 | Bird In The Air Means We Can Still Breathe Author: Browne, Mahogany L. | |
| Price: $14.99 | ||
Summary:
In this poignant mixed voice, mixed form collection of interconnected prose, poems and stories, teen characters, their families, and their communities grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reviews:
Booklist (+) (12/01/25)
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 02/01/2025 *Starred Review* The author calls this book “a quilt of stories, poems, fables, and woes circling the moment we all survived.” What was survived, of course, was the COVID-19 plague, while “we” refers to the teens of color who endured, even when, in several tragic cases, their parents didn’t. In form, the book is a collection of linked short stories with the occasional poem interspersed. Leitmotifs of the collection are sadness and loneliness. One teenage girl, who lives, parentless, with her older sister, longs for a calico cat for company. Electra and Hyacinth, two “city girls with island roots” (Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, respectively), who met through the foster-care system, are luckier, having each other for company. Together, they provide choruses that help link the stories, the largest number of which feature a nearly 18-year-old boy, Malachi, who lives with his younger siblings, MJ and Lil’Monti. Their father, whom readers encounter in two later stories, has been in prison for four years for his revolutionary speeches and writings; their mother went out looking for an inhaler for MJ and never came back. The book boasts memorable characters and beautiful writing—especially the poems. It is singularly relevant in its unsparing examination of the pandemic and its impact on young lives, ideal for both classroom use and independent reading. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.
