Lighthouse Reviews

Genre : The Crossover by Kwame Alexander is my choice for the novel in verse category. Target Age Group: The target age group is 10-13 years.  Summary:     The Crossover by Kwame Alexander is an extraordinary novel in verse about 12-year-old twin brothers, Josh and JB, who excel at basketball and encounter a myriad of problems while they are mentally and physically trying to work toward the championship game for the Reggie Lewis Wildcats. Their dad, a joyful yet stringent father, Chuck "Da Man" Bell, is a former professional basketball player. He has a set of basketball rules for the boys which are actually life rules. These rules are a constant throughout this intense novel. The novel is written from Josh's point of view and his fearless confidence enables him to make complex decisions at difficult moments where his age does not hinder him from accomplishing unerring resolutions. Justification:     I chose The Crossover for my verse novel because I was not f...

  Genre: I chose P.S. Be Eleven by Rita Williams-Garcia for the Coretta Scott King Award winner category. It won the award in 2014. Target Age Group: The target age group is 9-12 years. Summary :     P.S. Be Eleven is an enchanting and at times, turbulent contemporary realistic novel for middle schoolers. This novel focuses on a few months in a young Black girl's life in Brooklyn during the 1960s. Friendships and family relationships go through dramatic changes when Delphine, the main protagonist of the novel, and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, arrive back in Brooklyn. They had spent the summer with their free-spirited and activist mother in Oakland, California. The societal issues of the time such as the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, and the sexual revolution swirl around Delphine's life and bring challenges that energize her to discover the kind of person she hopes to become. Delphine realizes, through pivotal events that take ...

  Genre: I have selected Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega for the graphic novel category. It also won the 2023 Pura Belpre Children's TextWinner Award. Target Age Group: The target age group is 9-12 years. Summary :     Frizzy , a graphic novel written by Claribel A. Ortega, is a playful yet somewhat serious story about a young Dominican girl, Maribel, in middle school who not only has a problem managing her hair but is also trying to find a way to accept herself for who she is. Maribel has unmanageable hair and her mother forces her to go to the local salon once a week. She feels she is being punished by having her hair straightened by the churlish hairdresser, Gleny. Maribel has to contend with hair management, annoying cousins, bullies at school, and her mom's persistence about the status of her hair. It leads her, with help from her best friend, Camilla and Maribel's Tia Ruby, to a revelatory sense about herself and the realization that her mom's sense of self was cont...

Genre: I chose Efren Divided by Ernesto Cisneros for the Pura Belpre Award winner category. This middle school novel won the award in 2021. Target Age Group: The target age group is 8-12 years. Summary:      Efren Divided is the heart-wrenching story of Efren Nava, a 12-year-old boy who is confronted with the sudden deportation of his Ama (Efren's mother) and the responsibilities he has to undertake to help out his Apa (Efren's father). His younger twin siblings, Mia and Max, need him, emotionally and physically, and his life with his friends and teachers is disrupted when his world seems to be falling apart. Efren discovers the courage he didn't know he possessed and the feeling of hope is a constant thread that makes this story an exceptional one. Justification:      I chose Efren Divided because it is a contemporary realistic fiction middle-grade novel that addresses the humaneness of the immigration laws here in the United States and how these la...

Genre: I am reviewing Born on the Water (2021) for the historical fiction category. Target Age Group: The target age group is 6-10 years. Summary:     Born on the Water is a picture book in lyrical verse by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson. One day, a young girl was given an assignment in school. "Trace your roots," the teacher tells the class. She felt ashamed because she didn't know where she came from. That night, her grandmother assembled the family and told them how their ancestors had been stolen, kidnapped from West Africa. She spoke of their arduous journey and the hundreds of years of hard labor and how their freedom was finally found by living and surviving. This serious and important children's book does have moments of joy to balance the tragedy of enslaved Black people beginning in the 1600s in the United States. A historical picture book imparting so much sorrow yet, "And the people planted dreams and hope, willed themselves to keep living, liv...

Book Blog #2 The books I will be reviewing for Book Blog #2 are Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson, Efren Divided by Ernesto Cisneros, Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega, P. S. Be Eleven by Rita Willams-Garcia, and The Crossover by Kwame Alexander.