Words with Wings

  In this delight­ful­ly spare nar­ra­tive in verse, Coret­ta Scott King Award–winning Grimes exam­ines a marriage’s end from the per­spec­tive of a child. Set most­ly in the wake of her father’s depar­ture, only-child Gab­by reveals with mov­ing clar­i­ty in these short first-per­son poems the hard­ship she faces relo­cat­ing with her moth­er and nego­ti­at­ing the fur­ther loss of a good friend while try­ing to adjust to a new school. Gab­by has always been some­thing of a dream­er, but when she begins study in her new class, she finds her thoughts stray­ing even more. She admits: “Some words / sit still on the page / hold­ing a sto­ry steady. / … / But oth­er words have wings / that wake my day­dreams. / They … / tick­le my imag­i­na­tion, / and car­ry my thoughts away.” To illus­trate Gabby’s inner wan­der­ings, Grimes’ nar­ra­tive breaks from the present into episod­ic bursts of vivid poet­ic rem­i­nis­cence. Luck­i­ly, Gabby’s new teacher rec­og­nizes this inabil­i­ty to focus to be a cop­ing mech­a­nism and devis­es a dai­ly activ­i­ty designed to har­ness daydreaming’s cre­ativ­i­ty with a remark­ably pos­i­tive result for both Gab­by and the entire class. Through­out this fine­ly wrought nar­ra­tive, Grimes’ free verse is tight, with per­fect breaks of line and effort­less shifts from real­i­ty to dream states and back. An inspi­ra­tional explo­ration of car­ing among par­ent, teacher and child — one of Grimes’ best. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)