Thanhha Lai's _Inside Out and Back Again_

The Plot: Thanhha Lai's 2011 Inside Out and Back Again, a Newbery Honor book and winner of the National Book Award for Young People (along with Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming and Virginia Euwer Wolff's True Believer, one of only three verse novels to ever win the award), follows 10-year-old Hà during a period of one year in her life in which she flees Vietnam with her family after the fall of Saigon and then struggles to adjust to her new life in Alabama. As Lai explains in her author's note, "much of what happened to Hà... also happened to me" (261). Lai further notes that her goal in writing Inside Out and Back Again was to capture Hà's emotional life on the page, as well as use her own memories to provide insight into the beauties of Vietnam and the "challenges of starting over in a strange land" for first generation Vietnamese-American children (262). The narrative begins with the poem "1975: Year of the Cat" and describes how Hà's family celebrates the first day of the lunar calendar. Hà lives with her mother and three older brothers in Saigon; her father has been MIA for the past nine years. Early poems also focus on Hà's beloved papaya tree.

The Poetry: Lai's verse novel utilizes free verse, often with a short line, throughout her narrative. Because Hà is intently focused on learning a new language during a good portion of the narrative, several poems make use of sound (particularly the elongated S-sound). The poem "War and Peace" is an interesting example of Lai's use of ekphrasis and makes use of anaphora, imagery, and caesura to delve into her young protagonist's experience of her American teacher's belittling her culture. (This poem calls to mind a similar experience detailed in Marilyn Nelson's title poem in How I Discovered Poetry.) The poem begins, "MiSSS SScott / shows the class / photographs" and the four stanzas that follow go on to describe iconic images of the Vietnam War; most notably the second stanza describes Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Terror of War" depicting "a burned, naked girl / running, crying / down a dirt road" (194). The speaker of the poem goes on to lament this reductive description of where she is from that leaves out the things she loves most about her country.

The Page: Divided into four sections--"Saigon," "At Sea," "Alabama," and "From Now On"-- each poem ends with either a specific date or more general temporal designations such as "every day." The verse novel opens and closes with a poem on the lunar new year (1975 and 1976), emphasizing the tumultuous year in the protagonist's life and the hope she has for the future in her new home.

As a genealogical verse novel, Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again is an example of an award-winning work that explores the immigrant experience in a nuanced way that does not sugar-coat the harsh realities of racism faced by the young protagonist and her family. I give Inside Out and Back Again five stars.

Andrea Davis Pinkney's _A Poem for Peter_

The Plot: This week's picture book verse narrative is A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day (2016) written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson. A Poem for Peter is a 40-page narrative poem. The narrative tells the story of Keats's family and birth, his early life and career, and the experiences that led him to create his most well-known work for young readers in 1962, The Snowy Day. Pinkney begins with Keats's parents, Polish immigrants who fled Warsaw in 1916 and settled in Brooklyn (9-10). From the age of eight, Keats knew he wanted to be an artist, and although his parents worried about his dream, they supported him in his education and art. Peter, the young protagonist of The Snowy Day, appears throughout the picture book in what Pinkney describes as "a 'peek-a-boo' fashion, waving at the reader, serving as a narrative thread that is stitched throughout" (49).

The Poetry: The long poem that makes up the pages of A Poem for Peter "employs a form known as 'collage verse,' 'bio-poem,' or 'tapestry narrative' in which factual components are layered with a mix of elements" (49). As Pinkney explains, "the use of a verse narrative to present Keats's life echoes Keats's use of collage to tell a story" (49). In addition to these formal attributes, Pinkney also employs anaphora, lyricism, rhythm, and rhyme to tell the story of Keats's life. For example, in the spread on pages 40-41, the reader sees Peter gazing out the window at the tops of buildings and a flock of birds. The last two stanzas on the page read:

Peter,

forging your path in knee-deep wonder.

Peter,

welcoming us into your play.

Peter,

marching out in a whole new way.

The final stanza is bolded for emphasis (as many are throughout the picture book): "With you, Ezra tore off the blinders. / Yanked up the shades. / Revealed the brilliance / of a brown-bright day" (41).

The Page: As Pinkney emphasizes in the end pages (which include a section on "Ezra's Legacy," "Keats, the Collage Poet," acknowledgements, and sources consulted for the creation of the book), Keats's choice to include a young African American child as the main character in his picture book in the early 1960s was groundbreaking: "as an artist who had grown up surrounded by poverty and anti-Semitism, Ezra understood what it was like to be excluded" (46). Pinkney further notes the reasons behind her enthusiasm for this project in her bio: "as an African American child growing up in the 1960s, at a time when I didn't see others like me in children's books, I was profoundly affected by the expressiveness of Keats's illustrations." A Poem for Peter is a complex and striking verse narrative that would pair nicely with The Snowy Day. I give it five stars.

