As my inbox fills up with cancellations with this coronavirus outbreak, some hurt more than others. Top of the list is a tie between the Kaigler Book Festival and the JambaLAya Writers Conference. I had just finished a book that added another reason for anticipating the book festival and feeling mournful when the cancellation came. Our De Grummond Book Group had chosen Jason Reynolds book, As Brave as You, for our selection in anticipation of his visit.
Twelve-year-old Genie, the protagonist of the book, and his fourteen-year-old brother Ernie have left Brooklyn to spend time with their southern grandparents while their parents take a vacation in Jamaica to see if they can salvage their marriage. Genie copes with life by writing questions that he needs answers for in his notebook. Some could be found on the Internet if he were back in Brooklyn. Others, not so much. #444 ends with “and if I become a rich and famous questioner, does that make me a questionnaire?” Some of his new questions are attempts to translate southernisms, “#447: what does it mean to shoot the breeze?” and “#448: What does a month of Sundays mean?”
The book won the Schneider Family Book Award, given by the American Library Association to “honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.” Genie spends part of his summer becoming acquainted with his blind grandfather and learning when to leave him to a practiced independence and when to help him, part of it picking peas for his grandmother and helping take them to market, and part of it playing a second to his brother in an echo of the Pete and Repeat game.
At first glance, this book might seem to be written for a middle-grade African American boy, but it is much more. The relationship between city boys and rural grandparents will strike a universal chord with any boys or any grandparents who have tried to bridge location and generation gaps, especially the ones who were successful.
I did love this book, and I am really sorry not to get to meet the author at the cancelled book festival.