"The Poet X" Is the Next Book You Need to Read

“You need to read The Poet X.”

This is what I texted all my friends as soon as I read the last line of this book; I wanted to tell every person I spoke to that this book would not get out of my head.

Born and raised in New York city and the daughter of Dominican immigrants, Acevedo was a National Poetry Slam Champion and coached for the D.C. Youth Slam Team. The Poet X is her debut novel and quickly became a New York Times Bestseller. It also has won multiple awards including the 2019 Michael L. Printz Award and the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. With The Poet X being her debut novel, we are so impressed with her work and cannot wait to see what Acevedo comes out with next. 

The Poet X is a breathtaking novel in verse narrated by the protagonist, Xiomara Batista, who is a passionate and headstrong young Afro-Latina woman growing up in Harlem. Xiomara slowly falls in love with poetry, especially spoken word poetry. Xiomara pours her emotions and reflections of her day to day life into her poetry journal, commenting on topics ranging from pressures from her mother’s religion to gender to sexuality.

Acevedo told Publisher’s Weekly that she “pulls from her experience working with teens and her own high school journals”, which clearly is seen in her poetry, which truly channeling the emotions we can relate to from our teen years. She points to her being first-generation influencing her writing: “There are a lot of the cultural things that inspired aspects of Xiomara, like the ways in which who you are outside of your house is a little bit different than who you must be inside because of the cultural norms that exist. That push and pull that Xiomara carries of being first-generation is something I share.” (Publisher’s Weekly, 2018) Because of her own personal connection, her words evoke so much more meaning and carry weight of being something she has lived through.

Xiomara’s words haunted me at every moment I set down this book. A particularly impactful poem is In Front of My Locker (218). In the poem a boy at school grabs Xiomara inappropriately, and instead of waiting for her friend and crush Aman to say something, she has the realization of not needing to wait for anyone. In the poem In Front of My Locker we see Xiomara standing up for herself:

“For the first time since I can remember I wait.

I can’t fight today. Everything inside me feels beaten…

He’s not going to curse or throw a fit.

He’s not going to do a damn thing.

Because no one will take care of me but me.” (Acevedo, 219)

Xiomara is a girl to look up to, with her strength and dedication driving her actions, even when  everything inside her “feels beaten.” Her emotions are so raw and realistic, and from the first page I found myself cheering for Xiomara and her passion for life.

Acevedo excellently captures the struggles of being a minority teen in her novel, and I can see people everywhere being able to see some of themselves in Xiomara’s story.

“There is power in the word” Xiomara says, and yes, there is power in practically every word of Acevedo’s book. (Acevedo, 353)   

(SS)

Sources:

Acevedo, Elizabeth. The Poet X. HarperTeen, 2018.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/76224-q-a-with-elizabeth-acevedo.html

Dr. Michelle Abate's "Out of History: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the 1980s, and the Reclamation of a Lost Past

Please join us on Wednesday, February 20^th at 4 pm in Room LL430/431 for “Out of History: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the 1980s, and the Reclamation of a Lost Past,” a talk by Dr. Michelle Abate, Professor of Literature for Children and Young Adults at The Ohio State University.

Dr. Abate will be presenting on Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s critically acclaimed and prize-winning LGBTQ+ young adult novel, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Sáenz's powerful historical novel is set in the 1980s. However, it lacks any mention of the AIDS crisis, one of the major crises consuming the United States and the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s.

Abate argues that although the absence of AIDS may initially appear to be a historical oversight, Sáenz is actually offering empowering insight on a completely new way of looking at queerness in the 1980s. Instead of deliberately ignoring AIDS, Sáenz is creating a parallel timeline without the oppression of the existence of AIDS. In doing so, Aristotle and Dante are in an environment where they can live and flourish being queer without the growing stress of the AIDS crisis to create an environment without homophobia-fueled neglect, fear, and apathy. 

According to Abate, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is not to be analyzed as a historical novel, but instead that it ought to be analyzed as a new type of queer speculative fiction in an era otherwise full of fear and misunderstanding towards the queer community. This new insight will allow us to understand this beloved novel in a new and innovative light.

We can't wait to see you at Abate's talk!

(SS)

Ugo Fontana: Illustrating for Children

Dr. Giorgia Grilli, professor at the University of Bologna, has just written and compiled a 200 pg volume on an Italian illustrator for children that worked from the Forties to the Eighties: Ugo Fontana. She worked on this project with Fabian Negrin (an Italian-Argentinian illustrator and candidate for the H.C.Andersen and the ALMA Award). The book is in Italian and English and is companion to an important exhibition that will be hosted in two weeks at Bologna Children's Book Fair.

She shared these details with us:

Fabian Negrin and I have been researching for some years and put together a book in Italian and English on the work of a great Italian illustrator: Ugo Fontana (1921-1985). This book – a 200-page volume richly illustrated – is companion to the exhibition on Ugo Fontana that will be hosted by the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair. This exhibition inaugurates a new section of the fair, called ‘The Lost Treasure,’ which aims at rediscovering and presenting to the world the illustrative work of old masters of illustration that have been forgotten or have disappeared from bookstores, but deserve international attention. Ugo Fontana is the first one of the series and we, as curators, have been working hard to retrace his original artwork from national and private archives, old publishers, the family, friends, etc. We have collected more than 90 tables, which will be visible at the exhibition and which are all reproduced in the book. For our critical essay, we have studied the evolution of his style, the influences of other artists on his work, his own influences on other illustrators, the relationship of Fontana's way of illustrating for children with the children's publishing industry of his days and, more in general, the socio-cultural context in which he worked.

Having shown to some Italian publishers Fontana’s work (part of which they had in their archives or in their old catalogues, but no longer knew or thought about), many of them were so enthusiastic that they each decided to re-publish a book illustrated by him. So there will be three books illustrated by Fontana as ‘new’ releases at Bologna Children's Book Fair 2014.

The book can be bought, with a discount, directly through the publisher’s website (www.edizioniets.com -- it will be available in a couple of days). Or at the exhibition, in Bologna.

The Multicultural and Murderous in New Children's Lit Scholarship

Here are a few new reads to add to your research and collection. 

The first, Reading Diversity through Canadian Picture Books: Preservice Teachers Explore Issues of Identity, Ideology, and Pedagogy, edited by Ingrid Johnston and Joyce Bainbridge, may appeal to those interested in picture book study, multicultural studies (through a Canadian lens) and pedagogical practices. The description from the UTP site explains:

What is the value of picture books in educating a diverse society? This collection of original essays explores how preservice teachers from faculties of education across Canada engage with issues of diversity and national identity as represented in children’s picture books. Based on research drawn from education courses and student teaching experiences, the book illustrates new and culturally relevant approaches to curricula that meet the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies.

In the second book, Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children’s Literature, Michelle Ann Abate discusses the long history of violence that prevails in children's books -- not merely an indicator of American obsession with the grim, but also a sign of the complications, severity, and seriousness that children witness and face in reality. You must read Abate's insightful and excellent interview with the Boston Globe as well. Bloody good stuff.