"Ariel Blake's tender narration and youthful delivery will captivate listeners in this remarkable dual-timeline middle-grade audiobook." - Booklist
Award-winning author Amber McBride, whose previous book, Me (Moth), was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, lays bare the fears of being young and Black in America in her middle-grade debut.
In the future, a Black girl known only as Inmate Eleven is kept confined—to be used as a biological match for the president's son, should he fall ill. She is called a Blue—the color of sadness. She lives in a small-small room with her dog, who is going wolf more often—he's pacing and imagining he's free. Inmate Eleven wants to go wolf to0—she wants to know why she feels so Blue and what is beyond her small-small room.
In the present, Imogen lives outside of Washington, D.C. The pandemic has distanced her from everyone but her mother and her therapist. Imogen has intense phobias and nightmares of confinement. Her two older brothers used to help her, but now she's on her own, until a college student helps her see the difference between being Blue and sad, and Black and empowered.
This audiobook empowers listeners to remember that their voices and stories are important, especially when they feel the need to go wolf.
A Macmillan Audio production from Feiwel & Friends.
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 3, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781250911117
- File size: 242238 KB
- Duration: 08:24:39
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from September 4, 2023
This profound middle grade debut by McBride (We Are All So Good at Smiling), set in 2111 and 2022, follows two Black tweens navigating grief and racism. In 2111, in the Bible Boot, pale-skinned Clones are the ruling class while Black children called Blues are kept separate from society. A Blue girl called Inmate Eleven lives under confinement with her genetically modified dog Ira, whose tendency to “go wolf” inspires her to imagine a world elsewhere. As Inmate Eleven learns more about the systemic racism against Blues in the Bible Boot, she discovers that everything she’s learned about the world under Clone leadership has been a lie, and longs for escape. Meanwhile, in 2022 America, 12-year-old Imogen grapples with the long-term effects of an unnamed virus that has ravaged the nation while working through an unspecified traumatic event in therapy. McBride skillfully weaves each girl’s experience into the other’s via callbacks. In this weighty read, which explores the consequences of loss, quarantine, and racism on Black youth, the author employs brilliantly inventive storytelling as a tool through which the protagonists process their grief and find their people. An author’s note details historical events addressed in the book. Ages 10–14. -
Starred review from January 1, 2024
Gr 4-6-National Book Award finalist McBride's middle grade debut is an impressive genre-bending puzzle that opens with lulling piano notes, perfectly accompanying sweetly voiced Blake through the introductory credits and epigraphs. Blake deftly maintains a striking innocence through most of McBride's three intriguing sections. In "Blue," Blake haunts as wide-eyed Inmate Eleven in 2111, allowed only her dog Ira for companionship while she's been training her entire life to serve her assigned white Clone. In "Black," Blake is muted, mourning, 12-year-old Imogen trying to heal from traumatic racist violence and devastating pandemic losses. In "Blue & Black," McBride reveals her intertwined narrative brilliance, emphatically underscored by Blake's chilling recitation near the book's end of "and"s-denoted on the page as repeated &s (like twisted bodies) to represent the three million African lives lost along the Middle Passage. VERDICT What seems to be dystopic terror is the reality of the Black experience; author and narrator embody the lifesaving validation of storytelling-and story-listening.
Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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