Christine Heppermann's _Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty_

The Plot: Christine Heppermann's Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty (2014) is a collection of fifty poems that uses fairy tales to confront the realities of contemporary girlhood. I am not sure that I would categorize Heppermann's Poisoned Apples as a verse novel; it more clearly resembles a traditional collection of poems with strong narrative impulses (it reminds me a lot of Francesca Lia Block's 2011 collection, Fairy Tales in Electri-City). While there is no primary character within the collection, the speaker of the poems is almost always concerned with the bodily experiences of the teenage girl. As Heppermann explains in her author's note: "fairy tales and reality... run together, even though the intersections aren't always obvious. The girl sitting quietly in class or waiting for the buss or roaming the mall doesn't want anyone to know, or doesn't know how to tell anyone, that she is locked in a tower" (109). The poems in Poisoned Apples tell the story of the social and cultural regulation placed upon the female body through the lens of fairy tales and the voice of a present-day young adult heroine. 

The Poetry: The poems in Poisoned Apples make use of lyricism, metaphor, and imagery. Formally, Heppermann primarily employs free verse, but also includes haiku and villanelle. Many of the poems are quite arresting. For example, the poem "Spotless" features a five-stanza poem juxtaposed with a black-and-white photograph of a woman in white buried to the waist in a mountain of snakes, her face averted from the viewer. The speaker of the poem in "Spotless" begins, 

So I whet one razor 

after another against the stony

flesh of my leg until in barely

any time at all I have seven sharp

lines (95).

The poem then uses anaphora and imagery in its description of the body: "as deep as the silence of my days, / as straight as the path I ran from / the huntsmen, / as red as those three drops" (95).

The Page: The poems in the collection are accompanied by black-and-white photographs by various artists. The photography adds considerably to the collection in that it contributes yet another example of the way in which fairy tales can be updated to reflect contemporary realities. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Heppermann's collection, and I give it four stars. 

Kwame Alexander's "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents: A Story-in-Verse"

The Plot: Kwame Alexander's "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents: A Story-in-Verse" is the penultimate story the anthology Flying Lessons and Other Stories (2017) edited by the cofounder of We Need Diverse Books, Ellen Oh. Alexander pitched the work as a "novella-in-verse" or a "story-in-verse" on twitter the day before the book's release in early January. "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents: A Story-in-Verse" is a 48-page series of poems about 12-year-old Monk. The series begins with the poem "How to Write a Memoir" which details why Monk begins writing his poems (159). The next poem in the series, a haiku, is entitled "Question About the Assignment" and underscores the unique aspect of this story-in-verse: "I know memoir is / based in fact, but can it have / a little fiction?" (160). The story goes on to detail how after a car accident, Monk develops the ability to read people's minds, and ultimately he uses his powers on Angel Carter, his crush, to impress her enough to maybe get her to go on a date with him.

The Poetry: Alexander's story-in-verse is told primarily in free verse, with the exception of one haiku, and another poem which includes a haiku stanza. In addition to these formal aspects, Alexander also employs rhyme and anaphora sporadically throughout the series, as well as imagery and space on the page. Overall, "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents: A Story-in-Verse" is more focused on story than it is on poetic device, which makes sense for a shorter work. One aspect of Alexander's series that is particularly effective is his use of parenthetical aside in several of his poems. For example, in "How to Write a Memoir," Alexander uses five of these asides to develop the voice of his protagonist:

After reading

"Oranges"

by Gary Soto

(who I like)

Mr. Preston

(who I don't)

asks us

if we liked it

(which I did)

then makes us

write

(which I hate) (159).

The use of the short line and the parenthetical aside ask the reader to move more quickly and rhythmically through the poem and mirror Alexander's signature technique in his previous verse novels that focus on rhythm, linguistic play, and voice.

The Page: Like longer verse novels, Alexander's novella- or story-in-verse makes use of the space on the page, and among the nine other works in Flying Lessons and Other Stories, "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents: A Story-in-Verse" takes up the most space in the collection. Alexander's use of this shorter form of the verse narrative is new and groundbreaking; perhaps many other verse novelists will turn to this shorter form as poetry and verse narratives become more popular in contemporary children's and YA literature.

You can listen to a soundcloud recording of Alexander reading his story HERE. I highly recommend "Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents: A Story-in-Verse" and the other nine stories in the collection. I give it five stars.

Janice N. Harrington's _Catching a Storyfish_

The Plot: Catching a Storyfish (2016) by Janice N. Harrington follows Katharen Walker as she moves with her family from Alabama to Illinois to be closer to her grandfather. Keet, as her family calls her, is a natural storyteller who delights in talking and making stories so much that her friends nicknamed her Keet-Keet Parakeet. Katharen is sad to leave her friends and home in the south, and once she starts at her new elementary school, these feelings intensify as she is made fun of for "talking funny." While she struggles to make friends at her school, her relationship with her grandfather, who calls her Fish Bait, blooms through their regular fishing trips. Eventually Katharen meets Allegra, a Spanish-speaking girl in her class who loves her Cockatoo and excels at spelling. Allegra is self conscious about her teeth, while Katharen continues to be teased about her accent, so this allows the girls to bond. Throughout the narrative, Katharen experiences many changes that help her to grow, and while her identity as a storyteller is challenged initially, she is able to find her niche as a writer through the help of her family, friends, and one special librarian.

