Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A terrific middle-grade novel about systemic racism, colorism, and…fencing.

Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

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I’m a huge Jewell Parker Rhodes fan, and in middle-grade literature, she has no equal. She is uncanny at tackling major systemic issues that are not only age-appropriate but widely appealing, and also interesting to read about. I was excited to hear she had a new book out, and I quickly read it, as well. In Black Brother, Black Brother we meet Donte and Trey, two biracial brothers in an integrated family. Their dad is White, their mom is Black. Trey looks like their father, […]

Ghost Boys through history

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First, Ghost Boys does seem like a fairly balanced look how the shooting of Jerome, a 12-year-old boy, by a white police officer effects not only Jerome’s family, but the officer and his family as well. Perhaps, it is tilted a little more in Jerome’s favor, but that is to be expected. Second, this will bring up the feelings and thoughts we have on the subjects presented: Someone at the hearing yells, “Black Lives Matters.” And the father of Jerome is going to sue the […]

Children Can Experience Racism at Any Age, So There Isn’t Really Such Thing as Being “Too Young” to Learn About It

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I could see this book being involved in some good classroom discussions. I can also see certain communities resisting this, and not for the right reasons. From what I can see, Jewell Parker Rhodes’ body of work consists largely of novels dealing with current events and social commentary, aimed at children, and Ghost Boys is no different: in this novel, we follow the spirit of a young black boy named Jerome, after he has been shot by a police officer while playing with a toy […]

A nominee for Best Book of 2016

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If you’ve never read Jewell Parker Rhodes, you absolutely must. Her prose is light and crisp at once, and she tells a story like no other. You inhabit her characters fully, and they are strong, sensitive young women. I’ve read Ninth Ward and Bayou Magic, both of which tackle current issues and also include an intriguing thread of magical realism that’s friendly to young readers. I’ve taught excerpts from Ninth Ward to my college Composition I course, and if I was to theme a course […]

The magic within yourself

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After reading Jewell Parker Rhodes’ most excellent Ninth Ward, I was excited to learn that her newest children’s novel, Bayou Magic, was released this year. So I quickly requested it from my library and devoured it on my train ride to my in-laws’ house. I’ve come to decide that Ms. Rhodes is one of my new favorite children’s book authors. She is a terrific writer with incredible capabilities in character development and mythology construction. Bayou Magic takes place in the bayous of Louisiana, in more […]

A beautiful, sad book about Hurricane Katrina–and it’s for children, no less.

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A few years back, I was browsing the children’s display at Barnes and Noble (in other words: a day that ends in y), and I noticed a book about Hurricane Katrina that had just won the Coretta Scott King Award. That book was Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Ninth Ward, and it sounded intriguing. I’ve not read a lot of fiction about Hurricane Katrina, just a collection of poetry by Katie Ford (which, by the way is excellent. Check out Colosseum if you can). I can hardly […]



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