YOUNG CORNROWS CALLIN OUT THE MOON

Children on the summer streets of South Philadelphia make their own fun and don’t miss what they don’t have. There may not be frontyards and backyards, but they have brownstone steps, the corner store, the ice-cream man and all the street games they can play. They also have mamma, gramma, some good home cooking and lots of friends with attitude. Forman takes a poem from an earlier collection and gives it a life of its own. The text floats across the pages, appearing at the top, middle or side, sometimes curvy, sometimes straight. Bayoc’s colorful, cartoon-like illustrations are filled with fun and action and match the text perfectly. The poem is written in street slang with words spelled accordingly. Although young readers might have some difficulty with the dialect and cadence, this poem exudes so much joy that they’ll want to read it again and again.

A good choice for reading aloud together.