> SMALL PRINT DEIRDRE BAKER
On the Come Up By Angie Thomas Balzer & Bray, 449 pages, $18.99, ages 13 and up
Sixteen-year-old Bri’s a serious rapper, and when she wins her first battle she tastes the chance of success. Then her hit song goes viral, and she finds herself pushed into a role — that of “ratchet hood rat”, a stereotype of menace and violence she wants no part of. But how can she refuse when buying into it could save her family from eviction? This pageturner of a novel is exceptionally energetic, even more so than Thomas’s smashhit The Hate U Give. The rhythms and vibrant play of language give it loft, as does Thomas’s sly eye for comedy — in amusing church politics at the very least. At heart, however, this is a hard, respectful look at an adolescent’s journey towards self-understanding, and particularly the ways in which, as Thomas herself says, “freedom of speech isn’t necessarily free, and especially when you’re young and black in America.”
Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground By T.R. Simon Candlewick Press, 264 pages, $22.99, ages 10 and up
Here’s a wise, poetic and galvanizing combination: historical fiction, mystery, and themes so current it’s heartbreaking. It’s 1903, and Carrie and her best friend, Zora, are growing up in Eatonville, Fla. — America’s first incorporated Black township. Not until they find a neighbour stabbed and bleeding do they begin to learn of their own town’s painful past as the site of a slave plantation. As the mystery deepens, so too does the threat to Eatonville, posed by the plantation’s former owner. Simon imagines the writer Zora Neale Hurston as a sleuth of a child in this fictional mystery, highlighting Hurston’s capacious imagination and curiosity. Even more probingly, she invites her readers to think hard about the unfinished business of American slavery and today’s racism. A thoroughly gripping story and a lively portrait of friendship.
Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings By Francie Latour, illustrated by Ken Daley Groundwood, 32 pages, $18.95, ages 5-9
A girl gets on a plane and leaves “snow and snowman-making” behind. She wasn’t born in Haiti, but her mother and aunt were, and she’s on her way to visit her beloved painter-aunt Luce who lives there. As the two travel Haiti’s colourful streets and mountainsides, Aunt Luce describes its history of revolution, triumph and poverty. Finally, in the very portrait Aunt Luce paints, the girl sees the colours of her own heritage. “You were born outside … but you hold this place in your skin, deep in your bones,” says Aunt Luce. “Colours never lie.” A quiet celebration of bicultural, bi-geographic identity, this presents a wonderfully vivid intensity through Daley’s art. Azure, indigo, amber and emerald shine out, as much a part of Latour’s quick introduction to Haiti as the text. Includes a glossary and brief biographies of some of Haiti’s heroes.
Black Women Who Dared Written and illustrated by Naomi M. Moyer, 24 pages, $18.95, ages 8 — teen
Moyer highlights 10 Black activist women and womens’ groups in this quick, illuminating book. The Coloured Womens’ Club of Montreal, trans musician Jackie Shane, and Rosa Pryor, first Black woman to own a business in Vancouver, are just a few of the less-storied heroes of Black history and culture who get the spotlight here. From Chloe Cooley’s protest in 1793 to Toronto’s contemporary Blockorama LGBTTI2QQ Pride celebration, Moyer suggests through her choice of subjects the ways in which Black women in Canada had to (and still have to) push back against racism to advocate for care, justice and space for themselves. Most notably, the strong current of courage and practical activism, across time, calls out encouragement, inspiration and command for young readers. Moyer’s illustrations, a combination of bright blocks of colour with pen, pencil and ink drawings, are an electrifying counterpart to her lucid text.