Margarita Engle's _The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom_

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom (2008) was the first verse novel by Margarita Engle that I encountered years ago. It is the first book in Engle's "loosely linked group of historical verse novels about the struggle against forced labor in nineteenth-century Cuba" (Lion Island, 160). The Surrender Tree was a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, only the third verse novel to be recognized by the Newbery committee after Marilyn Nelson's Carver: A Life in Poems (2002) and Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (1998). Engle was the first Latinx author to receive a Newbery honor.

The Plot: In Engle's The Surrender Tree, poems alternate among the voices of five primary characters to tell a story based upon historical events as well as Engle's own great-grandparents' experiences during Cuba's fight for independence. It take place between 1850 and 1899, during which time three different wars rage in Cuba. The narrative follows Rosa, a healer and nurse; Lieutenant Death, a slavehunter; Jose, Rosa's husband; Weyler, a captain-general of Spain who instituted concentration camps in Cuba to control the rural civilian population; and Silvia, an eleven year old girl from a small farm who comes to learn from Rosa after her family starves in the concentration camps.

The Poetry: The most striking poems in this collection are told in the voices of Rosa and Silvia and meditate upon the natural world as a healing balm for war and sorrow. For instance, in an early poem, Rosa describes the burning city of Bayamo:

I watch the flames, feel the heat,

inhale the scent of torched sugar

and scorched coffee....

I listen to voices,

burning a song in the smoky sky. (28)

Imagery, language, and metaphor are at work in this poem to evoke the sense of beauty and danger brought on by the violence of war. The internal and slant rhymes in the first three lines ("watch," "torched," "scorched") emphasize the crackling sound of the flames, while the image of "voices, / burning a song" links the lives of the people to the fire that engulfs the city. Later in the verse novel, the poems told from Silvia's view point evoke the same lyricism and imagery. In one poem, the speaker describes how the driver of an oxcart helps her steal away from the concentration camp: "He points to a hole int he fence, / puts his finger to his lips, / then draws a map in the sky--" (103). Again, the sky figures heavily into the narrative, and silence lingers at the end of each line of poetry.

The Page: Engle's verse novel is divided into five parts: "The Names of Flowers, 1850-51," "The Ten Years' War, 1868-78," "The Little War, 1878-80," "The War of Independence, 1895-98," and "The Surrender Tree, 1898-99." The novel begins with a dedication and explanation of the historical roots for the narrative, as well as a quote from a poem by Jose Marti. It concludes with an author's note, a historical note, a chronology, selected references, and acknowledgements.

I give The Surrender Tree four stars.

Pamela L. Laskin's _Ronit and Jamil_

The Plot: Pamela L. Laskin's Ronit and Jamil (2017) is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set in the Middle East. The protagonists, Ronit (an Israeli girl) and Jamil (a Palestinian boy), are teenagers living in the present-day on either side of the barrier fence that divides Israel and Gaza. Ronit and Jamil first meet when they go to work with their fathers. Ronit's father is a pharmacist and Jamil's father is a doctor; the two men know and respect each other. Once Jamil and Ronit fall desperately in love, though, their families do not support them and become hostile toward each other. The verse novel is told primarily from the alternating viewpoints of the titular characters, but also includes the voices of their fathers in act IV. As Laskin notes in her afterword, the voices of the two teenagers sound very similar and that was a conscious decision on her part (180). Although this technique makes it difficult to tell who is who at the beginning of the narrative, it allows the reader to not quite become fully immersed in the story.

The Poetry: Although the majority of the poems in the collection are told in free verse, with a mirrored version of the poem spoken by the opposite character, Laskin also employs a variety of other poetic forms throughout Ronit and Jamil including a series of ghazals (a Middle-Eastern lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and repeated rhyme, typically on the theme of love and often set to music) and a crown of sonnets (a series of multiple 14-line poems, where each new sonnet begins with the last line of the previous sonnet). Laskin utilizes lyricism, rhyme, repetition, and imagery in order to convey the sense of longing shared by Ronit and Jamil. For example in the ghazals that appear together in one spread, "Built of Bones: Jamil's Ghazal" and "Water: Ronit's Ghazal," the speakers of the poems meditate on embodiment and their connection:

There is nothing but the body

built of bones,

when I find myself beside you

I rise like bones;

from the dead and my desire

it grows like bones. (124)

In Ronit's counterpoint, she laments, "my body withers in brutal summer / so what I need is water" and "if your body's mine / I'll need no water" (125). Additionally, multiple poems reference lines from Romeo and Juliet, as well as work by other poet such as Mahmoud Darwish.

