The Cay by Theodore Taylor (1969). Delacorte Press; 137 pages; adventure; ages 8-14; ISBN: 0-380-01003-8.Phillip Enright is an 11-year-old American living on the Dutch-occupied island of Curaçao during World War II. His father works for a local oil refinery, a target of German submarines that also happen to be torpedoing ships off the coast, and his mother decides that the island is no longer safe—she decides to take her son back home to Virginia. But tragedy strikes shortly after they depart when their ship is torpedoed as well; Phillip is hit in the back of the head with a piece of timber and blacks out during the evacuation, and when he wakes up he's on a raft with Timothy, a shipmate who rescued him from certain death in the water.
Timothy was born in the West Indies. He grew up with nothing, and doesn't know his own birthday. He and Phillip have nothing in common, but he will protect Phillip at any cost, and they must work together to stay alive, especially once they land on a small island, or cay, located in a forgotten part of the Caribbean that Timothy refers to as "the Devil's Mouth." A fast-paced, suspenseful story that provides poignant lessons on racial tolerance and the ties that bind all men together, The Cay almost dares you not to finish it in one sitting. It's a mesmerizing reading experience from start to finish.
Winner of a 1970 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and the Jane Addams Children's Book Award that same year, though the latter was revoked five years later due to controversy surrounding the author's portrayal of Timothy, who speaks in a Creole dialect. For further reading, check out Taylor's 1993 sequel of sorts, Timothy of the Cay.
Iggie's House by Judy Blume (1970). Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster; 117 pages; realistic fiction; ages 8 and up; ISBN: 978-0-689-84291-7.Eleven-year-old Winnie's best friend from down the street, Iggie, has recently moved to Tokyo with her family. As Judy Blume's first novel begins, a new family is moving into Iggie's house—a black family, making them the first nonwhites in the neighborhood. Winnie's excited to make new friends with the Garber family's three children, Glenn, Herbie, and Tina, and show them she's not like other white kids, but her parents are less enthused, mainly because they can see the trouble around the bend that Winnie can't. And once neighborhood busybody Dorothy Landon starts up her own unwelcoming committee, tempers begin to flare on both sides of the issue.
Blume's YA debut shows her in full control of her talent, which blossomed even further as the '70s rolled on. She creates memorable characters like hotheaded Herbie, who confronts Winnie on her ill-advised "great white savior" role and in general speaks his mind like a grade-school prototype of TV's George Jefferson (who was still a few years away from seeing the televised light of day), and shows readers how Winnie's actions are similar to Mrs. Landon's. Iggie's House powerfully reflects the "white flight" racial tensions of its time but ends on a quiet note, gently reminding readers both young and old that modest victories are sometimes the only ones you get.
For further reading, check out everything Judy Blume has ever written. You'll be glad you did. And to see a Glogster-hosted advertising poster I created for Iggie's House, click here.*
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970). Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster; 149 pages; realistic fiction; ages 9-14; ISBN: 0-689-84158-2.The suburb of Farbrook, New Jersey, is ex-New Yorker Margaret Simon's new home as she enters sixth grade. She quickly becomes friends with Gretchen, Janie, and Nancy, who invite her into a secret club for girls only; they create Boy Books, listing who they like the most (Philip Leroy is always number one), but mostly they talk about exercises to increase their "bust" and promise to tell each other when they get their periods. Margaret also talks to God about anything and everything, but because her father is Jewish and her mother is Christian, they haven't pressured her to choose between the two. The same can't be said for her overbearing Christian grandparents, but at least Margaret's Jewish grandmother isn't the kind to make her choose sides.
