The Diverse Shelves Book Reviews

  INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN  BIBLIOGRAPHY  Lai, Thanhha. 2011. INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN. New York, HarperCollins Children’s Books. ISBN 9780062574022 PLOT SUMMARY      Based on the author’s own experiences, Ha is 10 years old and is living in Saigon during the VietnamWar, and must flee with her family from war-torn Vietnam by boat in 1975, where they are eventually relocated to Alabama. Narrated in free verse poetry, the reader follows Ha’s story as she describes in personal detail the joys and frustrations in how she must learn the ways of a new culture, learn a difficult new language, deal with and confront bullying from her classmates, and face the blatant racism from both her classmates and people in her new home. Through all of this in a new country, Ha records daily of her struggles and grief, such as her yearning for her lost home and missing her POW father who went missing in action years ago by being captured by Communists nine years before. With her endurance and tenacit

  ONE LAST WORD: WISDOM FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE  BIBLIOGRAPHY  Grimes, Nikki, et al. 2017.ONE LAST WORD: WISDOM FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE. New York, Bloomsbury Children's Books. ISBN 9781619635548 PLOT SUMMARY  ONE LAST WORD: WISDOM FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE is a vital collection of poetry from various Harlem Renaissance poets, and Grimes’ continuation of the poems with her own poetry written in the form of the “Golden Shovel” for,, keeping the original theme of the poem created by the poet, but expanding and exploring it further within her own. In her poetry collection, Grimes first introduces some background information about the Harlem Renaissance, and why it is vital to keep the history alive. Next, she takes time to explain the  “Golden Shovel” form she uses to create her poetry in continuation to the original poems by the cast of both well-known Harlem Renaissance poets, and the little known poets that she introduces the reader to. The poetry collection is divided int

  BOOKSPEAK!: POEMS ABOUT BOOKS  BIBLIOGRAPHY  Salas, Laura Purdie, and Jose Bisaillon. 2011. Bookspeak!: Poems About Books . New York: Clarion. ISBN 9780547223001 PLOT SUMMARY      Salas introduces an astoundedly creative collection of twenty-one book-themed poems to children of all ages, poems that pay tribute to books, the library, the writing process of a book, the parts of a book, the relationship between the reader and book, and everything in between. Wacky and fun, the collection goes through books speaking to the reader, a character pleading for his life so that the reader will continue to read his story, an argument between the Beginning , Middle , and End of the story, and the woes of a Cliffhanger ending for both the reader and the book. Salas brings to life the love of stories and books in a clever way, weaving the joys of books into imaginative poems that can be enjoyed and understood by children and young adults.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS The arrangement of the poems vary throu

  RUMPELSTILTSKIN  BIBLIOGRAPHY      Zelinsky, Paul O. RUMPELSTILTSKIN . New York, Dutton Children’s Books, 1986. ISBN 9780525442653 PLOT SUMMARY      A poor miller had a beautiful daughter, and one day he encountered the king, and wanting to impress him, so he told the king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king, who was very greedy and not satisfied with his current riches, ordered the miller’s daughter to be sent to the castle immediately. When the miller’s daughter arrived, the king led her to a room that was filled with straw, and ordered on pain of death she was to spin all the straw into gold thread before the next morning. The girl began to weep, not knowing how it could be done. Suddenly, a tiny man appeared and offered to spin the straw into gold for her in exchange for her necklace. When the exchange was given, the little man spun all the straw into gold. The next morning the King, filled with more greed at the sight of the gold, led the girl into a second an