The Poetry: Harrington's Catching a Storyfish is unique in that it experiments with a multitude of forms throughout the verse novel, including: free verse, blues poetry, prose poetry, pantoum, narrative poetry, haiku, haibun, concrete poetry, catalog poetry, abecedarian, and contrapuntal poetry (a poem in two columns that can be read three different ways, what I have previously referred to in my posts as dueling poems). Each of these poetic forms (except free verse) is identified and discussed in the poetry glossary at the back of the book; Harrington also provides an example poem from her collection. In addition to these forms, Harrington also makes use of anaphora, rhyme, simile, metaphor, and imagery throughout her collection. In the poem "Monday: Reading and Writing Centers," many of these techniques are on display: "I like to roll words in my mouth, like pebbles / I like to read my books aloud / I like the ways stories unwind like Grandpa's fishing line" (60).

The Page: Catching a Storyfish is divided into nine "chapters" and also includes a prologue, a poetry glossary, and an acknowledgements page. Each of the nine chapters represents Katharen's experiences in a different week and includes several poems (anywhere from three to twenty-two poems). Harrington's Catching a Storyfish is a fine verse novel. It employs a variety of forms and tells the story of a friendship between two diverse characters, but at times the poems were not as engaging or electric as they could be. I give it three stars.

Skila Brown's _To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party_

The Plot: Skila Brown's 2016 To Stay Alive: Mary Ann Graves and the Tragic Journey of the Donner Party is a historical verse novel that explores the life and experiences of nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Graves, a real-life settler who traveled with her family, the Donner family, and several other families across the country to reach California in the 1840s. Brown bases her narrative on historical records and research to tell a particularly compelling story of a young woman's survival in a time of hardship, chaos, and ultimately horror. The nearly 300-page verse novel takes place over the course of one year, beginning in the spring of 1846 and ending in the spring of 1847. Mary Ann travels from Lacon, Illinois with her family which includes her mother, father, older married sister, three younger brothers, four younger sisters, and a hired teamster named John. Mary Ann is a quilter and a strong young woman who likes to speak her mind.

The Poetry: Brown's To Stay Alive is primarily comprised of free verse poems that make use of rich imagery, lyricism, and the space on the page, but the verse novel also includes a few concrete poems that take the shape of what they describe or allude to in the poem. For instance, the poem on page 3, "Father" is shaped like a sphere on the page and describes Mary Ann's father as "burning like the sun" and "itching" to leave on their journey. Likewise, the poem "Inside the Wagon" spreads single words across the space of the page drawing attention to the fact that riding inside the wagon is bumpy: "never still never / smooth / always bump shake rattle" (41). While these poems were interesting in terms of form and content, the poem that I found most moving and rhythmic was the final poem in the collection, "A New Quilt." This nine-page poem shows Brown's skill in the long lyric poem, something that I have yet to see many verse novelists for young readers do well. In "A New Quilt" Brown uses anaphora, lyricism, imagery, and a rhythmic line that mimics the work of quilting to tell the last bits of Mary Ann's narrative. The repeated refrains "I'm stitching / a new quilt" at the beginning of stanzas and "I stitch" justified to the right side of the page at the end of many lines become a place of meditation for the reader as she considers the ways that Mary Ann copes with her loss of many of her family members.

The Page: In addition to being divided into five sections that reflect the seasonal changes, Brown's verse novel also contains a variety of paratextual documents to aid the reader in understanding the historical time period and Brown's research process. The front papers include an article from The Lacon Home Journal announcing that a local family is headed to the west, as well as a two-page map spread that provides the path that Mary Ann's family followed. The end papers include an epilogue, an author's note, a photograph of the real Mary Ann Graves, a list of individuals who were part of the Donner party divided into families with their ages and survival status listed, and an acknowledgments section. Her website also includes an educational guide to pair with the verse novel and a variety of blog posts with more details about the Donner party.

I found Brown's To Stay Alive to be a surprisingly engaging narrative. While the subject matter (cannibalism) initially made me wary of the author's ability to tackle such a topic in a new way, Brown was able to skillfully and successfully weave Mary Ann's story together through her use of lyric poetry. To Say Alive was a page-turner. I give it four stars and highly recommend it.

Madeleine Kuderick's _Kiss of Broken Glass_

The Plot: Madeleine Kuderick's 2014 YA verse novel, Kiss of Broken Glass, follows fifteen-year-old Kenna Keagan during her 72 hour stay at Adler Boyce Pediatric Stabilization Facility after she is "Baker Acted" (1) when a classmate catches her cutting in the bathroom at school. The poems in the narrative are told in second person (you) point of view, and over the course of three days,the reader steps into the shoes of Kenna as she makes friends at Adler, attends group therapy, and prepares for her family to attend a group session before she is released. Kuderick's work is most certainly a traditional YA problem novel, and much like Ellen Hopkins's Crank Series, the reader discovers in the author's note that the author was inspired to write the book after her own daughter's struggle with cutting and experience of being "involuntarily committed under Florida's Baker Act" (203).

The Poetry: While the author strives to utilize memorable imagery and crisp language that hold the reader in the narrative, ultimately most of it falls flat and reads as cliche or inauthentic. At times the imagery and lyricism work well; for example in the poem "By the Time My Mother Leaves," the speaker describes her urge to cut using simile, alliteration, and anaphora: "The way the blood pools warm at first / then cools like morning dew on slivered skin" and "The way the crimson dances 'round the bowl / then trickles tiny teardrops down the drain" (100-101). Beyond the poetry used to describe Kenna's experiences, one of the characters that she befriends, Skylar (who is also a cutter and is struggling with anorexia) also writes poetry which she passes to Kenna.

