Fact Friday: Star Child: a Biographical Constellation of Octavia E. Butler by Ibi Zoboi

Image: Penguin Random House

Star Child: a Biographical Constellation of Octavia E. Butler by Ibi Zoboi. 128 p. Penguin Young Readers Group, January, 2022. 9780399187384. (Review of finished copy of hc and audio borrowed from public library.)

Happy Friday! I hope your summer is going well and that you're getting outdoors as well as reading as much as you can. Boo and I have been taking lots of long walks in the early morning before it gets too hot.

Fact Friday features Star Child: a Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler by Ibi Zoboi. Octavia E. Butler was a science fiction writer notable not just for her superb writing, but also for the fact that she was a Black woman in a field dominated by white men. Ms. Zoboi's unique biography combines poems and commentary with photos to relate the life of Ms. Butler.

Octavia E. Butler's father died when she was four. She grew up in Pasadena, California with her mother and grandmother. She didn't do particularly well in school due to her undiagnosed dyslexia, but she had a fertile imagination and made up stories. The poems vary from playful concrete poems to couplets and blank verse. 

Each section is introduced in prose that provides context for the poems to follow. Quotes by Ms. Butler are liberally sprinkled throughout the book. The author discusses her fandom in the final section and back matter includes a list of Ms. Butler's books, acknowledgements, source notes and photo credits.

I originally started reading this one with my ears and it didn't work. The author read the prose sections and, well, there's a reason why authors aren't always the best readers of their work (Douglas Adams and Libba Bray being notable exceptions). Ms. Zoboi sounded flat and like she had a cold. (She narrated her MG debut, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and, while I didn't love the book, I noted on GR that the author narrated ably. So maybe she had a cold. That's on the producers.) Plus, I missed the illustrations and some of the more interesting poems that played with space. I switched to reading with my eyes.

I'm looking forward to adding this intriguing biography to my school's collection this fall. I'm not sure who the reader is though. I didn't encounter Ms. Butler until well into adulthood and neither did the author.