From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 18:31:39 -0600

We're looking forward to your comments about the novels "Heaven" by Angela Johnson and "Jazmin's Notebook" by Nikki Grimes, as well as any responses you want to make to Angela Johnson's original poetry, "The Other Side: Shorter Poems," and Joyce Hansen's handsome prose volume, "Breaking Ground/Breaking Silence: The Story of New York's African Burial Ground."

We commend Angela Johnson for her several books recently published and - in particular - for her high visibility this year in the Coretta Scott King Award process. As I recall, she has been honored through the CSK Award process before - for her novel "Toning the Sweep."

Johnson's poems and the photos in "The Other Side" are a tribute to her hometown of Shorter, Alabama, and to the family of her childhood there. Shorter is filled with memories that will soon be all Johnson has left of Shorter, because her Grandmama has told her, "They're pulling Shorter down." Megan Schliesman observed in "CCBC Choices 1998" that Johnson "writes ... without sentimentality or nostalgia... through the eyes of an adult returning to the place of her past with appreciation for what was and sadness for what never will be again..."


Have you had a chance to see "The Other Side," or "Heaven" by Angela Johnson? Or "Jazmin's Notebook" or "Breaking Ground/Breaking Silence"
?? If you have, please share your comments and responses. ... Ginny
***************************** Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education University of Wisconsin - Madison Open during break: Monday-Saturday 9-4
Received on Mon 08 Mar 1999 06:31:39 PM CST