The Page: Throughout the narrative, almost every poem title includes one word with multiple strike-throughs obscuring it; this is one of the somewhat gimmicky things that Kuderick's Kiss of Broken Glass engages in that contributes to the at times tired approach to the topic of cutting. The author does include an author's note and a list of resources for young readers who might be struggling with self-harm themselves.

Overall, I found Kuderick's Kiss of Broken Glass to be a fine verse novel. It approaches the problem novel in a way that is becoming common-place with the verse novel form and strives to employ poetic technique while doing so. I give it three stars.

Julie Sternberg's _Like Carrot Juice on a Cupcake_

The Plot: Julie Sternberg's Like Carrot Juice on a Cupcake (2014) is the third book in her verse novel series for children. She previously published Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie (2011) and Like Bug Juice on a Burger (2013) which also follow her fourth-grade protagonist Eleanor. Sternberg's verse novel follows in the footsteps of Sharon Creech's Love That Dog in its focus on younger, elementary school readers. In Like Carrot Juice on a Cupcake, Eleanor struggles with feeling left out when her best friend, Pearl, becomes close to a new transfer student, Ainsley. On top of this, Eleanor's parents decide to send her new puppy to training school for two weeks and Pearl volunteer's Eleanor for a role in the school play, despite Eleanor's stage fright. As the narrative progresses, Eleanor becomes more and more anxious about her leading role and her solo, as well as her sense of distance from her best friend. Toward the end of the narrative, Eleanor's feelings lead her to do a "very mean thing. / To a new girl AND / to [her] best friend" (143).

The Poetry: As the title suggests, Sternberg's verse novel utilizes similes, as well as anaphora throughout the free verse narrative. This is true in "Chapter Fifteen" which includes the repeated refrain "I wondered" six times throughout the poem (93-94). The use of simile and metaphor are central to the main conflict in the narrative. This comes to the forefront in the poem Eleanor writes to her poem-loving best friend, Pearl asking for forgiveness. She refers to her actions as being the worst thing, like "carrot juice on a cupcake / or a wasp on my pillow / or a dress that's too tight at the neck" (143). This is the extent of poetic device used by the author in the text, which ultimately, like many other verse narratives, makes use of the increased space on the page afforded by verse novel form.

The Page: Sternberg's Like Carrot Juice on a Cupcake is divided into thirty chapters and includes sketch-like pencil illustrations by Matthew Cordell throughout. These illustrations are in a similar style to those by Quentin Blake for Roald Dahl's children's novels. As a verse novel for elementary school readers, Like Carrot Juice on a Cupcake forefronts the narrative elements instead of the poetic practices; this seemed like a missed opportunity. I would have liked to see the author spend a bit more time focused on the poetic technique, specifically the simile, implied by the title.

I give Sternberg's verse novel three stars.

Holly Bodger's _5 to 1_

The Plot: Holly Bodger's 2015 verse novel 5 to 1 is a polyvocal dystopian narrative that tells the story of Sudasa and Kiran, a teenage girl and boy growing up in India in the year 2054. After years of the government's one-child policy, there are five boys for every one girl in the country; fed up with the commodification of girls, a group of women found a new country called Koyanagar. In Koyanagar, girls are also highly prized, but the government sets up a series of seven tests so that every boy, no matter how rich or poor, has the opportunity to "win" a wife. Sudasa, the middle sister in a wealthy family, does not want to be a wife, although her grandmother with a high ranking position in the government is set on using her marriage as a way to pay a debt she owes. When Sudasa realizes her marriage contest has been rigged (as her cousin is one of the competitors, given an edge by her grandmother), she becomes determined to subvert the tests in some way. Kiran, or contestant five as he is referred to throughout most of the narrative, is a poor farmer boy from the coast. He does not want to be married either, and he has a plan to use the tests to his advantage as well, but finds that he feels a connection with Sudasa that he did not expect.

The Poetry: Bodger's verse novel alternates perspectives and styles; Sudasa's chapters are in verse, while Kiran's chapters are in prose. Like many other verse narratives, Bodger's utilizes the manipulation of space and the gaps created by line breaks to encourage a slowing of narrative pace and reader contemplation. Bodger also makes use of anaphora, variations in typography, strikethrough/underline/bold text, and arrows. Each of these elements draws attention to the words on the page and enacts many of the features of more standard visual or concrete poetry. At times these poetic techniques can seem gimmicky. One of the stronger poetic devices that Bodger uses is the reference to William Blake. Sudasa is depicted as a lover of poetry and she and her father often quote Blake. For example in the final poem, "34," Sudasa's father speaks to her in code using a quote from Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a text that mixes poetry, prose, and image: "Remember, beti,/ no bird soars too high,/ if he soars with his own wings" (236). Her father then follows up with a secret message to help Sudasa make a decision about her future: "And sometime, when wings burn,/ they rise from the ash/ as fins in turn" (237). Blake's exploration of contraries and his insistence upon the necessity of both in his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is interestingly reflected in Bodger's verse novel about the two extremes of the prizing of boys vs. the prizing of girls in culture.

