Written in Verse

I've never been a huge fan of poetry - I don't find it that accessible when I read it to myself.  So, when there are popular books in verse, I tend to shy away from them.  But, here are a couple - which also happen to be YA (so maybe that's why I could sort of understand what was going on) that I recently enjoyed.

Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai: Set during the Vietnam War, this is the story of ten-year-old Ha, who lives in Saigon.  When her father disappears, she and her family (her mother and two older brothers) are forced to flee.  They end up in Alabama, where everything is foreign to Ha - the food, the smells, the language.  This story is absolutely beautiful in its language and imagery - in evoking the beauty of Vietnam, and the horrors and traveling unwillingly to a hostile country.  I read this book out loud to my son - and I think the power of the poetry was enhanced by speaking it rather than just reading it.  We had to stop a few times and reread stanzas just to talk about how incredible it was to be able to tell a story in such a form.  I was simply blown away by the brutality of this book.  The Bay Area Children's Theatre then did a production of this book - which I took all three of my children to - I wasn't sure how it would translate to the stage, though again hearing the words out loud brought so much more power to them.  This is an important story in terms of history- but also in terms of telling the story of relatively recent immigrants - how difficult it is to leave a country you love and where you feel you belong - and what means to give up everything to start all over in the United States.

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander:  Someone recommended this book to my 7-year-old son, so I assumed that it was mostly just a book about basketball.  But, I wondered if he'd be able to get into the verse format, so I decided to read it for myself first.  I'm glad I did because while there is certainly a back-drop of basketball going on in this book - it's really about much more mature issues.  Twin brothers Josh and Jordan are phenomenal on the court - they play together just as you would expect twins to play together - as if they can read each other's minds. But as they are growing up - they begin to grow apart.  One brother has a girlfriend, while the other remains focused on his game.  And all the while they are also dealing with school, an aging father, and all the push and pull that comes with being a twin.  This is a wonderful coming-of -age story and the way in which the story is told help speed up and slow down the pace.  It almost felt as if the book had the pace and cadence of an actual basketball game.  I loved reading about all these typical family and sibling issues in this this really novel format.  I'm very eager to read Alexander's book Rebound - the prequel to Crossover which gives the background on Josh and Jordan's father.