How High the Moon

Starred review from May 13, 2019
In 1943, 11-year-old Ella Hankerson’s African-American mother has moved to the buzzing metropolis of Boston to become a jazz singer—far away from Ella’s small town of Alcolu, S.C., where she lives with her grandparents. Ella doesn’t know who her father is—just that he headed out west—but she’s sometimes teased for her white facial features, and she wonders if he could be Cab Calloway. When Ella’s mom sends a telegram asking her to visit for Christmas, Ella plans to show her just how much she’s grown up. Life is often dangerous and unjust for Ella and her black family and friends in the Jim Crow South, and Boston poses new challenges. Her mother works all day at the navy yard and sings in jazz clubs at night, leaving Ella in her tiny apartment, and the visit is over all too soon. Chapters alternate between Ella’s narration and the stories of cousins Henry and Myrna, who live back home, where an innocent black teen is unjustly accused of two murders. Parsons’ debut novel offers a complex exploration of Northern and Southern racial tensions and one girl’s bumpy path toward knowing herself. Ages 8–12.

Narrator Sisi Aisha Johnson transports listeners to rural South Carolina in the 1940s through the passionate perspectives of three characters: 11-year-old Ella and her two cousins--14-year-old Myrna, an orphan, and 12-year-old Henry, who is Ella's best friend. They live together with their grandparents, but life is dangerous for African-Americans in the South. Teased by other black kids for her light skin, Ella is eager to leave when her mother invites her to live with her in Boston. But while Myrna and Henry deal with scary realities in South Carolina, Ella finds Boston a difficult adjustment. Johnson's youthful voice and Southern accent sympathetically capture the three kids as each experiences childhood through the lens of a racist society. S.C. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine