This thought-provoking companion to Nikki Grimes’ Coretta Scott King Award-winning Bronx Masquerade shows the capacity poetry has to express ideas and feelings, and connect us with ourselves and others.
Darrian dreams of writing for the New York Times. To hone his skills and learn more about the power of words, he enrolls in Mr. Ward’s class, known for its open-mic poetry readings and boys vs. girls poetry slam. Everyone in class has something important to say, and in sharing their poetry, they learn that they all face challenges and have a story to tell—whether it’s about health problems, aging out of foster care, being bullied for religious beliefs, or having to take on too much responsibility because of an addicted parent. As Darrian and his classmates get to know one another through poetry, they bond over the shared experiences and truth that emerge from their writing, despite their private struggles and outward differences.
Between the Lines follows a group of teenagers in an English class not only learn to love poetry but also learn to express themselves and see that everyone's life is different, and not to judge a person by the way they look because you don't know what there home life is like.
Darrian is the main character we get to see and it always goes back to him, but we also get to see several of his classmate's lives and why they write the poetry that they do. One other thing I enjoyed was how Darrian would come up with headlines for each of his classmates after they read their poems and how they were thrown into the story to still show the focus on Darrian wanting to become a newspaper reporter one day.
Overall I loved this book and couldn't get enough of it. Grimes did an amazing job of keeping all the different perspectives we were seeing from getting confusing, while also giving all of them different backgrounds and stories that would help connect them to one another by the end of the semester. For once I didn't only have a few favorite characters as I loved all of the teenagers in this book, and how they were able to express themselves in this class, and gained a few friends along the way.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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19 August, 2020:
Finished reading
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19 August, 2020:
Reviewed