The Page: 5 to 1 is organized into three parts, each part representing a day of the tests. Each part is then further separated into chapters that explore the narrative from Sudasa and Kiran's point of view. Each chapter includes a varying illustration that depicts an image of a woman/fish hybrid, and each part includes an illustrated image of a pair of hands with mehndi or henna designs (typically applied to women's hands during Hindu wedding ceremonies) featuring the same woman/fish hybrid.

I found 5 to 1 to be an interesting read, and it is one of the first ever dystopian verse novels I have encountered. I give it three stars.

Christine Heppermann's _Ask Me How I Got Here_

The Plot: In Christine Heppermann's 2016 verse novel Ask Me How I Got Here, high school sophomore Addie attends an all-girls Catholic school (Immaculate Heart Academy) where she runs on the cross country team. At the beginning of the narrative, Addie is dating a junior named Craig from St. Luke's, but his drinking and partying eventually lead her to developing a connection with his best friend, Nick. Addie and Nick kiss after a party one night, Addie breaks up with Craig, and begins dating Nick. After dating for a few months, Nick and Addie have sex and she becomes pregnant. Addie talks to her boyfriend, and eventually her parents, and decides that she wants to have an abortion. The remaining half of the narrative focuses on Addie's physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological struggles and growth after her abortion. Although Addie never wavers in her view that having an abortion was the right choice for her, she is conflicted throughout the narrative with what her choice means for her morally and how she will be perceived by others because of her choice. In the second half of the narrative, Addie reunites with Juliana, a former cross country runner who graduated the year before. Addie decides to quit the cross country team, and is happy to meet regularly with Juliana, who is taking a break from college cross country and going to therapy to deal with her own demons.

The Poetry: Heppermann's verse novel is primarily told through free verse poems, but interspersed throughout the collection are various haiku and prose poems. Throughout Ask Me How I Got Here, Addie's narrative is juxtaposed with her own writing (written in a script, sans serif font) which includes poetry, mostly focused on the figure of the Virgin Mary, and assignments for various classes. Heppermann uses a variety of poetic techniques beyond the syllabics of the haiku including imagery, lyricism, anaphora, and metaphor. For example, in the poem "Sunday Morning," one of the early poems written by Addie, she draws connections between her sexuality and religious devotion:

His mouth a skittish liturgy

along my neck,

my need a holy ache,

a blessing, I tilt back my head,

prepare to receive

communion (32). 

In this poem, Heppermann utilizes rich religious imagery and the lyric in order to foreground the bodily experience of her protagonist. In the haiku that immediately follows this poem, "A Risky Equation," the poet juxtaposes this lyric imagery with a more restrained, formal approach to express her speaker's regret and anxiety: "Add one plus one plus / zero condoms to equal / pleasepleaseplease not three" (33).

The Page: One subtle way that the author/publisher underscores the significance of her use of both narrative poems and the writing of her character is through the use of alternating page color throughout the narrative. All of the poems, class assignments, and letters written by Addie are marked with a slightly grey-toned page color, in addition to the use of a script-style, sans serif font and a inked-in script scribble at the end of the title and final line of the writing.

One of the strengths of Heppermann's verse novel is the fact that it never becomes overly didactic in terms of its approach to discussing Addie's abortion, and overall the narrative's conclusion is open-ended. I found Heppermann's Ask Me How I Got Here to be a fine verse novel. I give it three stars.

Carole Boston Weatherford's _You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen_

The Plot: Carole Boston Weatherford's 2016 verse novel You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen is her eleventh poetry collection for young readers. In this collection, Weatherford uses the second person throughout in order to, as the front matter suggests, "allow readers to fly too." The narrative explores the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, much like Marilyn Nelson's American Ace, but Weatherford's collection employs a slightly more didactic approach, emphasizing specific historical dates, describing real-life individuals such as Lena Horne, and calling out the racist attitudes and segregation of the time period. The narrative of You Can Fly begins with the speaker of the poem's (the you's) desire to "Head to the Sky" (1)—to be trained as a pilot—and the speaker's meditation upon the image of the Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster and its implications for young African Americans entering the military at that time (2). The reader then follows the speaker to Tuskegee (4), through training in both the classroom and on the air field (14-15), on a first solo flight (16-17), overseas on deployment after the events at Pearl Harbor (44-45), and finally back home where racist attitudes still prevalent provide "No Hero's Welcome" (57).

The Poetry: Weatherford's verse novel is told through a series of 33 free verse poems. The most significant feature of the collection in terms of the poetic technique is the use of the second person throughout; this approach, as the front matter suggests, draws the reader closer, decreasing the narrative distance, and allowing the reader to step directly into the shoes of a young Tuskegee airman. In one poem, "The Fight Song," Weatherford includes the use of rhyme in order to foreground the ways in which song plays a significant role in the unity of a company: "Sailing through the blue/  Gallant sons of the 99th/ Brown men tried and true" (41). In the final poem in the collection, which includes an epigraph from an executive order issued by President Harry Truman in 1948 that declares "there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin" (63), the speaker uses anaphora through the repetition of the phrase "If you live long enough" in order to underscore the ways in which the efforts of the Tuskegee airmen cleared the way for other important advances in the representation and advancement of people or color in all realms of society including MLB, NASA, and the White House.

