Image: HarperCollins Publishers
Happy Tuesday (on a Wednesday)! I posted this to my school's platform yesterday, but forgot the blog. Teen Tuesday features The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. Ms. Acevedo was teaching eighth grade language arts in Maryland and was trying to get her students to love reading. The school was almost 80% Latinx and 20% black, but she was the first Latinx teacher of a core subject. She asked her students why they didn't like to read and was told it was because there were no black and brown characters in the books they were given. She wrote The Poet X for her students.
It is the first-person story of Xiomara Batista, a sophomore at a Harlem High School. She's angry and pours her anger into her poetry journal. She's angry about the double-standard that is applied to her and her twin brother. He gets freedom, but her mother has her practically on lockdown, sure that X is going to get into trouble. She's large and curvy and she's angry about the unwanted comments thrown at her about her body.
This coming-of-age story is intense and beautifully written in verse. Ms. Acevedo's YA debut was published in 2018 and made quite a splash! It won the National Book Award, the Printz Award and the Pura Belpré Award. The audiobook, which was performed by the author, won an Odyssey Award and is well worth a listen.
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