Seize Your Copy After Tupac And D Foster Developed By Jacqueline Woodson Distributed In Booklet

for Elijah's English teacher as a parent reviewer, Very good book, with themes like friendship, social justice, and the impact of music, Not so good, even for teens, Woodson tries to sell us the Tupac part, without the Tupac, The reader is duped here, There are none of his rhymes, and nothing to really grab onto here, If she came back with a new addition, adding some character, plot, and setting "meat," I believe we may have a winner, As it stands, the book simply fails to live up to its cover, After Tupac and D Foster is the type of magical book that whisks you into its fictional world and makes you forget reality for awhile.
The book spans several years, from when the narrator and her best friends are eleven to thirteen years old, They are on the edge of puberty when the book startsstarting to be interested in boys, and wanting more independence from their familiesbut still very aware that they have to follow their families' rules and stay on their block.
A new girl, D Foster, comes into their lives, She's the same age but takes the bus to their neighborhood and decides to stay and hang out, On her second visit, she brings a double dutch rope and the girls connect because they are the "older" girls who know how to jump rope.
D's arrival seems to symbolize a completionthey couldn't jump double dutch without this third friend, Time and specifics are pretty fluid in this book, and the book was a very short, quick read, yet I didn't feel like I was missing out on big chunks of anything important.
In a way it is told in vignettes, because really important moments are pulled out of their lives and described in detail, Woodson manages to do all of this and really convey the feeling of being there, with a first person narrator inpages,

Neeka's oldest brother is in jail for his supposed role in a robbery gone wrong, He is in jail upstate,hours away on a bus, The narrator goes with Neeka and her family to visit and the journey and visit is one of the most vivid descriptions in the book.
We find out at the end that Tash wasn't the one responsible for the violencerather, it was a hate crime committed against him and his friend, both of whom are gay.
Woodson does a good job of addressing Tash's multiple identitieshe is black and gayand he is a beautiful character who manages to not be afraid despite what he has gone through.


Woodson also weaves Tupac and his music into the book, His life and death situate the story in a certain time and place, but it does not feel dated, The girls' connection to Tupac seems to be an aspect of their adolescence and growing independence, Music tends to be so important to the middle school students I work with and this book definitely captures that in a powerful way.


In addition to addressing racism, class issues, jail, and gay bashing, Woodson portrays D's experience moving in and out of foster care in a sensitive way.
For readers who don't know anything about the child welfare system, they get an understanding of it from a very kidfriendly perspective, For kids who are familiar with it, they will see their experiences reflected in the book,

This book is truly a middle school book, but I think that someth andth grade readers would also relate to it.
The violence committed during Tash's supposed crime is the only part of the book that I would be especially concerned about with younger students.
Otherwise, kids will digest the parts of the book that they understand and relate to, and skim over the parts that might be too old for them.


I think this would make a good class read, It's short and
could be completed in class in a few weeks, but it is very dense, In some ways it is like the House on Mango Street, but much easier to understand and more middle school appropriate, And I am now motivated to read everything by Jacqueline Woodson as I think the writing is very powerful, My favorite of Jacqueline Woodson's chapter books, by far, Beautifully written, thoughtful, and what really makes me prefer this to her other books swimming in complicated reallife situations without becoming too issuedriven,

My favorite thing about this book is that it feels very much written for a younger audience despite topics that are normally reserved for didactic picture books or teen readers: it addresses injustice, prison, homophobia, racism, the foster care system, and other issues that touch families and affect many of my urban kids, but maintains a voice and perspective that's warm, loving, righteous, and utterly ageappropriate foryear old readers.
It's beautifully written and avoids overly lyrical phrasing, something that I think often gets mistaken for good writing for children, I wouldn't recommend this as an insightful or gritty read for a teen, and I think even older middleschoolers wouldn't really identify with the girls' lack of rebellion.
. . the main characters are young, sheltered, mostly observing rather than acting, and not yet arguing with their protective mothers, The exception of course is D, whose hardknock life has resulted in an impressive, if unrealistic, level of maturity that allows her to offer timely insights.


I'd love to see this inth grade book clubs, as a classroom readaloud, and absolutely as a book on tape, maybe with some actual Tupac thrown in.
I'd also be happy to see it win the Newbery, . . I think it's a much, much stronger offering than last year's Newbery Honor sitelink Feathers, and many of the Newbery speculations I've heard so far this year.
A mustpurchase for my Klibrary, great but not what i thought it would be about
This is a small, simple, huge story that says so much in so few pages.

When it comes down to it, Jacqueline Woodson has packed a lot of tough topics into this airtight little story: throwaway kids, jail visits, homosexuality, Tupac's art, fatherlessness, and the hope some kids cling to that they might one day play professional sports.
With so many big issues in the mix, it's amazing how smooth the story flows, Of course the strongest thread is friendship,
Favorite quote:
"D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died.
By the time her mama came and got her and she took one last walk on out of our lives, I felt like we'd grown up and grown old and lived a hundred lives in those few years that we knew her.
But we hadn't really. We'd just gone from being eleven to being thirteen, Three girls. Three the Hard Way. In the end, it was just me and Neeka again" p,.
This would be a good book to show how a writer can say a lot with a few seemingly simple descriptions,
One of my themes in reading this year has been to find quality books for my children, Even at a library, books featuring either magical princesses and fairies or sports stand out, Kids fall into the trap of only reading books that mesh with their social upbringing, My quest has lead me to both classic and contemporary books, Over the summer I discovered Jacqueline Woodson, Woodson has been writing poetic prose for the last twenty years and has won multiple awards for her prose, After Tupac and D Foster won the Newberry and features memorable characters growing up in as Brooklyn neighborhood,

Our narrator measures time from before and after D came to the neighborhood and when Tupac was shot, Even though our narrator and her best friend Neeka live in wholesome environments, they could relate to Tupac's music because various lines in his songs spoke to them individually.
He had been one of them once, and all the teenagers in the neighborhood listened to his music either on the radio or through Walkmans.
The day he was shot, time appeared to have stopped, and the characters knew where they were when they found out about Pac,

Life went on for the narrator, Neeka, and D, They went from precocious adolescents jumping double Dutch to gangly teenagers trying to test their parents' limits, This book is not without its take on society, Woodson addresses treatment of gays in the black community as well the percentages of black males in prison, Additionally, the "be like Mike" culture has permeated black urban communities as Neeka's older brother used a basketball scholarship as a means to get out of poverty.
Even though this novel is geared toward middle grade readers, Woodson includes many social issues that make the book appropriate for adult readers as well.


I enjoyed this novel as

it showed girls in a warm, friendly relationship devoid of conflict and competition, Jacqueline Woodson has been writing her poetic novels for twenty years and I am glad that I unearthed her writing this year, This is the third of her books that I have read recently and each story is more poetic than the last, A poignant book that addresses many of the current social issues of its time, I rate it a solidstars, Appropriate for middle grade readers and the entire family, .