City Summer, Country Summer

Gr 1-4–With perfect parity, Laymon poetically lays out how the Black boy from New York came to visit the Black boys in Mississippi, and what unfolds next. While their grandmother is at the chicken plant working, the boys, one called New York and the other two, the country children, walk through the woods to an underpass where they plan to slide on cardboard sleds. Tacitly, New York is moved by the country, the cool air away from his city streets, and his feelings are apparent to the other boys, too. Bolting back toward the houses, New York stares at the garden between Mama Lara’s and Grandmama’s, recalling his baby sister at home, and a familiar bodega. A game of Marco Polo breaks the ice, at last, and the boys are free to feel safe together, no matter where they come from. Franklin’s summer scenes read as classical oil paintings from the first view of the Mississippi street and its row of slightly dinged-up shotgun houses, shady trees, and front porches ready to welcome all. Laymon puts words to all the longing children have before they have the vocabulary to express it. The story leaves so much unsaid that, like the works of Anthony Browne and Jon Klassen, questions can be asked at story hours about the big feelings behind this summer day.