Does growing up have to mean growing apart? From Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Author Award winner Renée Watson comes a poignant novel about love for home and for ourselves, embracing change, and what it means to grow up.
Identical twins Maya and Nikki have always agreed on the important things-their friends, the right boys, their plans for college and the future. But before senior year begins, too many things are changing. Their neighborhood is starting to get nice-and not really in a way Maya enjoys. With houses turning into trendy coffee shops and restaurants, and neighbors, including their best friend, Essence, being pushed out, Maya's neighborhood is becoming unrecognizable. And when a new-White-family buys the house Essence's mom rented, Nikki suddenly has a new best friend and Maya has a new admirer, someone she's not sure she should like. And then there's their principal, intent on prioritizing the comfort of White students at the expense of the school's largely Black identity. What's worse, no one seems to be as alarmed by these changes as Maya is-not even Nikki. As Maya struggles to hold on, she begins to wonder where-and with whom-she belongs.
Autorentext
Renée Watson is the New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor Book, and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, and Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, as well as two acclaimed picture books: A Place Where Hurricanes Happen and Harlem's Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. She is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts, and currently lives in New York City.
www.reneewatson.net; @reneewauthor
Klappentext
From New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author Renée Watson comes a captivating and poignant coming-of-age urban novel about sisters, friends, and what it means to embrace change.
Maya Younger and her identical twin sister, Nikki, have always agreed on the important things. Friends. Boys. School. They even plan to attend the same historically African American college.
But nothing can always remain the same.
As their Portland neighborhood goes from rough-and-tumble to up-and-coming, Maya feels her connection to Nikki and their community slipping away. Nikki spends more time at trendy coffee shops than backyard barbecues, and their new high school principal is more committed to erasing the neighborhood's "ghetto" reputation than honoring its history. Home doesn't feel like home anymore. As Maya struggles to hold on to her black heritage, she begins to wonder with whom--or where--she belongs. Does growing up have to mean growing apart?