In a way Judy Blume picks up where she left off with her previous novel, Iggie's House, expanding her scope in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret to incorporate preteen girls' concerns and curiosity about their changing bodies as well as issues of religious faith and tolerance. Blume switches from the third-person narration of Iggie's House to first-person narration in this book, causing the reader to feel Margaret's frustration right alongside her as she questions her body, her beliefs, and everything in between. I especially like how Blume portrays grandparents in her books: Margaret's Jewish grandmother treats her like a person, not a child, similar to the grandmother of Katherine, the protagonist in Blume's 1975 novel Forever.... (Please wait a few years before you tackle that book, tween readers. Having said that, I'm completely positive you won't wait to find out why you should wait.)
For further reading, check out It's Not the End of the World, Blume's 1972 novel about a girl whose parents don't have the same loving bond as Margaret's.
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume (1971). Yearling/Random House; 164 pages; realistic fiction; ages 9-14; ISBN: 0-440-48659-9.A year after Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret Judy Blume published the flip-side male version. Similar to Margaret, Tony Miglione moves from a small house in Jersey City to a big one in (fictional) Rosemont, New York, after his dad, an electrician and part-time inventor, strikes it rich with a prototype for an electrical cartridge. The seventh grader enjoys certain aspects of the 'burbs, like his next-door neighbor Joel's older sister, Lisa, who undresses in front of her bedroom window but doesn't know Tony can see her from his bedroom (or does she?).
On the other hand, he hates that his mom suddenly only seems to care about impressing the Migliones' wealthy neighbors, and he really hates that their new housekeeper has banished his grandmother from the kitchen, depriving her of her main source of happiness. Tony also has to contend with Joel, who's "nice" around adults but shoplifts whenever he can in front of his new friend, which literally ties Tony's stomach in knots.
I first read Then Again, Maybe I Won't when I was in second or third grade. At that time I had no idea what a wet dream was, and I still don't think I knew by fourth grade, but age nine seems like a good entry point for new readers of Blume's classic book. Unlike Margaret and her friends, Tony doesn't talk with other boys about the changes their bodies are going through, including the erections he gets from out of nowhere during school, but his dad does try to have "the talk" with him, and much awkwardness ensues. Then Again, Maybe I Won't proved that Judy Blume could write just as incisively about the young male mind as she could about girls like Margaret and Winnie.
For further reading, check out The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951), featuring another male protagonist who's wary of "phonies." (Recommended for older tweens.)
T-Minus: The Race to the Moon by Jim Ottaviani, Zander Cannon, and Kevin Cannon (2009). Aladdin/Simon & Schuster; 124 pages; historical fiction; ages 9-13; ISBN: 978-1-4169-4960-2.A graphic novel covering the historic race between the United States and Soviet Union to put a man on the moon, T-Minus gives equal coverage to both superpowers, culminating in the events of July 20, 1969.
Along the way readers are introduced to the men and women who made it happen, including lesser-known figures like German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who designed the Saturn V rocket that carried Neil Armstrong and company into outer space; Sergei Korolev, the "chief designer" of the Soviet space program; NASA engineers Caldwell "C.C." Johnson and Max Faget; and "computers," otherwise known in the USSR as Russian women who were hired for their mathematical expertise.
Jim Ottaviani, the writer of T-Minus, and Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon, who illustrated it (and aren't related, it turns out), stuff a large amount of historical and technological information into T-Minus's 100-plus pages, so much so that at times the pace flagged because I got bogged down in explanations of acronyms such as TLI ("Trans-Lunar Injection") and GUIDO ("Guidance Officer"). If you've recently developed a casual interest in the history of space exploration, T-Minus probably isn't the place to start, but its authors show a deep respect for the attention spans of their intended tween audience, which is to be commended.
