Book Review:
Cline-Ransome, L. (2020). FINDING LANGSTON.
Holiday House.
Plot Summary:
It's 1946. Langston's mother has just died, and now they're
leaving the rest of his family and friends. He misses everything, Grandma's
Sunday suppers, the red dirt roads, and the magnolia trees his mother loved. In the city, they live in a
small apartment surrounded by noise and chaos. It doesn't feel like a new
start, or a better life. At home he's lonely, his father always busy at work;
at school he's bullied for being a country boy. But Langston's new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only
library in Alabama, the Chicago Public Library welcomes everyone. There, hiding
out after school, Langston discovers another Langston, a poet whom he learns
inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him.
Critical Analysis:
There is detailed
character development in this book, from Langston himself to his mother who
passed away before the book ever begins. Langston’s father is a secondary
character, but his evolution as a father as he struggles to bring up his son
and deal with his own grief is shown throughout the book. His father makes the
decision to move them from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration,
where black people sought better lives free from that of a sharecropper on a
white man’s farm. FINDING LANGSTON doesn’t shy away
from topics of segregation and discrimination as Langston encounters it in the
libraries in the South, in the passenger cars on the railway to the North, and
in the neighborhoods of Chicago. The book also touches on the Port Chicago Disaster of 1944 and while it doesn’t go into the grim details of the disaster or the
segregation practices that made African Americans do the most dangerous jobs,
the brief reference gives readers the chance to start examining the history of
oppression in the United States and to ask critical questions. There is also an author’s note at the end that provides more context for
the story.
Review Excerpts:
CLA Notable Children's Book in Language Arts
SLJ Best Book of 2018
Coretta Scott King Honor Book
2019 Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction
Booklist, Starred Review: “The impact on the reader could not be more powerful. A memorable debut novel.”
Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review: “A captivating novel about a boy whose story
will leave readers wanting more."
Connections:
-Teach students more in depth about what life was
like for families like Langston’s during that time period, Jim Crow and The
Great Migration through artwork and photographs such as: Jacob
Lawrence: The Migration Series (phillipscollection.org)
-Have students identify character traits and
conflicts throughout the book that show the evolution of characters.
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