Black Star (The Door of No Return series, 2)
This star of a book comes from a star of an author: Kwame Alexander is a poet and broadcaster as well as a novelist whose books have won both Newbery and Caldecott Medals, along with many other awards, including an Emmy.
Another shining star is the novel’s main character, Charley (a.k.a. Charlene) Cuffey, who dreams of being “the first girl pitcher to play professional.” Smart, smart-mouthed, and totally engaging, Charley plays backyard ball with her friends, Cool Willie Green and Socks, idolizing the teams and players of the Negro League, for this novel takes place in rural Virginia in the 1920s, amid segregation, cruelty, and violence. It was also, tragically, an era when the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Black citizens without repercussions.
In Black Star (the title invokes the Black visionary Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Steamship Line), Alexander deploys a daring and brilliantly successful literary technique. The novel is constructed from a series of poems—some lyrical, some dramatic, some conversational—all filtered through Charley’s sparkling twelve-year-old intelligence. Many of the poems are dialogues; one even rhymes. Altogether they create a thrilling, touching story easily accessible to readers aged 10 and up, including adults.
Another wonderful character is Charley’s beloved grandfather, Nana Kofi, who links this second volume to the first (The Door of No Return). Relationships are beautifully drawn, especially the tender one between Charley and her nana—meaning “grandfather” in Twi, the African language he teaches her, along with African culture recalled from his boyhood. Warm family scenes alternate with funny banter between Charley and her baseball-obsessed buddies. But two crucial baseball games drive the novel to a shocking, open-ended conclusion.
This is the second volume of Alexander’s projected Door of No Return trilogy. To be continued… in the forthcoming Book III!