For further reading, check out Laika by Nick Abadzis (2007). And to see a Glogster-hosted advertising poster I created for T-Minus, click here.*
No Girls Allowed by Susan Hughes (2008). Illustrated by Willow Dawson. Kids Can Press; 80 pages; history; ages 9-12; ISBN: 978-1-55453-177-6.Susan Hughes's graphic novel, subtitled "Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure," is made up of seven stories based on historical fact (more or less) that stretch from 1500 BCE to the American Civil War. Readers learn about Hatshepsut's rise to power as an Egyptian pharaoh despite men only being allowed to hold that title; Mulan's selfless enrollment in the Chinese army, an action she took to save the life of her elderly father; Ellen Craft's bold plan to escape her life as a slave in the American south in the 1840s with her husband, William, also a slave; and four other females who sacrificed their identities but never their souls in order to carve out better lives for themselves.
Hughes crams a lot of history and exposition into her seven tales, sometimes with a heavy hand that also ends stories abruptly, but Willow Dawson's clean black-and-white drawings help convey the characters' fears, frustrations, and triumphs quickly and effectively. "Allowed the freedom to reach out and try, they could achieve their goals," Hughes writes in No Girls Allowed's afterword. "Unfortunately, they had to do it while living a lie." Luckily, their shining examples of courage and independence blazed the trail for countless other women in the years to come.
For further reading about risk-taking females, check out T-Minus author Jim Ottaviani's Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists (1999).
Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back by Shel Silverstein (1963). HarperCollins; 112 pages; humor; ages 9-12; ISBN: 0-06-025675-3.An African jungle lion decides one day that he isn't going to run from the rifle-carrying hunters who are chasing him and his friends. He tries to make nice with one of them, but when the hunter tries to shoot him, the lion eats the hunter and takes his rifle. Eventually he learns how to pull the trigger with his tail and becomes an expert marksman, attracting the attention of a circus owner who names the lion Lafcadio and brings him to America. Lafcadio becomes rich and famous showing off his skills in front of circus crowds, but when he returns to the jungle years later he questions his place in the world.
Shel Silverstein narrates Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back as "Uncle Shelby," a self-described "very handsome and very intelligent and very kind" man who helps Lafcadio when he arrives in America. The author fills his story with whimsical conceits, such as a suit made of marshmallows and a lion who can sign six autographs at once using his tail, teeth, and four paws, but Lafcadio and his lion friends do eat the hunters who want to shoot them, and those hunters do shoot and kill the lions who don't run away fast enough. Silverstein's book also ends on a down note, with Lafcadio facing an identity crisis—"And he didn't really know where he was going, but he did know he was going somewhere, because you really have to go somewhere, don't you?"—that will likely ring true with tween readers who feel stuck at the border between childhood and adolescence.
Older tweens may also be interested in reading Brian K. Vaughan's graphic novel Pride of Baghdad (2006), illustrated by Niko Henrichon.
Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates by Jonah Winter (2005). Illustrated by Raúl Colón. Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster; 40 pages; biography; ages 7-11; ISBN: 0-689-85643-1.Jonah Winter’s biography of Roberto Clemente, who played baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates for the duration of his 18 seasons in the major leagues, is a compelling portrait of a man who worked relentlessly at the sport he loved (“’If you don’t try as hard as you can,’ he said, / ‘you are wasting your life’”), using his earnings to give back to the people of his native Puerto Rico before his untimely death in a plane crash on December 31, 1972.
Winter gives his text the appearance of poetry by putting a space between every two lines, thus implying that Clemente was poetry in motion, a hitter, runner, and fielder without equal. Meanwhile, illustrator Raúl Colón alternates soft, cool watercolors with black-and-white pencil etchings, but the latter are only used when showing Clemente in his Pirates uniform, far from home and fighting to be seen as more than just a color. Fans quickly warmed to him, but “the newspaper writers did not,” Winter writes; “when Roberto got angry, / the mainly white newsmen called him a Latino ‘hothead.’”
This hint of a temper is the only negative trait Winter allows his hero, and it’s viewed merely as a byproduct of his quest to become so good at his profession that he could no longer be ignored by the world at large. Winter's message to young readers in Roberto Clemente is that success isn’t guaranteed for anyone in America, but if your work ethic is solid and you keep striving to be the best, you can ultimately prove your doubters wrong.
