Bird in a Box

Title: Bird in a Box
Author: Andrea Davis Pinkney
ISBN: 978-0-316-07403-2
Copyright: 2011

While everyone knows that Fantasy is the hot genre right now, what you might have missed is that historical fiction is working hard to make a comeback.  Most new historical fiction is set between the great depression and the 1980's.  I know most people wouldn't consider 1980 to be historical, but trust me it is! 

Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney, is one of my top picks for Black History Month.  This is a total "boy book" (forgive my stereotyping please!).  Joe Louis is absolutely famous during the Great Depression and in the small town of Elmira, New York Joe Louis is going to change the lives of three children: Hibernia, Willie, and Otis.  This is a story about the power of hope and the effect it can have on young children. 

Willie is living at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans after his stepfather burned his hands so he couldn't box anymore and his mother gave him up.  Otis' parents are killed in a car accident leaving him no one to take care of him and all he has for memories is his dad's old radio and a handkerchief of his mothers.  Then there is Hibernia, the reverends daughter who dreams of following her mother who abandoned her to be a great singer in Harlem. 

Andrea Pinkney weaves a beautiful story that makes the reader feel as if he is taking a step back into the 1930's filled with all the good and bad that the era was filled with.  Plus she includes real live radio broadcast commentary of Joe Louis fights.  For those of us who weren't alive in the 1930's they are pretty amazing to read. 

Give this book to your favorite sports fan!