The Page: Ronit and Jamil is divided into five acts: "Naming Things," "Complications" (which includes the series of ghazals), "Dreaming an Escape: Overlapping Voices," "A Father's Lament" (which is made up of a crown of sonnets), and "Onward." The verse novel is also bookended by an introduction, reader's note, and epigraph, as well as an afterword and acknowledgement section. I found Ronit and Jamil to be an interesting and lively read. I give it four stars.

Skila Brown's _Slickety Quick: Poems About Sharks_

The Plot: Slickety Quick: Poems About Sharks written by Skila Brown and illustrated by Bob Kolar is a picture book that contains 14 spreads, each dedicated to a poem and informational blurb about a different shark. Brown's picture book is not a verse narrative, as it doesn't contain any sort of plot; instead the thread that links each poem is simply the fact that they all address sharks. It may fall into the informational books category (because of its inclusion of informational blurbs), but it does not include a bibliography of sources or peritextual matter that would lead to further resources.

The Poetry: Slickety Quick includes 14 short poems that employ a variety of poetic techniques and forms. In terms of poetic devices, Brown uses rhyme and repetition pretty consistently throughout the collection. The form that Slickety Quick uses most frequently is the concrete poem; for example, the poems, "Great White Shark," "Frilled Shark," "Cookie-Cutter Shark," "Nurse Shark," "Megamouth Shark," and "Whale Shark" all use the space on the page and the visual arrangement of the words of the poem to evoke the shape of a sharks body or mouth. The poem "Hammerhead Shark (a poem for two voices" is a contrapuntal poem, as its title suggests.

The Page: Kolar uses an interesting illustration style: each spread includes an image of the shark described, as well as a background made up of layers of monochromatic shapes depicting the ocean floor and landscape. This technique gives the reader a blurred effect and a feeling of viewing each illustration through goggles or a swim mask.

I found Slickety Quick an interesting approach, but none of the poems really stuck with me. I also found the informational blurbs to be a missed opportunity to expand the purview of the picture book as an information/educative text. I give it three stars.

Margarita Engle's _The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist_

The Plot: Margarita Engle's verse novel The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist (2013), a 2014 Pura Belpre Honor Book, is a work of historical fiction based upon the life and writing of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda (Tula) a poet, playwright, and novelist who lived from 1814-73. Avellaneda's boldest and most well-known work is Sab, "one of the world's first abolitionist novels and the earliest one written in Spanish. Sab is also the only known Latin American abolitionist novel that combines proemancipation views with feminist themes" (170). The Lightning Dreamer begins in 1827 when Tula is thirteen years old and is told from alternating viewpoints (including those of Tula, her younger brother Manuel, her mother, her maid Caridad, the Nuns whose library Tula often visits, the Orphans at the theater, and a young boy named Sab). The narrative follows Tula through 1836 when she is twenty-one years old and details her experiences on the marriage market, the blossoming of her passion for writing through discovery of Cuban Romantic poet Jose Maria Heredia's work, and her journey to Havana to write her novel.

The Poetry: Engle's verse novel is full of lyrical verse that combines imagery and metaphor to tell the story of a burgeoning young writer growing up in a time of oppression and injustice. At times Engle employs spare, rhymed verses in her narrative, such as: "I am alone / and my heart / is my own" (108). In other poems in the collection, Tula meditates upon the power of poetry's rhythms and silence: "I study verses with a drumbeat rhythm / like pounding music," "just as often, poetry is a free / dance / of birds in air," and "in each verse; / the stillness / between words" (45). Still other poems ask poignant questions about authenticity and the ethical implications of writing the story of injustices experienced by others:

Can a woman ever write

the true thoughts of a man?

...........................................

Can a free person

really understand one whose dreams

must fly up and soar

high above the depths

of slavery?

Is my imagination enough,

or do I need to add the ways

in which I myself

have felt enslaved? (162).

The Page: The Lightning Dreamer is divided into five parts: "Suns and Rays," "The Orphan Theater," "The Marriage Market," "See Me as I Am," and "The Hotel of Peace." The poems included in these sections are also book-ended by sections containing historical background and notes on the writing of Avellaneda and her mentor Heredia, as well as references. Engle also provides samples of poetry and prose written by both Avellaneda and Heredia in Spanish and with English translations.