For further reading, check out Jonah Winter's picture books ¡Béisbol! Latino Baseball Pioneers and Legends and Fair Ball! 14 Great Stars from Baseball’s Negro Leagues, as well as the Colón-illustrated Play Ball!, New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada's account of his childhood in Puerto Rico.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007). Illustrated by Ellen Forney. Little, Brown and Company; 230 pages; realistic fiction; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-0-316-01369-7.Arnold Spirit Jr. is an awkward but creative 14-year-old Spokane Indian who lives on a reservation with his parents and grandmother. On the first day of ninth grade at the "rez" school, he discovers his mother's maiden name in his "new" geometry textbook. Infuriated, he throws the book at his teacher, breaking the man's nose, but when the teacher comes to Arnold's house to talk to him about the incident, he encourages Arnold to do whatever he can to get off the reservation, before it kills his spirit. Arnold decides to enroll at the all-white high school in nearby Reardan, angering many Indians, especially his newly former best friend, Rowdy, who feels abandoned but can only express himself with his fists. But over the course of the school year, as he experiences one family tragedy after another amidst personal triumphs on the school's basketball court, Arnold comes to terms with his status as a part-time Indian.
Sherman Alexie's semiautobiographical novel is bursting with brash humor and unexpected tragedy (apparently seven of his relatives died in a single school year when he was around Arnold's age). It also doesn't pull any punches in discussing extreme poverty among Indians or the rampant alcoholism that's a direct cause—and effect—of that poverty. Ellen Forney's line drawings enhance Alexie's prose, so much so that it's hard to imagine the book without them. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian lives up to the critical hype.
Winner of the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. For further reading, check out The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake or American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (see below). And to see a Glogster-hosted advertising poster I created for Part-Time Indian, click here.*
The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake (1998). Jump at the Sun/Hyperion; 171 pages; realistic fiction; ages 11 and up; ISBN: 978-142310385-1.Seventh grader Maleeka Madison is picked on because of the darkness of her skin. When a new language-arts teacher named Miss Saunders arrives at her inner-city middle school as part of a corporate program that puts advertising executives in classrooms for a year, Maleeka finds herself in the presence of a caring mentor, though she doesn't know it at first. In fact she resists Miss Saunders's attention and concern almost every step of the way, partly because the new teacher has a large white birthmark on her black face, making her, in Maleeka's mind, as much of a target for negative comments as Maleeka herself. The protagonist must also deal with an aggressive classmate named Charlese, who lets Maleeka wear her fashionable clothes in exchange for doing Charlese's homework every night.
Author Sharon G. Flake makes the point of providing hints as to how a "bad girl" like Charlese came to be: we see that her home life consists of no parents and an older sister who throws parties that last entire weekends. We also learn why John-John, one of Maleeka's worst verbal tormentors, began disliking her in the first place. The Skin I'm In wraps up its various plot threads a little too neatly (did Maleeka really have to find romance with the cutest boy in school?), but Flake energizes her story as a whole by telling it in Maleeka's urban-teen vernacular ("I ain't no squealer. Never was, never will be."), and her account of a near-rape that Maleeka narrowly escapes is told with vivid, heart-rending suspense.
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards' John Steptoe New Talent Award in 1999. For further reading, check out The First Part Last by Angela Johnson (see below).
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2006). First Second; 235 pages; drama/fable; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 1-59643-208-X.Three stories converge in an unexpected fashion in this graphic novel centering on identity crisis and self-respect. The reader is first introduced to the Monkey King, a character from epic Chinese literature who emerges from a large rock and uses Taoist teachings to gain supernatural powers. But when he attends a party in heaven and isn't given what he considers proper respect for his godlike status, he beats up all the other deities; his punishment is 500 years' imprisonment trapped under a mountain. The second story revolves around Jin Wang, a Taiwanese-American middle schooler who's recently moved from San Francisco to a new town and new school and just wants to fit in, while the third story begins as a sitcom parody entitled "Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee," in which handsome white teenager Danny is visited—and humiliated—by Chin-Kee, his cousin from China who embodies every outdated Chinese stereotype in existence.
