necessaryfictions's reviews
184 reviews

excellent primer on black history for young kids! the backmatter glossary is wonderful, and the words are poetic, and the illustrations are so colorful and well done

each strand a story without end :)

With a rare smile, Sido signaled to my father to follow him down a hallway. Sido unlocked the iron gate and led him to a lush, sunlit garden. Hundreds of homing pigeons rustled in their wooden cages in the shade of a proud olive tree.

The next moment, he released all the pigeons and skillfully guided them into a circle in the sky, with the help of only a black piece of cloth tied to the end of a long stick.

With surprise and delight, my father asked, "Why won't they fly away?"

Sido shook his head slowly, the key swaying at his side. "This is their home."

That was the last day my father saw his grandfather; the last time he saw Palestine.

This book ozes with a longing and wonder for a home never known in person. I love the art, the way people and setting is drawn is so detailed with such a pretty, precise style. the glossary and all the back matter is very informative, and the real family photos and recreations are beautiful touches.

a bit of black history seldom told to kids, which i appreciate. beautiful illustrations of black people, love the browns and the blend of the paint. writing flow a little clunky at times. good backmatter of historical context for things throughout the story! and the whole book being also love letter to the author's daughter harlem is very sweet

on memory, on being second-gen, on wanting to belong. lovely and thoughtfully illustrated book. i especially love how the two page spread of "from the depths of the trunk, they unearth a brown paper bag, rusty scissors, and a longing for china" ia done. the flip across the plants from the present to the past generations across the world from each other... the tie between plants and culture and family. 

from the author's note: this story is both an apology and a love letter to my parents. it's also an encouragement to all children who feel different and to families with difficult past- share your memories. tell your stories. they are essential.

(also- love to see an illustrator's note as well!)

beautiful! art and words! the pages that commemorated black lives lost were very thoughtful and affecting. and excellent backmatter giving context to all the people and events highlighted

mixed feelings.. i liked it! i like the art, and the realistic detail it has. the prose is fun. i like this turn of phrase especially- martin kept refining: painting with a preacher's fine brush, a light shade of wisdom here, a darker shade of frustration there, the darkest shade of "for whites only" everywhere. i also enjoy the complexity to martin's emotions and thought processes brought here in this short book

as a storytime book: a harder sell. not just the length but a noticeable amount of references to religion which makes sense, he is a preacher, preaching: but good to note. some of the framing of america is a bit ... softened for me. black death is mentioned throughout, but not dr. king's, nor who killed him even in the backmatter... but this is a picture book! idk mixed feelings but a valuable book to exist nonetheless

and a thought occurs to him: maybe you can't really know anyone just by looking at their face. milo tries to reimagine all the pictures he made on the train. maybe he could have done it like this instead. or this. or this.

really sweet story about imagination, assumptions, shown by a long subway ride of two siblings on their way to visit their incarcerated mother. the art is very charming, and the writing is very thoughtful!!

this was so sad? my goodness. he ate her childhood! i loved this, i was so hyped to see a book centering the callaloo plant and this was a great story and the loose rapunzel retelling was done in a way i really liked— the braiding to find lou’s way home made me emotional! the illustrations are beyond glorious, i gasped at a couple of the large illustrations of the winding landscape between somewhere and nowhere. yay caribbean picture books :))

“You go on ahead, then,” said the Lion. “We’ll find a future uncharted by any tiktok charm. We’ll make our luck as we go along. When I get back.”

       “Why?” asked Ilianora. “What are you doing now? Where are you going?”

       He wasn’t sure even what his answer would be; he waited to hear the words from his own mouth.

       “The cottage there.” They were passing a small stone hut with a roof of oakhair thatch. A kitchen fire was still burning in the chimney, and beyond, in the light, a field of wheat rustled like gold on water. “One of the maunts mentioned that an elderly couple lives there, and their sons have gone off to war. The rain will come soon, and the wind, and an army will trample this field by tomorrow. I have learned enough about prophecy to say that for sure: Its future is drenched in blood. Let me harvest wheat before the catastrophe. I’ve done some agricultural work in my time. I can bring in that crop for them. Better they should have something to sell to the mill when the battle is history and their sons are dead. Better that wheat should go for bread. No? No?”

       “Go, then,” said Ilianora. “If you must. Someone might as well chase the schoolchildren away from the lightning-wreathed hill.”

a book can be… a bridge? setting the stage? 

on the cover of the audiobook i listened to most of this book with, there is a bit of praise for maguire that said “a masterful storyteller with an uncanny flair for mixing political and personal.”

that remains true, and beyond the gelphie motivators, is likely why i finished this book on the first place. this world fascinates me, especially in the granular, and especially in the political. a masterful storyteller yes, but when the book feels like more of a bridge to a conclusion than an active story, where does that leave you? it leaves you with this, with brrr, with mr. wrong-place-wrong-time pinballing about oz and struggling to connect with any campaign, any person at all—- including me, the reader, until quite near the end.

this book retraces some things. a maguire protagonist with an intimate relationship to loneliness and failure, a distant relationship to intimacy, and an ambiguous and haunting origin. yackle, like nastoya, is another figure who wants to die and cannot, for whom living is a daily hurt. i found this book most compelling when we got further answers and insight and perspectives on the going’s on of the very first book in the wicked years. this series lives in elphaba’s shadow, in good and in ill. it is once again very interested in religion and fate and the role of character in history and narrative and there are some interesting ideas there — i think of the conversation on liir and candle’s daughter, on her belonging — but then again much of it retreads ground and meanders, scattering seeds.

it is good to see nor again. i am excited for her and liir’s reunion. maguire’s can really do an affecting reunion! i just hope the final book will be decisive and precise enough to make me say yeah, we needed this one