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Twelve-year-old Ana-Marie Jin is the National Juvenile Girl’s Figure Skating Champion in “Ana on the Edge” (Little Brown 2020) by A.J. Sass. Ana trains in the Bay Area, lives with her supportive mother, and has a devoted best friend, Tamar. Ana is progressing so quickly she must leave Tamar behind and train with her coach Alex at a rink across town.

Ana is determined to do so well in competition that she’ll bypass Regionals and progress straight to Nationals, in order to save her single mom a load of expenses. Her mom works three jobs in order to pay the huge expenses of the sport. A Russian super-star choreographs Ana’s new free skate. Alas, it’s princess-themed and danced to sweet lyrical music. This just isn’t Ana’s thing. She’s a strong powerful mover. Ana doesn’t tell anyone how disturbing this choreography is to her.

New skater, Hayden, a transgender boy who has recently come out, arrives at the rink. Ana introduces herself as A and Hayden thinks she’s a boy. Ana likes this, so she doesn’t correct him, as they develop their friendship. “I am a girl,” she thinks to herself. But she doesn’t identify as a girl exactly. “If I’m not a girl, then . . . what?”

She gets her hair cropped very short and Hayden’s whole family thinks she’s a boy. She stands Tamar up a couple of times, in order to see Hayden, which, of course, strains her BFF friendship.

Ana is not exactly nailing her new lyrical skate dance. Her choreographer advises, “Feel the music. Become the princess.” Anna quips to herself, “What does she want me to do, sprout a crown?” And then the costume arrives. A sequined dress! She hasn’t performed in a dress since she was a little girl. And it costs thousands, as does the choreographer. She thinks, “I’m a strong skater who lands jumps on perfectly timed crescendos.” She’s all about “speed and power instead of portraying a delicate character.” She can’t tell her coach, her mother, Tamar, and especially not Hayden about her feelings.

To me that’s a weakness in the plot. Why can’t she question Hayden who has just recently come out? Why would she think he wouldn’t understand a situation similar to his own? But I go along with it because the identity crisis is so intriguing. And I’m sure there are young readers experiencing something similar to Ana’s.

So there’s no one she can confide in, but she does some great thinking, like: “Maybe I’m not a boy like he thinks, but it doesn’t feel right to call myself a girl, either. I need to find a word that describes this in-between feeling.” And if the reader doesn’t already know, you learn about non-binary identity as A does.

Thank heavens for A’s supportive mother, even if she is presently confused. Is there a young person you know who might benefit from this story by “expert” A.J. Sass, whose pronouns are he/they and has medaled in U.S. Figure Skating?

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com

Ellie’s family has been driven from their small Maine town to a little patch of land on the mountain due to the Great Depression in “Echo Mountain” (Dutton 2020) by Lauren Wolk. Her father had been a fine tailor, her mother a music teacher, but no one could afford such things in the early thirties and their poverty is deep. They’ve been on the mountain for a couple of years.

Twelve-year-old Ellie and her father take to living off the land, but her sister and mother do not. Samuel, at six, would be fine anywhere, it seems. Ellie has become something of a mountain girl. In the opening scene, their dog Maisie has given birth to a litter, but one puppy is dead. Mother instructs Ellie to bury it. Instead, Ellie douses it in a bucket of cold water. The puppy gasps and lives. Ellie is a natural healer that she describes as a flame in her chest which guides her. When Samuel asks why she did that, she says when he’d dropped snow down her back, she’d gasped. Why not the puppy?

Early in the story, Father is not present. He’s asleep—a prolonged sleep—a coma. The reason is uncovered gradually. But Daddy had taught Ellie to be self-sufficient. As an empath, she feels for people, animals, trees, the mountain itself, which stands her in good stead to be a healer. Not only does she try to cure her sleeping father, but the hag she finds up-mountain.

A fishercat has gouged the hag’s leg. Ellie finds her unconscious with magots roiling in the wound. Ellie is about to cauterize the wound with a heated chisel when the woman awakens to stop her, saying the magots are eating the dead flesh of the wound—a cure. Voila! Ellie has a healing mentor and at least one reader is fascinated.

