A SPECIAL VOICE
Wright, Bil. When the Black Girl Sings. NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. 2008. Print
ISBN-13:
978-1-4169-3995-5
Hardcover,
$16.99
266 pages
***BOOK PRAISE***
To
learn more about what critics have to say, visit the website of Simon & Schuster.
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| Cover Artwork Copyright © Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 2008 |
ANNOTATION
Lahni Schuler—a young Black teenager with White adoptive parents and a powerful singing voice—draws from her experience in a church gospel choir to set herself apart from the crowd at her school’s big talent competition. This heartwarming, dramatic novel is the predecessor to author Bil Wright’s hilarious Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy.
As if being adopted weren’t hard enough for Lahni Schuler, having White parents with marriage problems makes life even more difficult. Lahni’s a young Black teenager attending a mostly-White private school in Connecticut, where parents and peers—including an odd male stalker student, who goes by “Onyx 1”—seem bent on obsessing over physical differences.
Lahni’s mother eventually takes her to a local church, where the gospel choir puts Lahni’s singing talents to work:
I
was somewhere else, flying way over the auditorium, over the parking lot, when
I heard them. The audience. They were clapping and I hadn’t finished
singing yet. …Even though they were clapping,
I didn’t stop flying. I didn’t want to
come down (255).
With
the support of her new extended family in the church, Lahni uses her voice to
set herself apart from the crowd at school. But
will she find the strength to step on stage and follow through with her school’s big talent
competition?
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| Title Page Artwork Copyright © Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 2008 |
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RELATED RESOURCES (COOL STUFF)
>>> Check out a book trailer here...
>>> Bellie reviews her top five books of all time, including When the Black Girl Sings...
>>> Check out two separate versions of Lahni's song, “His Eye is on the Sparrow” here...
>>> Listen to a podcast about “Musical Books for Teens” on ReadWriteThink.
>>> To discover more teen fiction exploring adoption, take a look at this list from the Hennepin County Library in Minnetonka, MN.
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