Yang's bold color palette signals an assured sense of identity that generally eludes Jin Wang, Danny, and the Monkey King as they struggle to break free from their roots ("It's easy to become anything you wish," a mysterious Chinese herbalist tells a young Jin Wang, "so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul"). Yang is an inventive storyteller, playing around with readers' preconceived notions of story structure in order to catch them off guard when he delivers his plot twists, and his story ends on a sweetly reconciliatory note. American Born Chinese teaches an important lesson about tolerance—of other people, of your own race, and of yourself—while also throwing in some pee and fart jokes for reluctant male readers.
A 2006 National Book Award finalist in the category of Young People's Literature; also, winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album (New). For more fantastical—not to mention fantastic—tales by Gene Luen Yang, check out The Eternal Smile: Three Stories, coauthored with Derek Kirk Kim (2009).
The First Part Last by Angela Johnson (2003). Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; 144 pages; realistic fiction; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-1-4424-0343-7.Bobby is 16, a good student who's planning to attend college. He's also a single father. Feather is the baby's name, and Nia is the mother, and we find out why she's no longer around as Angela Johnson's narrative unfolds, crisscrossing back and forth in time as it covers various events that have occurred in Bobby's life. Nia and he are presented with the option of giving Feather up for adoption, but once their lives are changed forever, Bobby decides to bring Feather home—to his mom's home, that is, and despite being a loving, attentive grandmother, she has no intention of taking care of Feather whenever her son is too tired or too busy with schoolwork to do it himself.
The "tough love" reticence Bobby's mother displays as she adamantly refuses to let him deflect any of his parental responsibilities onto her, is my favorite aspect of The First Part Last. It's nice to see a pregnancy-centered "problem" novel for tweens and teens that's told from the father's perspective—one who doesn't leave the hard work to the mother—but the revelation of why Nia isn't around tips the story into soap-opera territory, and the conclusion pours on the schmaltz. Still, the novel's good qualities outweigh the bad.
Winner of the 2004 Michael L. Printz Award and 2004 Coretta Scott King Award. For further reading, check out Angela Johnson's Heaven (1998), another Coretta Scott King Award winner, in which Bobby makes his first appearance.
The Death of Superman by Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson, and Roger Stern (1993). Illustrated by Jon Bogdanove, Tom Grummett, Jackson Guice, Dan Jurgens, et al. DC Comics; 168 pages; sci-fi/fantasy; ages 8-13; ISBN: 1-56389-097-6.This graphic novel delivers on its promise: the seemingly immortal Man of Steel is killed at the hands of Doomsday, an otherworldly creature more powerful than any foe he's faced before. Doomsday is a killing machine, pure and simple, whose agenda consists of nothing more than total annihilation of everything that lies in his path.
Because The Death of Superman is a compilation of seven comic-book issues that spanned five different DC Comics titles (Superman, Superman: The Man of Steel, The Adventures of Superman, Action Comics, and Justice League America) at the tail end of 1992, there's a bit of repetition in the storytelling to fill in readers who may not have picked up previous issues. Every few pages it seems like a new character is questioning the origins of Doomsday, just as Superman constantly questions his ability to defeat the creature. The action-packed Doomsday story line, which becomes increasingly bloody as it nears its climax, starts on an unpromising note with a subplot involving creatures who live below the streets of Metropolis, but once Superman is interviewed on a local daytime talk show and states that "violence is the price we pay to accomplish a greater good," The Death of Superman begins to take off.
For further reading, check out World Without a Superman and The Return of Superman, which completed the saga in 1993.
Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (1989). HarperCollins; 109 pages; magical realism; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-0-06-073625-5.Weetzie grew up in Los Angeles and is nostalgic for a Hollywood she never knew, yet it's one we all unconsciously know, the golden age of stars like Bogart and Monroe. Weetzie is in her early 20s and a little lost when she meets Dirk, who becomes her new best friend. Dirk's gay, and Weetzie helps him in his search for an ideal boyfriend. Together they find Duck, while Weetzie falls for the one and only Secret Agent Lover Man. The two couples then move in together, but author Francesca Lia Block doesn't provide them with "happily ever after" until she's thrown a wrench or two into the works, plus a baby, a disease, and a death or two.
If you're in the right frame of mind, Weetzie Bat is a fun read that operates mostly on dream logic as it blends elements of 1980s L.A. with 1950s La-La Land. Tweens and teens discovering the book today can learn a little about the AIDS epidemic that permanently changed the American landscape in the '80s for both homosexuals and heterosexuals, though Block's then-progressive scenario of a woman and her two gay male friends raising a baby together may seem quaint to today's younger audiences. Thank God for that ...
For further reading, check out subsequent entries in Block's "Dangerous Angels" series: Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop.
Coolies by Yin (2001). Illustrated by Chris Soentpiet. Philomel/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers; 40 pages; history; ages 7-10; ISBN: 0-399-23227-3.Shek and his younger brother, Wong, leave famine-devastated China for America in the mid-1800s to find work building the First Continental Railroad along the western portion of the country. Their goal is to send money home so their remaining family members won't starve. On top of back-breaking work and discrimination from white railroad foremen, who condescendingly call the Chinese "coolies," or slaves, Shek, Wong, and their fellow immigrants discover they're being paid less than non-Chinese laborers. They go on strike, but Shek reminds them that as long as they don't work, they can't send money back to their families in China.
Yin tells her story with a framing device involving a tween boy and his grandmother, who regales him with the history of her great-grandfather and his brother—Shek and Wong, respectively. Soentpiet's drawings employ wide-screen, sun-kissed vistas that add cinematic flair to Yin's heartfelt, human prose. "Call us what you will," Shek says upon the completion of the First Transcontinental, "it is our hands that helped build the railroad."
For further reading, check out Ten Mile Day and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad, written and illustrated by Mary Ann Fraser (1993).
Debbie Harry Sings in French by Megan Brothers (2008). Henry Holt and Company; 234 pages; realistic fiction; ages 13 and up; ISBN: 978-0-8050-8080-3.This coming-of-age novel centers on Johnny, a 1990s Florida teen whose dad dies in a car crash the week of his 13th birthday. His mom, too depressed to do much of anything over the next couple years, leaves chores like shopping for groceries and paying the bills to Johnny; he starts drinking to deal with the pressure. After she recovers and takes charge of the household again, Johnny accidentally overdoses on Ecstasy one night at a club. He goes into rehab, but following his own recovery, his mom sends him to South Carolina to live with his uncle Sam, whereupon he meets and falls for Maria, a “bad girl” who shares his love of 1970s punk rock (Blondie, Patti Smith, the Ramones) and helps Johnny explore his latent interest in transvestism.
Debbie Harry Sings in French received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for its “brisk pace and ... strong-willed, empathetic narrator,” although, like Kirkus Reviews, it took issue with Brothers’s plot, which the latter found “problematic,” especially in the early chapters set in Tampa. I’m sure a movie adaptation would cut the bulk of those chapters, but I enjoyed how Brothers presented a single-parent household in which the only child, out of sheer necessity, takes on the responsibilities of the incapacitated parent. Booklist’s Jennifer Hubert noted that “the prose occasionally slides into cliché,” but I’d argue it’s the supporting characters who sometimes run the risk of being stereotypes: Lucas, the hip, wise Jamaican record store owner, skirts the edge of “Magical Negro” status, and Bug, Johnny’s female cousin, acts more like a precocious second grader than an 11-year-old on the cusp of adolescence.