The hag’s wound needs honey for disinfectant. Whereas she feels bad for the bees that will sting her and die, she makes a fire from a flint and tinder, creates a torch, extinguishes it. She smokes the bees out of their hive and takes the honeycomb. A couple of years ago her father had taught her to make fire, saying you must learn by doing it. Ellie asks the age-old question, “How am I supposed to do something that will teach me how to do it if I don’t know how to do it in the first place?” Practice.

When Ellie comes upon a long-abandoned foundation she says, “When I put my hand on those boulders, I could feel how much they missed the steady weight of a cabin above them. The idea they had been of use.” Ellie is wise. She’ll keep silent and shoulder the burden of blame rather than make her loveable little brother or even her annoying sister know her father’s accident was their fault. She recognizes, when she meets Larkin, that “loneliness shared is loneliness halved.”

I love this book, and as a young reader, I’d have devoured it. It might have changed my life.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com

Ibi Zoboi met Yusef Salaam in an African literature course at Hunter College taught by Dr. Marimba Ani in 1999. Yusef Salaam was one of the five Black teenaged boys who were wrongfully convicted of murder in Central Park a decade earlier—a story documented in Ken Burns’ The Central Park Five.

Yusef had “freed his mind” while serving a sentence for a crime he hadn’t committed, by writing poetry in prison. Since their first meeting, Haitian-American Ibi Zoboi had become the acclaimed author of American Street, Pride, and others. A few years ago, she asked Yusef to collaborate on a book. That book became the co-authored Punching the Air (Balzer & Bray 2020) the much-decorated best-selling novel-in-verse, about Amal, using some of the poetry Yusef had written while in prison along with the words of master poet, Zoboi.

The fictional character Amal, speaking of his court prosecutors, says, “Their words and what they thought/ to be their truth/ were like a scalpel/ shaping me into/ the monster/ they want me to be.”

Waiting for the court’s decision, Amal says, “The jury finds, she says/ As if this is a game of hide-and-seek/ and I’m curled up under some table/ my body balled up like a fist…”

Once convicted, he says, “There is nothing left to do now but think about God: my country’s Money/ my mother’s Allah/ My grandmother’s Jesus/ my father’s American Dream/ my uncle’s Foreign Cars/ my teacher’s College Education/ my lawyer’s Time.”

Once in prison, everything inside him is dying—his dreams, his life. His frustration is over-whelming. “Some of us put up more walls/ some of us look as if/ we will break down all the walls/ Most of us become the walls.” He is sinking into hell.

Then he finds poetry and drawing, which will be his salvation. “I paint words and voices, rhymes and rhythm/ and every whisper, every conversation beats a drum/ in my mind/ at full blast.” But the making of art doesn’t make everything okay. Maybe this reader’s outrage peaks when one of the white guards continually but secretly displays his tattoo to the Black inmates—a black baby with a rope around his neck.

Only gradually does the reader discovers of what Amal was accused. We live with Amal through his imprisonment where an invisible line divides the rich from the poor prisoners, the white from the Black—it’s subtle and treacherous.

Sometimes this beautifully written book is just too hard and I had to close the book. I realize that is due to my white privilege—a Black person cannot close the book on the potential and real ongoing threat to their life and freedom.

The theme of the book is contained in the lines, “my punches will land on a wall/ my punches will be paintbrushes.” If you care about the plight of America, I suggest you read this book then hand it to another reader.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com

In the city of Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan has the talent and drive to be a fútbol star, but her parents believe in the old social order where here is no place for a girl athlete. Camila lives a double life keeping her fútbol on the field with her teammates, who call her La Furia—the fury—and a secret from everyone else. “Furia” (Algonquin 2020) by Yamile Saied Méndez is a Reese Witherspoon Young Adult Book Club selection as well as the 2021 Pura Belpre YA Medalist—the Latinx literary award.

