Reviewing: The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

While I cannot review books eligible for BFYA, I can describe them and I can still actively promote books written by authors of color. One way I’ll creatively do that is by providing more guests posts this year. I am looking for guest reviewers, so if you have read or are reading any of the (FEW!!) MG or YA books that were written by authors of color and would like to write a review, please contact me at crazyquilts in care of hotmail dot com.

Today, I’m featuring Shadra Strickland’s comments on The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Arthur A. Levine; March 2013).

Click to read the first chapter on NPR

From the publisher’s website:

A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.

The lush city of Palmares Tres shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that’s sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June’s best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist.

Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Tres will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government’s strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.

Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.

From Shadra Strickland:

I just really enjoyed the book for it’s daring and unconventionality. The setting really made me use my imagination and create Palmeres Tres in my mind. I felt that all of the rules of the world that Johnson created in this novel made us stretch our imagination. I loved watching our heroine transform throughout the story. I loved the intimate relationships she had with Gil, which read to me less like a romantic infatuation but more like a relationship built through common ideas and support, and then watching her relationship with Enki evolve through art. As an artist who also had to leave her comfort zone and mesh with other artists before fully coming into her own, I can relate to the idea of seeing a reflection of myself through someone who is freer thinking and uninhibited by certain rules and trappings of modern society. I can relate to the excitement and energy she found when she combined her ideas with Enki’s to create something more powerful and daring than she could have imagined on her own until she learned to trust her own voice and create for herself.

I did not focus as much on the rules of the world our characters lived in. I was amused to see a futuristic world where so many ideas about love, sexuality, and freedom were expanded from what we know now, but how difficult it still was for people to embrace change and new ideas.

I think that was the overarching theme for me…transformation.

I enjoyed how Johnson answered many what ifs about society. What if women ruled the world? What if we could live for centuries (if not forever) and choose when we wanted to leave our physical bodies? What if technology merged with art; how would we use it? What if love was love and free from gender restrictions? What if the future really did belong to young people?

Shadra Strickland studied, design, writing, and illustration at Syracuse University and later went on to complete her M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She won the Ezra Jack Keats Award and the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent in 2009 for her work in her first picturebook, Bird, written by Zetta Elliott. Strickland co-illustrated Our Children Can Soar, winner of a 2010 NAACP Image Award. Shadra is also the illustrator of A Place Where Hurricanes Happen (Random House, 2010), written by Renee Watson: a story of four children in New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Publishers Weekly called Strickland’s illustrations “quietly powerful,” and Booklist said, “In vibrant, mixed-media images, award-winning illustrator Strickland extends the drama, feeling, and individual stories.” from Shadra’s website

 

book review: The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

Title: The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

Author: Sonia Manzano

date: September 2012

main character: Rosa Maria Evelyn del Carmen Serrano

Rosa has decided that El Barrio, Spanish Harlem, doesn’t need another Rosa, so she has taken to using one of her middle names, Evelyn. It’s 1969 and Evelyn is losing her childhood perception of her world. She’s becoming more aware of race and status and with her grandmother’s recent visit, she’s more aware of relationships. Evelyn has given up working at the family’s bodega in exchange for working at a drug stop in a different neighborhood. Her daily walk has her seeing inequities in the neighborhoods and it is these differences that are bringing to life an organization called the Young Lions. Her grandmother, who was a revolutionary in Puerto Rico, becomes interested in the group and supports their call to action.

Her grandmother’s support of the group adds just that much more friction to the already tense relationship she has with Evelyn’s mother. Evelyn, rather than wanting to take sides is more interested in understanding what has caused the relationship to deteriorate. In forming an understanding of these women, of their collective history which is certainly tied to Puerto Rican history, Evelyn begins to better understand herself.

Manzano recently shared stories of how she developed her writing skills over the years. We only see her successes, but at the recent Joint Conference for Librarians of Color, Manzano shared the history of what it took to become a writer and the inequities she experienced in the school system echoed those she wrote about in The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. The story has the feel of someone who is sharing a part of their life rather than a world they’re creating for us. Manzano incorporated historical events in the book and uses them not only to expose readers to the history, but to attract them to the idea of finding their voice by becoming involved in the community around them.

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano is an uplifting and very well told story!

review: Qutugh Terkan Khatum of Kirman

title: Qutlugh Terkan Khatun of Kirman
author: Shirin Yim Bridges
illustrator: Albert Nguyen
date: Goosebottom Books, 2010
non-fiction

Qutlugh Terkan Khatun of Kirman is an award winning volume in the Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Real Princesses. Qutlugh ruled in Kiman, a region in Persia. Rescued from enslavement as a child, her benefactor educated her and treated her quite well. Qutlugh lived a fortunate life, becoming a princess and a ruler of many people, She acquired much power and used it to benefit others. Her story reads quite different from other rulers who manipulate and murder to maintain their positions.

In reading her story, we learn much about the Persian culture and how different Qutlugh’s life was from ours. The story is documented with some photos that are well placed throughout to emphasize important details while others add background details. It’s eye-opening to realize how few details are left about this woman who ruled for 26 years.

other books in this series

book review: In Darkness

title: In Darkess

author: Nick Lake

date: Bloomsbury, January 2012

main character: Shorty

 

Nick Lake tells the story of Haiti by combining the stories of Toussaint L’Overture and Shorty. When we meet Shorty, he is trapped in a hospital that has collapsed on him in the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country. He uses his time in darkness to tell us about his life and why he was in the hospital. In his telling, we probably learn as much about Haiti as we do about Shorty because the gang violence and religious beliefs that are part of Shorty’s life are also very much part of Haiti. Perhaps only in a culture that believes in voodoo and Zombies could Toussaint and Shorty become one. Or do they? Is Lake artistically stating that Haiti’s past and present is linked in darkness?

Biggie stopped the car.

–Y’a  pwoblem? he said.

–Gen pwoblem, said Manman. Not with you, anyway, Biggie. But that’s my son in your car. My kid.

Biggie laughed.

–I don’t see a kid, he said. I see a soldier. My frere chouchou. This kid’s one of my bodyguards. I love him, man. I love all my soldiers.

Manman looked at the gun in my hand. She said:

–Chita chouter yon your wap fait goal.

That’s something Manman used to say to me a lot. It means if you keep shooting, you’ll make a goal. It means, if you keep doing that, you’ll get what you’re aiming for. It means basically, stop doing that, or you’ll get what you deserve.

Usually I laughed when Manman said it; it’s such an old woman thing to say. But then I had a gun in my hand and she was talking about shooting and it made me uncomfortable.

Lake’s experience in Haiti helps him creatively recreate the textures of Haitian life. It is a story about a narrow part of Haiti but it is also a story that takes us to a small place in the world that readers wouldn’t otherwise know. In the Author’s Note, Lake tells us that the neighborhood in which the story is set is perhaps the most violent place on earth. He writes about its violence, bondage, pain and history and somehow in all this, he manages to provide a sliver of hope that the Haitians will indeed one day be free.