Engle has written ten verse novels, several of which I have reviewed. The Lightning Dreamer is my favorite of Engle's verse novels for young readers. I give it five stars and highly recommend it.

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.

Helen Frost's _Applesauce Weather_

The Plot: Helen Frost's Applesauce Weather (2016) is a slim verse novel illustrated by Amy June Bates that tells the story of siblings Faith and Peter and their Uncle Arthur. Every year, when the first apples begin to fall from the apple tree in their yard, Uncle Arthur comes to visit Faith and Peter to make applesauce and tell stories. But this year is a bit different, as Aunt Lucy has recently passed away and Uncle Arthur is still grieving. As the narrative unfolds, readers learn of Arthur and Lucy's love story, and Uncle Arthur weaves strange tales about how he lost one of his fingers. Frost's narrative is about ritual, relationships, and growing together through love and grief.


The Poetry: Every ten pages in the verse novel, a new section begins with a short poem. The first of these eight poems is called "The Apple Tree," and each subsequent poem is entitled "Lucy's Song" (17, 27, 37, 55, 69, 83, 91). These poems often include end rhyme, and they all refer to Lucy and Arthur's love story. "The Apple Tree" begins by describing place, "A house beside an orchard / at the edge of a small town / a bench beneath an apple tree" and continues as a prologue to the narrative: "this story tells what happened / between here and that first bend" (ii). Each of the additional poems in the collection are titled with the name of the character from whose perspective the reader hears the story ("Faith," "Peter," or "Arthur"). Frost tells an engaging narrative, utilizing both rhyme and the space on the page to focus the narrative.

The Page: Bates's pencil illustrations for the verse novel are striking and truly enrich the narrative. This shorter verse novel (103 pages) mirrors the length of poetry collections for adults and allows readers to focus on the poetic silence in the spaces left. While Frost uses rhyme and narrative elements to great effect, her verse novel would have benefited from additional use of poetic devices such as imagery. I give Applesauce Weather three 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.

Sharon Creech's _Moo: A Novel_

The Plot: Sharon Creech's (2016) verse novel Moo: A Novel tells the story of twelve-year-old Reena. Reena moves with her younger brother, Luke, and her parents from the big city to Maine, where they encounter an old woman named Mrs. Falala. Mrs. Falala owns a farm and a stubborn cow named Zora. After a few strange meetings with Mrs. Falala, Reena and Luke's parents volunteer them to work on the farm helping Mrs. Falala clean and care for Zora the cow and her other farm animals. While Reena and Luke are at first skeptical and even scared of the old woman and her cow, they eventually grow quite fond of her. Luke, an avid drawer, spends time teaching Mrs. Falala to draw, while Reena works diligently to train Zora. With the help of a young man named Zep, Reena begins to train to show Zora at the county fair. The novel ends with Reena and Zora's first time showing at the fair, and an unexpected twist involving Mrs. Falala.

The Poetry: Creech's verse novel follows her previous work in this form, Love That Dog (2001), Hate That Cat (2008), and Heartbeat (2004), in that it uses free verse  throughout the narrative, in addition to concrete poetry and varied typography in several poems. Despite the fact that in Moo the emphasis is most often placed upon the narrative arc, instead of poetic devices and techniques, Creech does use the broken line, white space, and typographical variances in order to emphasize the significance of particular moments in the narrative and to encourage the reader to spend more time on the page. For example, in the poem "Back to Twitch Street," Creech uses imagery and typography to create a distinct picture in the reader's mind of life on the farm:

with the open attic window

and the

           f  l  u  t  e     m  u  s  i  c

                       drift

                               ing

                                     d

                                     o

                                     w

                                     n (61)

In this excerpt from "Back to Twitch Street," Reena and Luke return to the farm after riding their bikes through pastures and past views of the ocean. They are truly captivated by the scenes of the country after growing up in the city. Throughout the narrative, Reena and Luke are captivated the the flute music they hear Mrs. Falala playing from her attic window. They never seen her play, but they come to learn that her flute music and attic space help her practice "remembering."

