Ninth Ward

Read for my young adult literature class.......more

I'm sorry, I think I liked this one a lot more in theory than in execution. A charged political issue (Hurricane Katrina), the subtle magical realism/supernatural elements more common in children's lit. today (a narrator that sees ghosts), and a 12-year-old strong female narrator coming of age all s......more

I fell in love with the protagonist of this book - 12-year-old Lanesha, an orphan raised by Mama Ya-Ya, the elderly midwife who delivered her. Lanesha can see and communicate with ghosts, but she also loves mathematics and words and longs to be an engineer. She has to use all of her talents, and a g......more

This is a great heart warming story about a child's perspective of the the Katrina disaster. The author mixes in some of the fantasy and mystery of New Orleans along with the normal aspects of being a middle school student in search of an identity. Her unique way of introducing vocabulary through th......more

This is a book that is just plain unequivocally Good, in its writing, its story, its characters, and even in the much more subjective territory of the feelings it left me with. Lanesha has lived all her twelve years in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans secure in the love of Mama Ya-Ya, the wise old woman......more