Camila’s ragtag but talented and passionate team qualifies for the South American tournament, but she cannot continue without the consent—and knowledge—of her parents. Her brother Pablo—less talented, less driven than she—is being groomed to be a soccer star by her father. Her brother’s friend Diego has soared to soccer fame, playing on the Italian team Juventus.

Diego visits home and seeks out Camila. They renew a childhood crush. Diego would like to rescue Camila—take her to Italy with him. Even he realize the star player she has become. Diego is every girl’s dream of a boyfriend and Camila loves Diego but she will not give up her dream for his. If her team plays at the South American tournament, a scout could see her and she might be offered a scholarship at a North American university.

The close bond between the girls on their team brings up the cultural taboo of girls hugging each other—even in a country that allows same-sex marriage. The issue of domestic abuse is also an issue in this story. Sexism looms huge. The story gives us a view of Argentine culture from many angles.

Camila’s mom married an aspiring but “failed” fútbol star and the marriage is a disaster. Mom, of course, worries about her daughter when rumors fly about her and Diego. Mom tells Camila, “Lies have short legs, guapa. Don’t forget, or you won’t run.” Great bit of wisdom, especially for those in the midst of teen culture, where gossip abounds.

Her parents think that Camila’s intelligence and ability to speak English will be what releases her from a world of poverty, but Camila is banking on fútbol stardom. However it is her English and compassion that get her a job teaching orphans at a parochial school where she becomes mentor to many, particularly one pre-teen girl. Somehow all these social issues work into one story.

Coach Alicia says to her team, “Daring to play in this tournament is a rebellion, chicas. Not too long ago, playing fútbol was forbidden to women by law.” It reminds me of the days before our own Title IX, when my big sister couldn’t play Little League even though she was a star player.

Globally we’ve come a long way, but we have so much further to go.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com

JoAnn Allen Boyce was one of twelve African American students who desegregated Clinton High School in eastern Tennessee in 1956. She is also the coauthor along with Debbie Levy of “This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality” (Bloomsbury 2019).

The landmark Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) ordered the desegregation of schools. Clinton was one of the earlier southern schools to test the case when twelve courageous teenagers decided they wanted the education that the until-then all white Clinton High School could provide. Plenty of white students threaten the Black students, but some are friendly. And JoAnn is immediately popular and even gets elected president of her class.

Black and white people seemed to have gotten along fine in Clinton, until white townspeople experience their teen children in school together. Teens in close proximity might like each other; the potential of mixed marriages or mixed “breeding” instills terror in the white population and the town’s true colors emerge. In JoAnn’s neighborhood one family used to borrow a cup of sugar and return with a cake in exchange. Not anymore.

Allen and Levy via a Face Book connection. They communicated by email and phone from southern California (Allen) to New York (Levy). Allen would tell Levy stories; Debbie would take copious notes and due to JoAnn’s articulate nature, sometimes those stories could be written almost verbatim at times. Heres a story: “Negroes are not banned from stores, but at the grocery store downtown, if a white person is in the bread aisle, we wait. We do not enter that aisle while the white person is contemplating backed goods… it applies to milk and scouring powder too…These are the rules. We follow them and they keep us safe. We don’t like them.”

JoAnn Allen’s “own voice” informed this book in a way that Levy, who is white, could not have done on her own, just as Levy as a professional, talented writer could bring out JoAnn’s story in a manner that benefited them both.

I learned a detail about going to segregated movies. You may buy popcorn, but you leave and enter the separate door that leads to the “buzzard’s roost.” There was much to know to “keep safe.” Another way to say, “stay in your place” with Jim Crow laws.

JoAnn played a pivotal role in the 1956 Clinton High school year, visiting Washington DC to describe their endangered lives in Clinton. Clinton H.S. desegregated before the “Little Rock Nine” teens integrated Central High School in 1957 and Ruby Bridges in New Orleans desegregated William Frantz Elementary in 1960. Why do we know so little about Clinton? Probably because there were no iconic photographs as there were in the other situations.

This is a riveting and important book.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com