The Page: The 74 poems that make up Creech's verse novel Moo trace the experiences of pre-teen Reena as she moves from the city to the country and transforms from an indoor girl to an outdoor girl. Creech's Moo was a fine verse novel that represents a growing trend in the blend of free verse, prose sections, and concrete poetry in the verse novel for middle grade readers. I give Moo three stars.

Stefanie Lyon's _Dating Down_

The Plot: Stefanie Lyon's 2015 verse novel Dating Down tells the story of high school junior and daughter of a politician Samantha Henderson and her experience of falling in love with a "bad boy," who is referred to throughout the narrative as "X." Readers learn in the first pages of the narrative why Sam's love interest is referred to in this way:

I will call him X.

X

for the reasons I crossed him out of my life.

X

for the number of times I plunged into self-destruction.

X

because his name would only give him a place in your mind

that he does not deserve (1).

The narrative follows Sam through the first time she sees X at a coffee shop where he works, through her first sexual experience with him, her discovery of his drug use and infidelity, her own participation in drug and alcohol abuse, and finally her decision to separate from X and move on with her life. Dating Down follows in the pattern of many verse novels for young readers in that it is part of the problem novel tradition.

The Poetry: Lyon's narrative primarily utilizes free verse poetry throughout while making use of end rhyme and concrete poetry occasionally. Lyon also employs the format of dramatic verse in order to demonstrate conversations between Sam and other young characters in the narrative. Ultimately much of the poetry lacked lyricism or innovation. For example, in the poem "Sex," which details Sam's first time having sex with X, the poem relies on short, choppy lines and sporadic end rhyme to move the reader more quickly through the moment: "my bra / my shirt / the late-May air" and "His hands / my body / the canvas of me" (121). Ultimately, this approach is not effective in drawing the reader into the narrative or allowing the reader to linger in the emotion or intensity of Sam's experience.

The Page: Throughout the narrative, Lyon often makes use of the space across the entire page, presumably in order to allow the reader to linger in the white space or to slow down the eye in the reading process. But overall, this approach was not successful. The poetry in Dating Down fell flat and the narrative didn't succeed in pulling me in as a reader. In an over-300-page narrative, the lack of a compelling narrative made getting through Dating Down particularly difficult. I give Lyon's Dating Down two stars.

Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu's _Somewhere Among_

The Plot: Somewhere Among (2016), a verse novel by Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu, introduces readers to Japanese fifth-grader Ema, who lives with her American mother and Japanese father in Tokyo. Because Ema's mother is struggling with a difficult pregnancy, instead of visiting her maternal grandparents for the summer in California as she usually does, Ema and her mother move to the country to stay with her paternal grandparents, Obaachan and Jiichan. Meanwhile, Ema's father stays in the city and works, visiting them as often as he can. Throughout the narrative, Obaachan is portrayed as extremely strict and grating, while Jiichan is depicted as quiet and caring, yet troubled by his memories of experiencing the horrors of WWII as a boy. The narrative takes place from June to December 2001, and Ema and her family experience the sadness and grief from the September 11th terrorist attacks, as well as several earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis that rock their small community. In addition to her mother's difficult pregnancy and her father's absence, Ema also combats stares and comments about her biracial status, as well as a particularly upsetting bully at her new school. Eventually, Ema's mother's early labor and Jiichan's heart attack completely upset the family's life, but ultimately allow Ema and Obaachan to grow closer.

The Poetry: Donwerth-Chikamatsu's Somewhere Among is presented in free verse, and many of the poems make excellent use of space, rhyme, metaphor, and lyricism to communicate the overwhelming sense of sorrow that emanates from the various tragedies and events explored in the narrative. For example, the poem "After the Storm" depicts Ema's family emerging from the silence of their home after a typhoon by sliding open the shutters and turning on the news:

I look at Mom,

sound asleep,

             not enjoying the night air

                         one cricket here

                                     one cricket there.

TVs blare

a news flash

the whole neighborhood gasps. (206-7).

In this poem, the author makes use of the space on the page in order to emphasize the silence and to encourage the reader to engage in the same meditation the protagonist experiences as she enjoys "the moon and the stars" and "the sparkly air after a typhoon" (206). Additionally, the use of both rhyme and slant rhyme in the final five lines of the poem adds emphasis through language and sound, and furthermore, brings a subtlety to the description of this well-known historical event. The verse novel also made several nods toward other poets and popular musicians such as Emily Dickinson and The Beatles.

