From Publishers Weekly
Decorated with blurred photographs from a family album, this touching collection focuses on the denizens of Shorter, Ala., a town that is due to be leveled because of "some big company wanting to make a dog track." The 14-year-old narrator returns at the bidding of her grandmother ("Come see your past before it's all/ dust, baby"), and her journey back is the impetus for a series of nostalgic poems that describe her experiences at various ages?a disastrous attempt at piano lessons, the smell of soap at the Wash-a-Teria, leaving the South for the Midwest. The swift, thumbnail character sketches are almost entirely devoid of metaphors?as if these family stories had been broken into line lengths to be read aloud like eloquent monologues (e.g., "Me and Kesha Cousins used to dance to hip-hop music/ in the woods"). The African American narrator's use of poetry to portray the townspeople gives the reader a sharply defined view of a disappearing childhood. Images of her great-great-grandmama ("a voodoo woman who knew potions./ All kinds"), the scar her uncle received when he tried to order from a lunch counter in Montgomery ("how terrible it was/ and how beautiful/ it made him"), her father's Vietnam nightmares ("he/ used to yell that he couldn't/ get the blood off")?all offer readers an unforgettable view of an insightful young woman growing up in the South. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-7-These verses by the versatile African-American writer give readers glimpses at her years growing up in the small town of Shorter, AL. Through prose poetry and colloquial speech, Johnson recalls skinny-dipping, the soft Alabama breeze, dirt roads, and red dusty porches. She presents vivid images-mothers stripping their children in the Wash-a-Teria to launder their clothes; houses smelling of "cinnamon and dead flowers;" getting up enough nerve to ask the secret of growing old. She touches on topics such as Vietnam, racism, and the Black Panthers, but also recalls dancing in the woods with a "boom box blasting through the trees." This slim volume just may open up increased awareness and understanding about the way things were-and how they sometimes still are.
Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WICopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
