Freedom in Congo Square - an audiobook review

Freedom in Congo Square
By Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrated by Gregory Christie
Read by JD Jackson

Although I read the print book earlier, I recently reviewed the audio version of Freedom in Congo Square for AudioFile Magazine.

You can read my review of Freedom in Congo Square at AudioFile Magazine.

The following are some additional thoughts:


Freedom in Congo Square is a multiple award winning book, and the audio production with sound effects and music is flawless. However, the digital audiobook suffers without the accompanying picture book.  For full disclosure, I should mention that I've hosted the illustrator, Gregory Christie at my library and I am a huge fan, but the fact that he's a joyous and interesting person who wows children, is beside my main point. In the picture book version (for which he earned a Caldecott Honor), he captures the moods of each day so perfectly, and his transition from the torture of day-to-day chores to the joy of a music-filled Sunday afternoon at New Orleans' Congo Square captures a joy and resiliency of spirit missing in the audio version.  Although the narrator, JD Perkins, does a stellar reading, the accompanying music for the Sunday afternoon of freedom is rhythmic drumming with no hint of the tambourines, flutes, fiddles, and triangles mentioned in the foreword.

By all means, listen to the audiobook version, but have the picture book on hand as well!

You can still visit Congo Square!  It's located within New Orleans' Louis Armstrong Park. It is on our National Register of Historic Places.

Note:

I am slowly getting back up to speed following Hurricane Irma, which impacted almost every part of Florida. If you are a resident of hurricane impacted areas in Texas, Florida, Georgia, or Louisiana, please remember that your libraries may need your support, but they're also there to support you!  Libraries and everyday people are a combination that can weather any storm. 😊

If you want to help libraries in Florida and Texas, here's how:

• The Florida Library Association has set up a Florida Libraries Disaster Relief Fund at http://www.flalib.org/.
• Want to help Texas libraries recover from Hurricane Harvey?  Click Here for more details about the Texas Library Association Disaster Relief Fund.

Drowned City - a review

 The National Council of Teachers of English recently named Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans by Don Brown (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) the winner of its prestigious Orbis Pictus Award.

The NCTE Orbis Pictus Award  was established in 1989 for promoting and recognizing excellence in the writing of nonfiction for children. The name Orbis Pictus, commemorates the work of Johannes Amos Comenius, Orbis Pictus—The World in Pictures (1657), considered to be the first book actually planned for children. (from the NCTE website)

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans is a spare, but powerful graphic novel account of the tragedy that befell the City of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  Don Brown researches and illustrates Drowned City in his usual fashion.  It has extensive Source Notes and a corresponding Bibliography.  Every direct quote is sourced.  The illustrations are serious and in muted colors to accurately convey the gravity of the events; but they are sufficiently vague to spare the individual horror experienced by victims, survivors, and rescuers.  As he has done with other topics, Don Brown creates a focused, accurate, and powerful story - suitable for visual learners and for readers in a wide age range.


Other Hurricane Katrina books reviewed on this site:

• Saint Louis Armstrong Beach 
• A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

Also by Don Brown and reviewed by Shelf-employed:

• America is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell
• The Great American Dust Bowl 
• All Stations! Distress!: April 15, 1912: The Day the Titanic Sank 
• Let it Begin Here!: April 19, 1775: The Day the American Revolution Began

Saint Louis Armstrong Beach - a review

Woods, Brenda. 2011. Saint Louis Armstrong Beach. New York: Nancy Paulsen (Penguin Group)

It's hard to believe that I'm labeling a book about Hurricane Katrina "historical fiction," but to middle-grade readers, that's exactly what it is.  While memories of  Katrina are still fresh in the minds of New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents, 2005 is a lifetime ago for a 5th grader, born in 2001.

This first-person fictionalized account of 11-year-old Saint Louis Armstrong Beach (named for his grandfather King Saint and the famous trumpeter), tells the brief story of the run-up to Hurricane Katrina, the storm (in which he is trapped with an elderly neighbor), and its aftermath.  With freakish good luck and a family with money and decent jobs, Saint will fare better than many, if not most, New Orleanians actually did.  However, Saint Louis Armstrong Beach: A Novel (a boy, a dog, and the hurricane that almost separated them) serves as an excellent middle-grade introduction to this important page in American history.  The plight of the less fortunate provides a backdrop for Saint's story.  When he wonders why others are not evacuating to shelter in other cities, his father reminds him that not all people can leave,

"And who's gonna pay for that?  Some people got no jobs, others got no money, and when I say no money ... I mean no money.  Some people got nuthin' except the clothes on their backs, Saint."
"Money's real important, huh?"
"Yep, but what you do with it is even more important.  Most a the people who claim money's not important are folks who have plenty of it.  You remember that."

If it's a tad didactic and Saint is a tad too saintly, so be it.  Sometimes we need the obvious lesson. A short (136 pages) and accessible book for young readers. Light on scientific information, pair this one with an appropriate nonfiction title.

Brenda Woods is a Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner for The Red Rose Box.

Other reviews @
Kirkus Reviews
Waking Brain Cells
Bermuda Onion's Weblog

Teachers, there's a Reader's Companion for Saint Louis Armstrong Beach.

New Orleans A.D.

I'll be leaving New Orleans today after a wonderful experience at ALA Annual.  Here are a few thoughts on the Crescent City and its inhabitants:

• The ease and politeness of the Big Easy is notable.  With very few exceptions, the local population was friendly and accommodating - even to three librarians on an expense account. ("Can we have three separate checks?" "Sure, no problem." "Can we check out an hour late?" "I can do that.")

• New Orleans is a religious city.  Plentiful are the numbers of transportation companies bearing the name of the Almighty.  The Lord's Son may even be found endorsing iPhone repair. If there is debauchery on Bourbon Street, it is a tourist production; New Orleans serves only to provide the venue.

• If there is one thing that New Orleanians would like you to know, it is that New Orleans was not a victim of Hurricane Katrina.  Yes, the hurricane passed close by and caused damage from wind and rain.  However, the devastation of New Orleans was caused by human failure - the failure of the levees, the failure of the local infrastructure.  They want us to know that, to remember that, and to ensure that it never happens again.

• There are many books written about the New Orleans experience during and after Hurricane Katrina.  If you're looking for a distilled, visceral interpretation that is accessible to teens, look no further than Josh Neufeld's graphic novel, New Orleans After the Deluge (Knopf 2010).

I'll be finishing the book on the plane.  I think I know how it turns out.

So long, New Orleans, it's been great!