The Page: Somewhere Among is divided into seven sections, each representing a month from June to December, ranging in length from 35 to 100+ pages. Each section's front page also includes a black and white illustration. At 439 pages, the verse novel spent a lot of time exploring the experiences of Ema. The early poems and the narrative moved pretty slowly, and it seemed the author could have edited the collection down a bit. Overall I found Somewhere Among to be a fine verse novel. I give it three stars.

Leza Lowitz's _Up From The Sea_

The Plot: Up From the Sea (2016) by Leza Lowitz tells the story of seventeen-year-old Kai, a Japanese American boy living in the Tohuku region of Honshu, Japan and his experience of surviving the March 2001 earthquake and tsunami that devastated his community. The verse novel begins with a preface detailing the particulars of the tragedy and then immediately immerses the reader in Kai's experiences the morning of the earthquake and tsunami. Kai loses his mother and grandparents, as well as his home, but as the months go on he comes to terms with his loss. Deciding he wants to seek out his father, who he hasn't seen in many years, he travels to New York with a group of survivors to meet with other young people who lost their parents on September 11th when hijacked planes were crashed into the World Trade Center. After Kai fails to locate his father in New York, he returns to Japan and focuses his energy on creating a soccer team in his town and teaching young people the sport he loves.

The Poetry: Lowitz's verse novel is told in free verse with short, choppy lines. It was disappointing that in an almost-300-page verse novel, Lowitz included very little poetic technique, and what was used was not impactful. The short lines, which often included a single word per line for an entire poem, seemed gimmicky after a few pages. Like other verse novels that I've discussed on this blog, Up From The Sea does not follow the standard poetic practice of only having one poem on each page, and this contributes to a lack of space for reader contemplation (which in my estimation is one of the most significant features of the verse novel form). The poem "When I Wake Up," which includes lines referencing the collection's title, was maybe the only example of a poem that utilized the short line in a way that was meaningful; this poem also makes use of rhyme, but overall the poem could have held more weight if it were placed on its own page. There were a few moments of imagery, but these were very few and far between. For example, one such instance occurs early on in the poem "March 11--" when the speaker of the poem describes his community: "Shin's dad washed his taxi in their garage, / bleached the seat covers white as bone" (4). While the second line uses a simile to begin to create some imagery, most of the collection follows the first line in that it focuses on tired descriptions with little detail or language play. The lack of imagery and lyricism, as well as the inability of the author to fully develop her character or landscape made this a tough work to get through.  

The Page: The narrative is divided into three seasons: "Spring," "Summer," and "Fall," and each season has sections of poems within it that use alliterative titles, such as, "Adrift," "Amidst," "Ashore," "Ascend," and so on. Many pages also include footnotes that define and explain Japanese terms. For instance, on page 4 the reader learns that "Obaachan" and "Ojichan" mean grandma and grandpa, respectively, and on page 79 a note explains that "natsukashii" means an "expression of a feeling of nostalgia or fondness when experiencing something for the first time in a long time."

Overall, Lowitz's Up From the Sea seemed like a missed opportunity in both narrative and poetic craft. While the verse novel's topic seemed of interest, the author was unable to use the form or narrative content to create a work that stood out. I give Up From The Sea two 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.

Linda Oatman High's _A Heart Like Ringo Starr_

The Plot: Linda Oatman High's 2015 A Heart Like Ringo Starr tells the story of 17-year-old Faith Hope Stevens who is awaiting a heart transplant. Faith, who has been sick since she was born, is home-schooled, and her family runs a funeral home, so death seems to always be a part of her life. The narrative follows Faith through her experience of being on the transplant list, to discovering that she will receive a heart transplant, to her life with a new heart and the uncertainties and surprises that arise from this transition in her life. Before her transplant, Faith is depicted as cynical, and she expects that it is not just a matter of if she will die but when. After she receives a new heart, she feels unsure of who she is and longs to have her old, defective heart back. Faith starts her senior year at high school (it is not as exciting as she thought it would be and she feels on-display and invisible at the same time), and she meets a young man while at the beach with her great aunt. The narrative moves surprisingly quickly through each of these events and has a closed, happily-ever-after ending.

