Skip to main content

Review: The Door of No Return

Image
By
By Kwame Alexander
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2022. Historical fiction.

11-year-old Kofi Offin is on the verge of becoming a man, and it seems like everything in his world is changing. He lives in Upper Kwanta, a village in the Asante Kingdom (modern-day Ghana) in 1860. For Kofi, growing up means standing up to his bully of a cousin and getting the courage to speak to the girl he likes. It means going to school, where his teacher, Mr. Goodluck Phillip, punishes him for speaking in Twi and not the Queen's English. It means learning about the world through the stories of his grandfather, Nana Mosi. When Kofi's older brother accidentally kills the nephew of a neighboring village's chief during a wrestling match, Kofi realizes that his world is going to change even more -- but he couldn't imagine just how much, especially when he is taken from all that he knows.

Newbery-award winner Kwame Alexander is a children's lit powerhouse, and this historical fiction novel in verse sees him writing at his absolute best. Kofi's story is heartbreaking, powerful, and important. Grounded in the richness of West African heritage, this compelling story follows a compassionate main character as he is ripped from his home. This book is emotionally heavy and a masterpiece, best for young readers who are ready for the important conversations this book will undoubtedly spark.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Blood in the Water

By
Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more