The Page: One of the most significant features of Weatherford's verse novel are the incredibly detailed, 23 scratchboard illustrations created by Jeffery Boston Weatherford. These black and white illustrations accompany almost every poem in the collection. At times the entire page is blacked out and the text and the scratchboard illustration appear in white to contrast. Along with many other historical verse novels for young readers, Weatherford's You Can Fly includes an author's note, a detailed historical time line that begins in 1865 and carries through until 2009, and a list of resources.

You Can Fly is a fine verse novel and a great companion read to Nelson's American Ace; I give it three stars.

Skila Brown's _Caminar_

The Plot: Skila Brown's 2014 verse novel Caminar tells the story of Carlos, a young boy growing up in Guatemala in 1981. According to the prefatory note to the reader, Brown's narrative is inspired by the real events and experiences of individuals living in Guatemala during the period after 1954 when the "democratically elected government of Guatemala was overthrown by a group of military men who were unhappy with the way the government had been passing laws to help poor farmers in rural communities. Forty horrible years followed, in which the people of Guatemala tried to resist, organize, and bring about change." Carlos lives in a small farming village with his mother in the mountains and is at the point where he is still treated like a child but wants to be grown up. When a group of soldiers come through their village asking for names of Communists and promising money for individuals who provide names, Carlos's mother and community begin to worry. The villagers decide that if the soldiers or the rebels fighting against them return to their village again, they will run and hide in the trees. While some of Carlos's friends wish to stay and defend the village, Carlos's mother is adamant that he run if anything happens. A few days later, when Carlos walks to the edge of the village and into the jungle to gather mushrooms for his mother to make soup, the soldiers return and massacre his village. He escapes into the jungle and hides in a tree; unsure about whether or not to return or to flee, he decides to make his way to the village where his grandmother lives. Along the way, he encounters a group of rebels and, after some trepidation, he begins to walk with them. Carlos teaches them what he knows about the jungle, plants, animals, hunting, and hiding. Once he reaches his grandmother's village, he must decide whether to carry on with the rebels or stay and defend the village.

The Poetry: Some of the most interesting features of Brown's verse novel are her use of space, repetition, shape, and language. Throughout Caminar, which is the Spanish word for "walk," Brown relies heavily upon the use of repetition and the blending of English, Spanish, and other indigenous languages to emphasize the significance of voice, cultural experience, and character subjectivity in the narrative. For example, in the poem "Nahuales," an elder named Santiago explains the process of coming of age for young men when he was growing up in which each young man enters the jungle to meet his animal spirit protectors:

I looked up to the trees,

away from his eyes. I did not want to tell him

no one believes anymore

in nahuales,

spirit animals who guides us in life, keep us

safe.        I walked away.

                           But I wondered

                                   which animal

                                           he saw. (22)

This poem foregrounds the tensions between Carlos's connections with his cultural history and the circumstances of his experience of war. These tensions are also connected to Carlos's desire to grow up, to go to work instead of school, and his mother's insistence that he is too young to think about participating in work and war.

The Page: Brown makes use of the space on the page and shape in her poems. Many of her poems employ right and left justification, dual columns on either side of the page, and are shaped to evoke the imagery her narrative conveys. For example, the poems "Ah Xochil" (4) and "Eye to Eye" (90) utilize right and left justified columns that encourage readers to read and reread poems in a variety of ways to glean different meanings from the poem. Concrete poems such as "After They Left" (35) and "I Climbed a Tree" utilize the space on the page and shape. "After They Left" depicts a series of voices from the village giving their opinion about what to do if any soldiers return; this poem depicts the lines of dialogue spread across the page as if the voices are coming from many different people and co-mingling together. "I Climbed a Tree" is shaped simply as a tree, utilizes repetition to depict climbing, and describes Carlos's experience of terror as he waits in the tree while soldiers with machetes and rifles pass through after destroying his village.

Brown's Caminar was a fascinating read. I give it four stars.

Andrea Davis Pinkney's _The Red Pencil_

The Plot: The Red Pencil (2014), written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Shane W. Evans, takes place in Sudan in 2004 and tells the story of Amira. The narrative opens on the day of Amira's twelfth birthday, the day she can exchange her tarha for a toob (a child's headscarf for a woman's sari-like garment). Part one of the verse novel meditates upon Amira's family and cultural traditions; her mother and father tell her birth story (26-31) and her little sister Leila's birth story (38-43), she practices calling the Sayidda Moon (glowing lady) with her family (36), and Amira meditates upon the goz (sandy soil of Darfur) "sprinkled by Allah" and its connection to her family's farm (52). The reader also learns that Amira loves to draw in the sand and desires, more than anything, to one day attend school, which goes against her mother's wishes that she follow tradition and marry. Toward the end of part one, her parents begin to worry about the Janjaweed militia attacks and war. After the Janjaweed attacks her village, she journeys with whats left of her family and neighbors to a refugee center called Kalma Camp. While the camp is safer, Amira and her family are forced to live with thousands of others in poor conditions. For a while, the grief Amira experiences causes her to lose her voice, and it isn't until an aid worker named Miss Sabine offers her a red pencil and tablet for drawing and writing that she begins to regain her voice and desire to learn. Her old neighbor eventually begins to teach her to read and write in secret, and the narrative ends hopefully as the possibility for education and healing are within Amira's grasp.