The Poetry: Throughout the verse novel, Oatman High utilizes a significant amount of end and internal rhyme, as well as a considerable amount of white space. These two poetic techniques seem at odds with each other throughout the collection. The use of rhyme speeds the narrative up, which seems to contradict the serious subject matter. The white space created by the use of short lines, half-blank page, and alternatively left and right justified text might usually act as a method to slow the reader's pace in verse novels, while in A Heart Like Ringo Starr these techniques juxtaposed with the extensive use of rhyme and the sporadic changes in typography do not seem as purposeful. For example, in the poem "Wintertime," three four to five line stanzas include only one to five words and the facing page leave the top half of the page blank and includes two similarly short stanzas that end the poem:

Bummer.

I so

want summer.

Popsicles.

Not icicles.

This pedicure tickles

                                 my

                                         toes (9).

This use of rhyme and space on the page does little in terms of narrative work or linguistic play, and ultimately the poem falls flat. Other poems such as the title poem, "A Heart Like Ringo Starr" (91), are on the verge of successfully exploring a character's thoughts and feelings with rhyme, rhythm, and lyricism, but in the end the poem is less impactful because of the author's choice of line length and use of white space.

The Page: A Heart Like Ringo Starr is divided into two parts that follow Faith before and after her transplant. As previously noted, the poems make use of white space and typography play. It seems that the author made some of her choices because she sees her work appealing to "reluctant readers." This argument for the use of white space and short lines as inviting to readers because less appears on the page seems to be a mistake and a view that doesn't take young readers seriously as an audience. Ultimately, white space and poetic language within a verse novel are most successful when they encourage a reader to slow down and meditate upon the narrative, emotion, and meaning.

I give Oatman High's verse novel two stars.

K. A. Holt's _Rhyme Schemer_

The Plot: Rhyme Schemer (2014) is K. A. Holt's second verse novel for young readers (following her 2010 Brains for Lunch: A Zombie Novel in Haiku). Holt's Rhyme Schemer follows Kevin Jamison, a seventh grader who is struggling with his home life and his school life. Both of his parents are doctors who are never around, all four of his older brothers ignore him, and he and another student Robin are constantly taking turns tormenting each other. Kevin's one solace is creating poetry through erasure (by defacing classic books for young readers, which most all of his teachers and his principal frown upon). As punishment for his bullying he is forced to work shelving books in the library where he meets Mrs. Little, who encourages him in his poetry. When Robin finds Kevin's poetry notebook and begins posting his work around school, he realizes how much his poetry means to him.

The Poetry: Holt's verse novel follows Sharon Creech's Love That Dog in that it essentially functions as a young poet's writing notebook. Like Creech's verse novel for younger readers, Rhyme Schemer emphasizes the reluctant poet character, his connection to a trusted teacher/librarian, and the young poet's hidden emotional pain. For example in the poem "Friday Rescue" Mrs. Little finds Kevin outside a restaurant alone and crying after his parents send him out for making a scene at dinner. Kevin is astonished when his teacher begins to praise him in front of his parents:

She called me

A schemer, no doubt.

But also?

Smart.

Funny.

Fragile (134). 

Mrs. Little then asks to borrow Kevin and take him to a poetry open mic night at a local coffee house. One of the most interesting and innovative elements of Holt's verse novel is her use of erasure poetry; there are 10 erasure poems dispersed throughout the novel pulled from The Wind and the Willows, Peter Pan, and Hansel and Gretel, among others. There are also a series of quatrains with regular rhyme schemes that Kevin calls "Necktie Poems" (written about his principal).

The Page: Through its writing journal structure, Rhyme Schemer provides yet another unique approach to the verse novel form. Poems are titled as either days of the school year or are pasted in pages of other book pages that Kevin uses to create erasure poems. Verse novels like Holt's and Creech's certainly serve a pedagogical function in that they provide an outline for how developing writers might approach poetry. In this way, the writing journal structure in the verse novel is distinct in its approach and call to young readers who want to be writers in that the form and structure imply a participatory reader experience. The structure serves as a model, one that is referred to by other verse novelists such as Kwame Alexander, whose protagonist reads and refers to Holt's Rhyme Schemer and then creates his own erasure poems after this model.

I found K. A. Holt's Rhyme Schemer to be another fascinating exercise in form and poetic experimentation. I give it four stars.

Kwame Alexander's _Booked_

Earlier this year I reviewed Kwame Alexander's Newbery Medal winner The Crossover (2014). I highly recommend The Crossover, which incorporates some truly electric language and utilizes a variety of different formal approaches to tell a rich story that deals with family, grief, sports, and boyhood in an absolutely innovative way. Alexander's follow up to The Crossover, Booked (2016) is another groundbreaking verse novel that is sure to garner praise from young readers, librarians, educators, and scholars.

