Reviews of three very different novels/memoirs-in-verse

Reading. Blogging. Blogging. Reading. I am trying to keep up or catch up. Today I am reviewing three very different novels-in-verse/memoir-in-verse.

 The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin by Kip Wilson

Versify, 2022

Audiobook read by Juliette Goglia

HarperCollins Audio

Target audience: YA

Set in Berlin in 1932 at the end of the Weimer Republic before Hitler comes to power. Hilde, an orphan, finds friends and a family of sorts, in a gay cabaret. There she learns to use her voice to sing for wages and finds love at the same time. However, the new world is brewing outside the doors of the Cafe Lila, one that is not friendly to gays or Jews. Of course, we all know the horrors of the Holocaust, but you may not be aware that the Nazis aimed their ire at gays, also.

This is the first novel-in-verse that I've ever listened to the audiobook version, with the print version available if needed. Poetry is meant to be read aloud so this format should have been a good medium for the book, and in some ways it was, but not so others. First, the flow of the story was choppy in the audiobook. Naturally there are fewer words, so each word carries more weight. The book, for example is almost 400 pages long, yet the audiobook is only 4 1/2 hours long. Anyone who listens to audiobooks often knows that is the length of very short books, not ones of 400 pages. I actually stopped listening 3/4 of the way through the book and returned to the print version. 

Since the book was set in Germany, it was lovely, however, to hear to German pronunciations of words. I also enjoyed hearing the narrator sing the song Hilde wrote for Rose, her love interest.

Overall I found the book to be quite satisfying. I like learning new information or information about a known topic but from a different angle. The author, Kip Wilson, likened what was happening in Berlin in 1932 to what is happening in some parts of our country today "Where certain parts of the country still impose restrictions on individuals based on gender and/or sexual orientation and where it's still dangerous to be out and free." It was a timely read.

Rating: 4 stars.

Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round: My Story of the Making of Martin Luther King Day by Kathryn Kirkwood

Versify, 2022

Target Audience: Middle grade students

 

Kathryn was seventeen and in high school in Memphis, Tennessee the year that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in her very town. Prior to his death she had joined in the March for Freedom and Justice in support of the Sanitation Worker's strike in her town. When suddenly agitators broke up the peaceful protest and Kathryn was scared for her life. That was the beginning of her life long activism as a foot soldier for Black justice and to see to it that Martin Luther King would be honored with a National Holiday. 

This a deeply moving memoir-in-verse written by a woman who was on the front line for most of the fight to see to it that MLK received the honor he deserved for his work for voting rights and civil rights. The book is short with lots of photographs and other primary documents that related to the movement or were from Kathryn Kirkwood's private collection. Like all good nonfiction books that would be useful for class projects it has a glossary of terms, a bibliography for further reading suggestions, a diagram of how a bill becomes law, and other source notes. I recommend this book for all elementary and middle grade libraries.

Rating: 4 stars.

Golden Girl by Reem Faruqi

HarperCollins Children's Books, 2022

Target Audience: Middle grades

Aafiyah lives a very privileged life in Atlanta as Pakistani-American whose father makes plenty of money, she has every physical thing she needs, yet she can't seem to stop herself from stealing, it is almost like scratching an itch. She must do it. When her father is arrested at the airport for embezzling money, and her mother is forced to support the family and pay the legal bills, her compulsion to steal gets tangled up with wanting to do something for her family, to help out.

What I liked about the book:
The simple, short poems.
The weird facts that Aafiyah collects in her little notebook.
The way that religion, Islam, is incorporated into the family's life.
The resolution.

 

Rating: 4 stars.

-Anne