The Poetry: Pinkney uses lyrical free verse throughout her verse novel; some of the most prevalent poetic techniques in her work include anaphora, imagery, and internal rhyme. Language play and rich imagery abound in the poems that describe Amria's family's journey to the Kalma Camp. For example, in the poem "Soles" Amira wishes she could be closer to her mother as they traveled: "I could press my chest right to her. / I could send my hearth's drumming to Muma's heart, / sliced with sorrow" (125), and in the poem "Hungry," Pinkney uses internal rhyme for effect: "A clump of corn, / swallowed down with the little bit of wet / I can summon from my tongue" (129). The pain of Amira's loss after the Janjaweed attack is exemplified through Pinkney's use of imagery in the poem "Locked":

I know the names,

but can't say them.

I shake my head.

Pain-clouds rise in Muma's eyes.

She takes both my hands in hers.

Holds them.

Kneads them,

as if she's shaping dough.

"Amira, sorrow's fence

has locked you in," she says (158-59).

Once again this poem uses internal rhyme, lyricism, metaphor, and imagery in order to illustrate the experience of grief and the connection between Amira and her mother.

The Page: The Red Pencil, like many other verse novels, includes several paratextual elements that add to the reader's experience including: a map, a glossary/pronunciation guide, an author's note that includes historical information, and definitions of important terms. One of the most striking things about The Red Pencil are Evans's pencil sketches that illustrate the verse novel. These sketches fill the blank spaces left by the poems and add much to the collaged aspects of the narrative. As Pinkney clarifies in her Author's Note, "The Red Pencil's illustrated poems follow one child's journey through grief and possiblity. Part novel, part sketchbook, this story celebrates the power of creativity, and the way that art can help us heal (312).

I give The Red Pencil four stars and highly recommend it.

Mariko Nagai's _Dust of Eden_

The Plot: Markio Nagai's verse novel Dust of Eden (2014) takes place between 1941 to 1945 and focuses on the experiences of thirteen-year-old Mina Masako Tagawa and her Japanese American family as they are forced from their home in Seattle and relocated to an internment camp in Idaho after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Amidst increasing discrimination in their town, Mina's father is imprisoned, and her family is then placed on a bus with only two pieces of luggage each to Camp Harmony in Puyallup, Washington. After four months, her family must travel again by train to Minidoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho where they live for three years. Throughout the narrative, Mina struggles with her identity and experience of living as a Japanese American during a tumultuous time in US history. Her grandfather and father practice "the stoic Japanese principle known as gaman, which means to bear hardship silently" (122), while her eighteen-year-old brother Nick expresses his anger and frustration at the unfair treatment of Japanese Americans by the US government and eventually volunteers to join the Japanese American regiment in the US military to prove his loyalty to his country. Throughout the narrative, Mina expresses sadness and longing for the way her life used to be; she misses her home, her cat Basho, her best friend Jamie, and her family being together and happy.

The Poetry: The free verse poems in Dust of Eden utilize a variety of poetic techniques and formal approaches to express Mina's story. Some of the most prevalent features of Nagai's collection are the use of imagery, anaphora, lyricism, and metaphor. Each of these features in the poem "October 1942":

Dust enters

during the night like a thief,

leaving mounds 

of sand in all corners

of the room where the wind left it,

leaving mounds like graves,

even on top of us, burying us

while we were asleep.

Dust enters through our noses

and mouths while we are asleep (53).

In this poem and many others in the collection, Nagai uses space and symbol to illustrate the hopelessness and grief experienced by those interned in the camps during World War II. Poems like "September 1942" utilize space and movement on the page to depict mundane every-day experiences of internment such as the way in which internees were forced to stand in "line after line" while imprisoned (51), while other spare poems like "July 1945" disclose the horrors of internment: "A woman killed her baby / today because she was / afraid of leaving the camp" (114).

The Page: Nagai's verse novel is divided into five sections each focused on place; each poem is titled with the month and the year to give the collection a diary or journal-like quality. In addition to free verse poems, Dust of Eden also presents Mina's experiences through letters to and from Mina and essays written by Mina for school. This approach contributes to the layered and assembled nature of the verse novel as a work that contains not just lyric poetry but also documents and correspondences.

I found the narrative of Nagai's Dust of Eden fascinating and affecting, and the poetry beautifully and uniquely crafted. I give Dust of Eden four stars and highly recommend it.

Jacqueline Woodson's _Brown Girl Dreaming_

Published in 2014, Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming has been awarded the 2014 National Book Award for Young People, the 2015 Coretta Scott King Award, and was named a 2015 Newbery Honor Book. In the summer of 2015, Woodson was named the Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. On the Poetry Foundation's website, they note that this "title is given to a living writer in recognition of a career devoted to writing exceptional poetry for young readers. The laureate advises the Poetry Foundation on matters relating to young people’s literature and may engage in a variety of projects to help instill a lifelong love of poetry among the nation’s developing readers. This laureateship aims to promote poetry to children and their families, teachers, and librarians over the course of its two-year tenure." This week, I read Brown Girl Dreaming for the fifth time and taught it for the third semester in my Literature for the Intermediate Reader class at Western Michigan University. If you are interested in teaching Woodson's work, HERE is an activity that I use to open up my students' discussion of Brown Girl Dreaming. Each time I come to Woodson's work, I find something new, and it becomes a richer text for me.