The Plot: Kwame Alexander's Booked follows eighth grader Nick Hall-- a wordsmith and avid soccer player-- as he navigates his first crush, his parents' separation, and his relationship with books. Alexander's verse novels have both portrayed highly professionalized parents; in The Crossover Josh's parents were a retired professional basketball player and an assistant middle school principal, and in Booked Nick's parents are a linguistics professor and a former horse racer turned trainer. The narrative begins with Nick daydreaming about soccer and feeling annoyed that his father makes him read a dictionary he wrote called Weird and Wonderful Words in preparation for college. As the narrative continues, the reader learns that in addition to playing soccer, Nick takes regular lessons at Miss Quattlebaum's School of Ballroom Dance and Etiquette (21), where he often gets to dance with April (the girl he has a crush on but is mostly too nervous to talk to). Early on in the narrative, Nick learns that his mother has decided to go back to work with horses in Kentucky and that his parents are separating (57). After learning this news, Nick becomes depressed; he has a hard time sleeping and begins to struggle in his classes. Nick struggles with his parents' separation throughout the novel, while also building up the courage to talk to April, playing against his best friend in soccer tournaments, dealing with being bullied, and resisting his honors English teacher's and his librarian's pleas for him to get more involved in reading because of his strength with words.

The Poetry: One of the most unique and fascinating things about Alexander's Booked is his use of erasure poetry, footnotes, acrostics, and intertextuality throughout. Towards the end of the verse novel, Nick begins to become immersed in literature for younger readers and joins a book club. He describes the experience of reading works like Karen Hesse's verse novel Out of the Dust and Jacqueline Woodson's Peace, Locomotion. In many ways, Booked takes on a pedagogical or didactic function in that it introduces readers to contemporary works for young readers and schools them in vocabulary. While acrostics, poems in which the first letter of a line spells out a word when read vertically, may seem like a commonplace poetic form for works for young readers, Alexander elevates this form by using unfamiliar words and then following up these poems with discussions of the word's meaning. For example the poem "April is" (114) utilizes an acrostic of the word "limerence," which means "the experience of being in love with someone" (119) to describe all of the characteristics he likes about April. When his English teacher asks him to find an example of a malapropism in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Nick creates an erasure poem from a page of the novel to show two malapropisms he found in the text (51). While Alexander's Booked does not contain the same level of electricity and playfulness in language as his previous work, The Crossover, Booked is innovative in its approach to form.

The Page: Footnotes are another inventive device that Alexander uses throughout Booked. While the footnote might be seen as academic, Nick utilizes them not only to define words, but also to provide his own commentary on the words. For example, in the poem "Busted," Nick's footnote reads: "*malapropism [mal-uh-prop-iz-uhm] noun: the amusing and ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of a similar sound. Here's an example: my English teacher, Ms. Hardwick, is a wolf in cheap clothing" (18).

I found Alexander's new verse novel Booked to be a fascinating and fun read. I give it four stars and highly recommend it.

Ellen Hopkins's _Rumble_

The Plot: Ellen Hopkins's Rumble (2014), her eleventh verse novel for young adults, tells the story of Matthew Turner, a high school senior who is dealing with his younger brother Luke's recent suicide, his parents' separation, and his conflicted feelings toward his evangelical Christian girlfriend Hayden. Most of the narrative in this 500+ page work centers around Matt's anger and resentment toward Hayden's circle of church-going friends who bullied his younger brother mercilessly for being gay before his death. Matt also attends regular therapy sessions in which he meditates upon his anger toward everyone who he feels had a hand in Luke's death, his fear of being left along (by Luke, his parents, and his girlfriend), and his struggles with guilt and forgiveness. Toward the middle of the narrative, Matt reconnects with his girlfriend's former best friend Alexa and they begin to feel more and more attracted to each other. This connection, along with his girlfriend's deepening faith and increased commitment to her youth group ministry, leads to Hayden and Matt's breakup. Matt finds out that Hayden also had a hand in gossiping about Luke to her friends who then posted photoshopped pornographic images to Luke's social media pages before he committed suicide. Matt also begins visiting his uncle's gun range regularly to practice shooting. His uncle eventually gives him a job working at the range where one of his uncle's friends (Gus) comes regularly. Gus is depicted as suffering from PTSD after his military service and regularly comes to the range drunk and tries to obtain his gun. When Matt's uncle has a sudden heart attack and leaves Matt alone at the range, Gus shows up angry and Matt's life is changed (again) forever. There is a lot of drama packed into Rumble, and Hopkins employs her signature angsty teen voice throughout. Ellen Hopkins is the Judy Blume of the verse novel, and Rumble is absolutely a problem novel, filled with the protagonist's confessions and an overarching didacticism concerning ideas about books and censorship, faith and religion, and teenage sexuality.

