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Arnold Adoff has earned a well-deserved reputation as both a poet and anthologist for young adults. His latest collection of his own work, Slow Dance Heart Break Blues, is another stellar performance.
Titles alone show why teens are drawn to his work: "All the Right Things Turn Out Wrong Song," "You Never Really Listen to Me," or "When This Boy Loves." Self-doubts, machismo, drugs, kisses, zits, even twinkies--it's all here. Adoff explores not only feelings but language, experimenting with rhythm and patterns of words on the page. This is a book that's not only good for literature--it's good for the psyche as well.
The Block (Viking, $15.99, 0-670-86501-X) is a feast for eyes and ears, a celebration of a Harlem block featuring the poems of Langston Hughes and illustrations from a collage by Romare Bearden, part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both poetry and art are bursting with the soul and sounds of the streets. There's a 22-year-old boy writing an English paper, a girl dreaming of a baby grand piano, a boy dreaming of Joe Louis's boxing gloves, and, as Hughes writes, "A city dreaming/To a lullaby."
Bill Cosby notes in his introduction: "The Block reminds many viewers of people and events from their own lives, and it encourages others to visualize what life might have been like in a busy and exciting Harlem neighborhood." Enjoy the book on its own merits, and use it as a springboard for studying the Harlem Renaissance.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.