Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 01/01/2022 *Starred Review* This startlingly resonant story of resilience, using an arresting combination of story, images, and rhythm and rhyme, centers on one family right before the 2006 Mardi Gras in New Orleans. This is a particularly meaningful celebration, coming the year after Hurricane Katrina tore apart this Black family’s home and neighborhood. Lala, the narrator, who looks preteen, takes us through the day of the hurricane itself, when they fled in a boat to their aunt’s house, to the days before Mardi Gras 2006. This year, something is very wrong: Lala and her younger brother’s mother isn’t buying Mardi Gras charms or king cake or beads. Their father hasn’t picked up his trumpet since the storm, so Lala decides she and her brother will hold their own Mardi Gras inside. And then things turn: her father picks up the trumpet, her mother starts dancing, and they join the rollicking parade outside. The illustrations, done in mixed media, are as powerful as the story, moving from an ominous-looking fried egg of a sun through total washout during the storm to a trumpet-shaped cloud as the family regains hope. An author’s note and glossary provide great supplements, including a shout-out to NOLA residents’ improvisational style in having porch floats when the Mardi Gras parade of 2020 was canceled during quarantine. Inspiring. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.