Midnight without a Moon

October 15, 2016
The ugly brutality of the Jim Crow South is recounted in dulcet, poetic tones, creating a harsh and fascinating blend. Fact and fiction pair in the story of Rose Lee Carter, 13, as she copes with life in a racially divided world. It splits wide open when a 14-year-old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till goes missing. Jackson superbly blends the history into her narrative. The suffocating heat, oppression, and despair African-Americans experienced in 1955 Mississippi resonate. And the author effectively creates a protagonist with plenty of suffering all her own. Practically abandoned by her mother, Rose Lee is reviled in her own home for the darkness of her brown skin. The author ably captures the fear and dread of each day and excels when she shows the peril of blacks trying to assert their right to vote in the South, likely a foreign concept to today's kids. Where the book fails, however, is in its overuse of descriptors and dialect and the near-sociopathic zeal of Rose Lee's grandmother Ma Pearl and her lighter-skinned cousin Queen. Ma Pearl is an emotionally remote tyrant who seems to derive glee from crushing Rose Lee's spirits. And Queen is so glib and self-centered she's almost a cartoon. The bird's-eye view into this pivotal moment provides a powerful story, one that adults will applaud--but between the avalanche of old-South homilies and Rose Lee's relentlessly hopeless struggle, it may be a hard sell for younger readers. (Historical fiction. 10-12)

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August 1, 2017

Gr 4-8-Life in a sharecropper's shack on a cotton plantation in Mississippi during the summer of 1955 is harsh and unyielding, especially for 13-year-old Rose Lee Carter. Rose lives under the guardianship of her grandmother, who openly mocks her looks and favors her lighter-skinned cousin. Opening with a tense scene of brother Fred Lee's birth and Rose's terrifying encounter with local white supremacists, readers are immediately drawn into the deep poverty and racism that Rose faces on a constant basis. Although conditions at home, physical and emotional, are hard to bear, she enjoys a strong friendship with the son of the local preacher, Hallelujah Jenkins. African Americans registering to vote are routinely harassed-and the murder of Emmett Till reverberates through the community as feelings of anger and fear intensify. Rose is a relatable, endearing, and fully developed character. Her heartaches are striking and acute. The change from her fervent desire to join her mother and stepfather in Chicago to her determination to stay in Mississippi and join the fight for civil rights is believably heroic. Descriptions of the family's severe poverty are shattering but never salacious. Preferential treatment for lighter-skinned African Americans in Rose's family and even in the mainstream African American media is painfully depicted. Recommend for fans of Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming and Mildred Taylor's "Logan Family" saga. VERDICT An unflinching and sensitively-told coming-of-age story from the perspective of a smart and thoughtful young girl in 1950s Mississippi.-Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier County Public Library, Warrenton, VA

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2016
Grades 5-8 It's 1955 in Mississippi, and 13-year-old Rose has a dream: to leave the cotton fields, follow her mama to Chicago, go to an integrated school, and then head to college to become a teacher or doctorthereby having the means to take care of her family. But then her harridan of a grandmother decrees that Rose won't be going back to school, even though she's only finished seventh grade. So much, it would seem, for her dream. Meanwhile, the larger world intrudes when a young neighbor is murdered for registering to vote and then a 14-year-old boy visiting from Chicago named Emmett Till is also murdered. Will the deaths be meaningless or will they presage change, both for Mississippi and for Rose? Jackson's debut does an excellent job dramatizing the injustice that was epidemic in the precivil rights South and capturing the sounds and sensibilities of that time and place. Her sympathetic characters and their stories will make this thoughtful book especially good for classroom use.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2017
In the summer of 1955, thirteen-year-old Rose Lee Carter chafes at the daily drudgery of life in rural Mississippi. Rose, who lives with her sharecropper grandparents, suffers from low self-esteem fostered by her despotic grandmother, who incessantly reminds her of her undesirable dark skin color ("blacker than midnight without a moon"). She longs to join her mother and favorite aunt, who leave the South in search of better lives, settling in Chicago and St. Louis, respectively. Rose's routine is precipitously disrupted when Emmett Till, a teenage boy from "up north," is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The murder deeply affects her as she attempts to negotiate the dilemma of a community divided between those who are afraid to challenge the status quo and those who demand change. Through her friendship with the local preacher's son, Rose gains insight into the intricacies of the segregated South and begins to realize her own sense of place. This nuanced coming-of-age story by a debut author is deftly delivered, with engaging characters set against a richly contextualized backdrop of life for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. It's also an authentic work of historical fiction (supported by Southern vernacular in both dialogue and vocabulary that accurately reflects the era) about a pivotal incident in the civil rights movement. pauletta brown bracy

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)