For further reading, check out Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (2007).
Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali by Charles R. Smith Jr. (2007). Illustrated by Bryan Collier. Candlewick Press; 80 pages; biography; ages 9-14; ISBN: 978-0-7636-1692-2.Charles R. Smith Jr.'s picture-book biography of the legendary boxer is written as a series of poems, simultaneously emulating and paying tribute to its subject, whose famous pre-fight poems—"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee / His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see"—influenced the braggadocio of early rap music. Warmly illustrated by Bryan Collier, Twelve Rounds to Glory takes young readers through Ali's entire career, from his heavyweight-championship knockout of Sonny Liston in 1964 to his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War three years later, and continuing on to his popular and professional comeback in '74, when he beat his seven-years-younger opponent, George Foreman, to regain the heavyweight title. The book ends with a brief mention of Parkinson's disease, which Ali was diagnosed with in 1984.
Smith doesn't ignore the often ugly insults Ali slung at his opponents before fights, the worst of them reserved for Joe Frazier: "cutting even deeper / into his heart by dropping a bomb, / by insulting his blackness when you called him Uncle Tom." But for the most part this is a sunny-side-of-the-street biography, in which Ali's four marriages and eight children, two of which were born out of wedlock, are treated as a show of generosity on Ali's part, i.e., he had too much love for just one family! Smith's poetry shines brightest when he recounts Ali's various title bouts, including the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" versus Foreman in Zaire: "'IS THAT ALL YOU GOT? / IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?' / absorbing brick after brick, / taking shot after shot, / infuriating the Bull, / making his eyes see blood-red, / moving shots to the body / up top to the head."
Winner of Honor Book recognition from the Coretta Scott King Book Awards in 2008. For more of Smith's poetry, check out the basketball-themed Hoop Kings (2004). And to see a book trailer I created for Twelve Rounds to Glory, click here.
In His Own Write by John Lennon (1964). Simon & Schuster; 79 pages; humor; ages 10 and up; ISBN: 0-684-86807-5.The Beatles stormed America in 1964 after conquering their native UK, so it made sense that any of the band's side projects would generate at least some interest from fans and the general public. Hence In His Own Write, singer-guitarist John Lennon's debut collection of stories, poems, and drawings, some of which were generated during his school days in Liverpool, or "Liddypool," as he refers to his hometown in a short story of the same name. "The writing Beatle," as one particular version of the book's cover touts, enjoys playing around with pronunciations and spellings, as evidenced by titles like "The Fingletoad Resort of Teddiviscious" and "On Safairy With Whide Hunter" ("written in conjugal" with Paul McCartney). He also isn't afraid to explore dark territory, a la Roald Dahl: in "The Fat Growth of Eric Hearble," the title character loses his job "teaching spastics to dance" and is called a "cripple" because of the scabby growth on his head that has conversations with him, and in "Randolf's Party" the protagonist is killed by his friends at his own "Chrisbus" gathering.
I was somewhat surprised to find In His Own Write in the Young Adult section of the Oak Park Public Library, but because Lennon's stories and poems are almost exclusively short and nonsensical, I can see the appeal for younger readers. However, because of Lennon's inventive spellings and heavy use of English slang, some of which may have gone out of fashion about the same time the Beatles broke up 41 years ago, In His Own Write can be a frustrating read. Beatles fans of all ages are encouraged to give it a go all the same: famous Lennon song lyrics like "Yellow mother custard dripping from a dead dog's eye" aren't far removed from poem lyrics such as "I wandered hairy as a dog / To get a goobites sleep" ("I Wandered").
For further reading, check out Lennon's second collection of this and that, A Spaniard in the Works, published the following year. And to see a book trailer I created for In His Own Write, click here.
* Glogster is a temperamental beast. At a certain point I had to give up on making all of the text I created completely visible at all times. What you see is what I got.
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