The narrator of this short but powerful novel has lost a lot in his short life. Starting with the death of his beloved and adoring Mama, he then loses all ties to her as his father makes the decision to move them north from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, where black people sought better lives free from that of a share-cropper on a white man’s farm. Solely set in Chicago in the 1940s, which is noisy and dirty and packed with people, the narrator holds onto his memories of growing up so hard that we can almost see the red clay dust kicking up from the roads in his small town in Alabama and feel his Mama’s arms around him.  Bullied for being a “country boy” (though he believes that those doing the bullying aren’t far from “the country” themselves), the boy finds solace in the George Cleveland Hall Branch Library. It is there that he makes the deepest connection to his Mama as he learns the origin of his name and is swept up by the poetry of many of the black voices tied to the Chicago Black Renaissance and the Great Migration. Langston’s father is a secondary character, but his evolution as a father as he struggles to bring up his boy and deal with his own grief is lovely. There is a fantastic author’s note at the end that provides more context for the story. The only thing missing is a list of the poets and some of their works, but this book is so good that hopefully it inspires readers to seek out those mentioned on their own, perhaps at their local library where a librarian is always ready to point out the 811s. A wonderful first novel for Cline-Ransome whose picture books are already an essential for any public or elementary school library. The recommended ages are grades 3-7 and this book really does have enough appeal and depth to use in a class with elementary students or to hand to a middle school reader who can fall into the story on their own.  Highly recommend.

Reviewed by Jill O’Connor, Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth