and agree that Blackbird is the most beautiful bird. In response to this vote, Ringdove asks Blackbird to share his color with him. When all of the other birds see Ringdove's new look, they too want to be painted. Blackbird obliges them all one day, but while he paints he tells them that what makes them beautiful can be found inside. In the end, each bird has an individual look and and sings a thank you to Blackbird for sharing his blackness with them. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Beautiful Blackbird incorporates so many of my favorite aspects of picture poetry books. First of all,  even without the illustrations, this book is fun to read and listen to. The ongoing singing in the book is repetitive and catchy. The songs the birds sing rhyme and their calls are easy to remember. They also allow for movement opportunities in the classroom while you read the book, particularly doing the "Show Claws Slide."

My second favorite aspect is the illustrations, which are pictures of torn paper and collage work that Ashley Bryan created. The colorful images jump off the page and the birds are in such a quantity and complexity of detail that Bryan did an amazing job of using them to illustrate not just the biology of birds, but the diversity of species at-large.

My third favorite aspect is the repeated concept that black is beautiful, but so is individuality. Often times in our social landscape American culture projects darkness as evil, but in Bryan's story, blackness is held up as ultimate goodness and beauty, not only because of the richness of his color, but also because when Blackbird spreads his wings, his blackness reflects all colors.

When Blackbird works his magic to help the other birds achieve their individualized look by sharing his blackness with them, it reminded me of a combination of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and Dr. Seuss' The Sneetches. Blackbird doesn't ask for anything back, and he gives and gives as he tries to help each bird understand that what makes them special is who they are as an individual, not what their feathers look like. I grew worried the first time I read the book, that Blackbird would somehow run out of feathers to paint all of the birds, but nothing gruesome like that happens.

Beautiful Blackbird is a wonderful story to get younger kids thinking about why the world is the way it is. By using this African folktale from Zambia, children can think about why birds look so different. What makes them that way? But they can also apply that lesson to how they relate to each other in the community of the classroom and can internalize the ideals of self-love and self-acceptance that Bryan puts forth.

But isn't it nice to see a group of birds loving another bird for being different, rather than trying to force Blackbird to be like everyone else?

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, 2004

Texas 2x2 Reading List, 2004

From Booklist
"Using a more vivid palette than usual, Bryan employs body colored, cut-paper artwork to dramatize the action. The overlapping collage images fill the pages with energy as the songlike responses of the birds tap out a rhythm punctuated with 'uh-huhs'." 

From Publisher's Weekly
"The message about inner beauty and identity becomes somewhat diluted by the closing song, in which the birds triumphantly sing, "Our colors sport a brand-new look,/ A touch of black was all it took./ Oh beautiful black, uh-huh, uh-huh/ Black is beautiful, UH-HUH!" But if the ending creates a bit of confusion, Bryan's collages make up for it with their exhibition of colorful splendor and composition. Scenes of the rainbow of wings are outdone only by a lakeside view of their colors intricately 'mirrored in the waters.' And Bryan's lilting and magical language is infectious."

5. CONNECTIONS
Other books by Ashley Bryan:

• All Things Bright and Beautiful. ISBN 9781416989394
• Can't Scare Me. ISBN 9781442476578
• Turtle Knows Your Name. ISBN 9780689315787

Other African Folktales for children: 

• Achebe, Chinua. How the Leopard Got His Claws. ISBN 9780823412327
• Alexander, Lloyd. The Fortune-Tellers. ISBN 9780140562330
• Bryan, Ashley. The Story of Lightning and Thunder. ISBN 9780689318368

As a student, I was often read traditional European fairytales and folktales. Then when fractured fairy tales began to become a norm, I was obsessed with them both as a teacher and as a mother. They were often witty and entertaining. But as my awareness as a teacher and a parent grew, I recognized how much of the world I was missing out on by not reading folktales from other cultures. It was true that some folktales are similar variants to the fairytales that I grew up on, but they shouldn't have to be to gain attention.

When I started introducing multicultural tales in the classroom interesting things happened, these tales sometimes dealt more with trying to explain something about the world, rather than passing on a moral lesson. Ashley Bryan has several picture poetry books that do this that are based on African and Caribbean tales. Those folktales on how the biological world came about really inspired several of my students to wonder and think about why how different species got to be how they are. Because of their young age, they weren't asking particulars, but they did begin to separate that the cat at home was similar in look and behavior, but very different than a wild panther and not just in size, color and ecosystem. Introducing African Folktales globalizes the reach of literature for a classroom. It reminds us that the world is a much bigger and older place than the country we reside in.

Activities with this book may include:

• Cutting out colorful birds and letting children put their own black designs on them. 
• Creating a play out of the book for children to perform using the songs.
• Cutting out poster board wings for children to decorate and wear to play outside or in the dress up area. 
• Taking a picture of each child and having the child recognize through righting or dictating to a teacher what they think makes them special.
• Tearing paper and making animal shape collages (open-ended art). 
• Learning about birds and other bird species through a field trip to a local nature center. 
• Investigating African culture, music and geography.