Ninth Ward

Sisi Aisha Johnson sparkles as Lanesha in this Coretta Scott King Honor novel. Classroom bullies, a favorite math teacher, new friends, and close-knit neighbors of New Orleans' Ninth Ward are voiced in a gritty dialect. The ghosts who populate Lanesha's life are equally real. Mama YaYa, her adoptive grandmother, has a personality larger than life, but not larger than love, for the little girl shunned by her "uptown" family. Mama YaYa predicts hurricane Katrina, but her powers are baffled by the post-storm catastrophe. Levees break, wind wails, and the Mississippi climbs the attic stairs. We hear these--not in an atmospheric soundtrack but in Lanesha's mounting terror. The listener climbs with Lanesha and her friend, TeShawn, to the roof and beyond. M.C.T. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 2, 2010
With a mix of magical and gritty realism, Rhodes’s (Voodoo Dreams) first novel for young readers imagines Hurricane
Katrina and the subsequent flooding through the eyes of resourceful 12-year-old Lanesha. Lanesha lives with Mama Ya-Ya, an 82-year-old seer and midwife who delivered Lanesha and has cared for her since her teenage mother died in childbirth. Living in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Lanesha is viewed as an unusual child (she was born with a caul and is able to see ghosts) and is ostracized at school. Lanesha finds strength in Mama Ya-Ya’s constant love and axioms of affection and reassurance (“When the time’s right... the universe shines down love”). The story becomes gripping as the waters rise and Lanesha, with help from a young neighbor and her mother’s ghostly presence, finds a way to keep body and soul together. The spare but vivid prose, lilting dialogue, and skilled storytelling brings this tragedy to life; the powerful sense of community Rhodes evokes in the Ninth Ward prior to the storm makes the devastation and the hardships Lanesha endures all the more powerful. Ages 10–up.

March 1, 2011

Gr 5-8-Hurricane Katrina is whirling toward New Orleans in this touching novel (Little, Brown, 2010) by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Twelve-year-old Lanesha is a confident loner in her Ninth Ward neighborhood. Other kids tend to avoid her because she has the sight-she sees ghosts-and casually ignores them. Lanesha concentrates on her studies. She loves math, words, her teachers, and above all things, midwife Mama Ya-Ya who took her in when her mother died giving birth. Lanesha has snooty light-skinned uptown relatives, but they abandoned her to the loving care of Mama Ya-Ya. Lanesha watches in amazement as her beloved Ninth Ward prepares for the storm of the century. Fortitude, a vocabulary word Lanesha relishes, will be necessary to see her through the storm. After Mama Ya-Ya dies, Lanesha must be brave and save herself and her best friend when the water begins to rise. Sisi Aisha Johnson, a gifted narrator, brings richness and texture to each character and her performance emanates with the humor, warmth, and grace of this fine story. This 2011 Coretta Scott King Honor Book is not to be missed.-Tricia Melgaard, Centennial Middle School, Broken Arrow, OK

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