Jon Little

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 He shows us how hard it can be to overcome our anger and break free from cultural norms, no matter how outdated or dangerous they may be.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.

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.

On the surface, the protagonists of Alan Gratz’s Refugee have little in common. They live in different eras, different countries, and practice different religions. Yet when they are forced to flee their homes, they all become refugees.

Geared toward young readers but fast-paced and honest enough to keep young adults engaged, Gratz’s insightful novel offers little calm before the storm. Barely on the cusp of adolescence, our protagonists’ worlds are already crumbling at their feet. When a bomb destroys Mahmoud’s home in modern-day Syria, the crumbling is both literal and figurative. With no place to stay, his family embarks on a journey out of the Middle East and across Europe. For Josef, a youth in 1939, it is the rise of Nazism and the horrors of Dachau that shatter his preconceptions and force his family out of their home country. For Isabel, change comes when her family decides to flee the destitution of Castro’s Cuba for the promise of American shores, braving the 90 miles of treacherous sea between Havana and Miami in a makeshift boat.

A heart-wrenching escape story, a coming-of-age tale, a treatise on the hopes and traumas of refugees the world over—with the civil war in Syria still raging and immigration a hot-button issue across the world, Refugee could not be more timely.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Alan Gratz for Refugee.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Children’s Top Pick, May 2017

Clayton Byrd is a bluesman. Despite his young age—and the fact that he can’t quite get those blue notes to wail like his grandfather and best friend, Cool Papa Byrd, can—he knows he’s a bluesman. He can feel it deep down in the pit of his stomach.

And like a true bluesman, when his grandfather dies, Clayton turns to music for solace. One problem: His mother has hidden his harmonica because he keeps falling asleep in class. Faced with the loss of his grandfather and a mother whose pain blinds her to his needs, Clayton recovers his harmonica and takes a note out of Cool Papa’s songbook—he hits the road.

But on his way to join up with Cool Papa’s backing band, the Bluesmen, Clayton runs into a pack of wayward youths who spend their days on the subway, dodging the police and dancing for spare change. Drawn by the beat-boxed rhythms that accompany their dance, Clayton adds his harmonica melody to the mix and quickly finds himself embroiled in their less-than-sunny subterranean world.

When his plan to join the Bluesmen goes bust and he finds himself holed up in a police station, waiting for his mother to pick him up, Clayton begins to grasp the desperation and despondency that births the blues anew in each generation.

In Clayton Byrd Goes Underground, three-time Coretta Scott King Medal winner Rita Williams-Garcia has crafted an endearing family drama with all the wit, wisdom and resonance of the best blues songs.

This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.