Renée Watson

"The most radical thing you can do is love yourself and each other.”

I didn’t care too much about the romance here, but I liked the characters, especially JT! The romance is more so in the background while Nala’s character development is in the front.

As someone who has been involved in community organizing, especially for black and environmental issues, I understood Nala’s feelings with the activists to an extent. Sometimes you meet people so passionate (they eat, breathe, sleep it) about something, you feel your zeal doesn’t compare to theirs. But I thought Nala would come around eventually. I also enjoyed that Nala was self-aware to understand her cousin Imani’s feelings may have stemmed from resentment.

Let this be a lesson: Sit cho’ behind down and stop lying all the doggone time. Seriously, even the littlest lies can catapult into something big. Just be honest even if it’s uncomfortable. Still, I think the story managed to show this without getting too preachy.

2.5… (lisätietoja)

Apassion for social justice blossoms during the middle school years for the girl who grew up to become Dr. Betty Shabazz.

Loved but unwanted by her mother, 11-year-old Betty finds solace in friends and church. In 1945 Detroit, Betty’s African-American church community is a hub for activism in the face of Jim Crow racism, police brutality, and economic inequality. With renowned guests such as Thurgood Marshall and Paul Robeson coming to speak and perform, Betty and her friends are swept up in the fervor and demand for social justice that would become a movement. They volunteer for the Housewives’ League, a group that encourages the community to give its dollars to black-owned and -employing businesses. But the movement is also personal for Betty, who struggles to find her place in a world that treats brown-skinned black girls as lesser—less beautiful, less worthy, less deserving. Authored by her daughter Ilyasah Shabazz in collaboration with Watson, this moving fictional account of the early life of the late civil rights leader and widow of Malcolm X draws on the recollections of family and friends. The result is a heart-rending imagining of Shabazz’s personal challenges as well as a rare, intimate look at the complex roots of the American civil rights movement.

A personal, political, and powerful imagining of the early life of the late activist . (Historical fiction. 10-14)

-Kirkus Review… (lisätietoja)