Jon Little

We often speak of history as a thing with a particular size and shape, as if it were concrete, like a textbook you could grasp in your hands. But history is amorphous. With every story told, it expands and with every story forgotten it recedes.

In the popular imagination, the struggle to end racial segregation in American schooling revolves around one event—the Supreme Court’s historic 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in public schooling.

But if you’ve studied American history, you might remember the story of Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas, who, three years after Brown was decided, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent African-American students from attending Little Rock Central High School. And even fewer people will remember the story of 12 African-American students who first integrated the all-white Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, in 1956.

Though Clinton High was the first public high school in Tennessee to be integrated (and according to most accounts, the first public school in the South to be integrated), its story has been all but forgotten. This is even more ironic given that, in 1956, when it was occurring, the integration of Clinton High made national headlines.

But This Promise of Change is the story of Clinton High’s integration, written by one of the students who lived through it, Jo Ann Allen Boyce, and Debbie Levy. Written in a variety of verse forms and interspersed with clippings from historic newspaper articles and TV shows, This Promise of Change will grip young readers and reveal a part of the American civil rights story that has been neglected for too long. This is amust-read for Black History Month.

In Bryan’s Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, the worst thing you can be is soft. Back down from a fight, apologize or just talk your problems out—you’re soft.

But Bryan’s a good kid. He’s quiet, studious and totally bananas for comic books. It still kind of irks him when his big sister calls him soft, but the last thing he wants in his life is more drama. He’s seen plenty of that as the projects are brimming with it. His in-and-out-of-jail dad hangs out on the corner, all but courting it. But Bryan? Nah. Give him the latest Black Panther comic, a quiet room to read in, and he’s perfectly content, soft or not.

But when Bryan meets Mike, everything changes. Things get tight. At first, it’s a good tight—the tightness of friends who bond over comics and common interests. But when Mike starts urging Bryan to skip class or to hop the subway turnstiles and run from the cops, their relationship turns a new kind of tight, a tense tight, like a rope threatening to snap any moment.

With Tight, the poignant tale of a young Puerto Rican-American struggling to find his place in a world awash in drama, author Torrey Maldonado questions the macho masculinity that has ensnared and imperiled American boys for so long. He shows us how hard it can be to overcome our anger and break free from cultural norms, no matter how outdated or dangerous they may be.

With its understated prose, evocative dialogue and much-needed message, Tight is essential reading.

BookPage Children's Top Pick, October 2018

The inimitable M.T. Anderson has teamed up with award-winning author and illustrator Eugene Yelchin for The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge—which is not quite a graphic novel but far more than your traditional illustrated middle grade book. Yelchin’s wonderfully quirky drawings fill entire chapters without any accompanying text. Other times, they supplement Anderson’s pithy prose or directly contradict it. Such is the inventive world of this wry, rollicking and totally refreshing take on cultural contact and conflict—in this case, between elves and goblins.

Having been at war for as far back as their histories stretch, elves and goblins are sworn enemies, but they’ve entered a period of tenuous peace. In stumble Brangwain Spurge and Werfel (an odd couple if there ever was one), two historians who are more at home in dusty libraries than at the center of the historical stage. Spurge, a pompous elf, has been selected by his government to return an ancient relic to the goblin overlord as a peace offering. Werfel, a gracious and endearing goblin, is tasked with playing cultural emissary to his elfin peer.

Werfel soon realizes that Spurge has no interest in anything that might change his view of goblins as uncultured brutes. Between Spurge’s prejudice and Werfel’s deep sense of hospitality—which requires him to appease his guest as well as protect him with his life—hilarity ensues.

A brilliant, satirical take on cultural chauvinism, objectivity and war and peace, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge is witty, wise and wondrously unique.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When facing the deep mysteries of life, many cling to beliefs they’ve acquired secondhand, but not Toaff, the precocious gray squirrel at the heart of Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt’s absorbing new novel, Toaff’s Way.

Why do dogs bark? Why do gray and red squirrels fear and hate one another? Brimming with questions and unbridled energy, Toaff bounds into the world to seek his answers firsthand. Whether Toaff is learning the language of dogs or delighting in the songs that human mothers sing to their babies, every day brings a new revelation. On his journey, Toaff learns that the fears that keep most of his peers huddled in their dens are largely illusory. Of course, Toaff’s insatiable curiosity lands him in some rather tight spots, and more often than not, it also makes an outcast of him. But in the end, his curiosity and genuine openness allow him to wiggle out of danger.

Both intriguing and enlightening, Voigt’s squirrel-eye view of the world shows us how even the most mundane things can be revelatory. A hymn to inquisitiveness, independent thinking and experiential learning in an age of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” Toaff’s Way should be required reading.

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.