The Plot: In Brown Girl Dreaming, Woodson traces the experiences of her first person speaker Jackie (who is the representation of Woodson's childhood self). The narrative begins at her birth and describes what life was like growing up during the civil rights era in both the North and the South. Jackie's parents separate when she is an infant, and she travels from Ohio with her mother and siblings to live with her maternal grandparents in South Carolina. Eventually, her mother moves the family to Brooklyn, New York. In addition to the examination of racism through the eyes of a young person, Woodson also tackles issues of the broken family, religion, death and illness, imprisonment, and her experience with a learning disability. Brown Girl Dreaming is divided into five sections: "i am born," "the stories of south carolina run like rivers," "followed the sky's mirrored constellation to freedom," "deep i my hear, i do believe," and "ready to change the world." The poetry within these sections is further framed by a rich paratext; Woodson includes a family tree, an epigraph from Langston Hughes's poem "Dreams," a scrapbook collection of family photos, and an author's note.

The Poetry: Brown Girl Dreaming is told primarily in lyrical free verse but is interspersed with a series of eleven haiku. No matter what form she employs, Woodson's poetry reflects a deep meditation upon the historical and personal roots that helped shape her speaker as a writer. For example, the second poem in the collection, "second daughter's second day on earth," begins with the language of Jackie's birth certificate. The first three lines of the poem read: “My birth certificate says: Female Negro / Mother: Mary Anne Irby, 22, Negro / Father: Jack Austin Woodson, 25, Negro” (3). The repetition of the final word in each line, “Negro,” emphasizes its significance as a marker, and these first three lines take on the feel of a collaged legal document within the poem. The poem mixes the left justified historical and documentary style narrative with stanzas rich in voice and lyric that are centered and italicized: "I am born brown-skinned, black-haired and wide-eyed / I am born Negro here and Colored there" (3). This poem goes on to reference Dr. King, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Ruby Bridges, and Rosa Parks as important figures who Jackie might model herself after as she grows up. This blending of personal and national history in the poem suggests Woodson’s desire to locate her story within and next to the stories of those individuals who profoundly transformed the world for brown children forever through their roles and their activism in the civil rights movement.

The Page: One theme that Woodson investigates in her memoir in verse is that of silence and blank space. Woodson has noted, “Memories don’t come back as straight narrative. They come in little bursts with white space all around them. It felt more realistic to write mine as poems.” The haiku series within Brown Girl Dreaming speaks volumes in its use of negative space. For example, the first haiku in the series, “how to listen #1” appears in part one of the verse novel entitled “i am born.” In the poem, memory, body, and emotion intertwine as a reflection of the early life of Jackie and her life in Columbus, Ohio with her mother, father, and siblings: “Somewhere in my brain / each laugh, tear and lullaby / becomes memory” (20). This poem encapsulates the drive of the entire collection—the focus of the narrative is remembering a history in order to gain insight into the self and understand the how personal and cultural history shapes an individual.

Brown Girl Dreaming is a gorgeous exploration of personal and national history. Woodson's use of lyricism, imagery, free verse, and haiku are distinct and moving. I give Brown Girl Dreaming five stars and highly recommend it.

Kwame Alexander's _The Crossover_

The Plot: Published in 2014, Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover was the winner of the 2015 Newbery Medal and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. The story follows 12-year-old Josh Bell and his twin brother Jordan (JB) as they lead their middle school basketball team to their first county championship. Their father is a former Euroleague basketball player and their mother is the assistant principal at their middle school. The narrative begins with Josh feeling confident about his locks, his basketball skills, his friendship with his twin brother, and the idea of one day attending Duke University. Throughout the novel, which is divided into six sections (warm up, four quarters, and overtime), things begin to change in Josh’s life: his brother accidentally cuts off five of his locks and he must shave his head, JB gets his first girlfriend and Josh feels neglected, Josh gets suspended from the basketball team, and his family becomes more and more concerned about his father’s health.

The Poetry: Alexander’s verse novel utilizes multiple poetic forms (free verse, rap, concrete, tanka, ode) and devices (rhyme, rhythm, anaphora, lyricism, metaphor, simile) in order to focus on the strong family ties and the significance of language in the life of Josh Bell. Alexander uses free verse in a variety of different poems to push the narrative thread along. Additionally, several poems utilize rhyme and rhythm that mirrors rap or hip-hop lyrics, while others use concrete poetry and irregular font size and placement to emulate movements during basketball games.

The Page: Throughout the narrative, the poems make use of a variety of narrative modes including conversation poems, basketball rules, definition poems, text messages, play-by-plays, and newspaper articles. For example, in the definition poem “cross-o-ver,” the speaker of the poem, Josh, explains the meaning of this basketball term and how it relates to knowledge he has gathered from his education in language, his father, and professional basketball players he admires (29). In the final basketball rules poem in the novel, “Basketball Rule #10,” Josh meditates upon the year that has gone by: “A loss is inevitable, / like snow in winter. / True champions / learn / to dance / through / the storm” (230).

I found Alexander’s verse novel to be one of the best I have encountered thus far. Both the narrative and the use of poetry were compelling. I give The Crossover five stars and highly recommend it.