The Poetry: Hopkins's verse novel is told through a series of free verse poems that have a strong focus on language and utilize internal rhymes and rhythm to move the narrative along quickly. For instance, the first poem in the collection "In the Narrow Pewter Space" begins:

Between the gray of consciousness

and the obsidian where dreams

ebb and flow, there is a wishbone

window. And trapped in its glass,

a single silver shard of enlightenment (1).

In these first few lines, Hopkins sets the focal point of the narrative on the mind and philosophical meditations of her protagonist. This first poem in Rumble utilizes alliteration, internal rhyme, and metaphor to convey the inner workings of Hopkins's character.

The Page: While most of the poems in Rumble focus on moving the narrative forward, several poems take the form of Matt's memories of his younger brother and the discussions they would have about faith, family, and the meaning of life. A few poems also focus on Matt's own writing, including an essay he writes for his English class arguing against the existence of God and a letter to the school board he writes arguing against the censorship of the YA text The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Overall, Hopkins's verse novel was in the same vein as her other works: full of drama and the frank discussion of serious/taboo topics like sex, drugs and alcohol use, religion, suicide, and PTSD. I give Rumble three stars.

Nikki Grimes's _Words with Wings_

The Plot: Nikki Grimes's Words with Wings (2013) was named a Coretta Scott King honor book in 2014 and tells the story of daydreamer Gabriella. Gabby's story begins with a poem entitled "Prologue" which explains how her parents decided on her name. Most of the poems focus on the primary narrative: Gabby's parents have just divorced and she and her mother have moved to a new town where she starts a new school. In addition to the focus on Gabby's changing home life, these poems also track her struggle in school and at home with being labeled a daydreamer. At school, most of her teachers remark that "her mind tends to wander," while at home her mother is constantly frustrated that she can't stay on task with her chores or doesn't seem to be listening. Gabby thinks this tension with her mother might have something to do with the fact that her daydreaming is something she gets from her father. The one teacher who seems to support her daydreaming is her English teacher, Mr. Spicer. When Gabby suddenly stops daydreaming, she becomes even more withdrawn and sad; it is her English teacher who encourages her by suggesting that her entire class spend some time every day writing down their daydreams. It seems that this helps her pay attention in class, and her mother begins to praise her for being such a great writer.

The Poetry: This short 83 page verse novel is comprised of mostly short free verse poems, with a few haiku and concrete poems. Eighteen of the poems are Gabby's "daydreams," and these poems are set off in a different sans-serif font and a slightly larger font size. Each of the daydream poems begins with the same refrain that focuses on the poem's title image. For example, the poem "Waterfall" begins:

Say "waterfall,"

and the dreary winter rain

outside my classroom window

turns to liquid thunder,

pounding into a clear pool

miles below,

and I can't wait

to dive in (30).

Most of the poems in Words with Wings fall into a similar pattern of using a key word to evoke an image. Mostly these poems are not extremely compelling, but they do work similar to that of Sharon Creech's Love That Dog in that they show a young person learning the intricacies of language and practicing at being a writer of poetry. A few poems in this collection incorporate interesting rhyme and imagery, but even these ultimately have endings that feel overly didactic or have a strange exclamatory clause at the end. For example, the title poem "Words with Wings" begins with interesting sound and imagery: "Some words / sit still on the page / holding a story steady" and "But other words have wings / that wake my daydreams," but ends with the phrase, "I can't help / but buckle up / for the ride!" (11).

The Page: The organization of Grimes's verse novel seemed a bit strange. At first it seemed that the daydream poems might have been flashbacks, but towards the end of the narrative it became clear that they were parts of her daydream journal. I am not sure that this was an effective organizational strategy.

Overall, Words with Wings is a fine verse novel. I give it three 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.

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.