Keeping the City Going written and illustrated by Brian Floca

 

Keeping the City Going

written and illustrated by Brian Floca

Atheneum  BFYR/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Simon and Schuster

2021, 40 pages

When we first heard about COVID-19, I used to lose sleep worrying about my Kiddo living in China and a mere 600 miles away from ground zero there. Than, before I knew it, New York became somewhat of an epicenter for the virus and almost everyone pulled in their welcome mats and shut down. People wore masks, disposable gloves, carried hand sanitizer and only went out when they needed to. Supermarkets stayed open, but restaurants closed their doors and had delivery only. Theaters and libraries closed and people turned to their Kindles and Nooks. Big Target boxes filled with toilet paper and disinfecting wipes littered apartment buildings lobbies, food delivery services like Instacart became even more popular, and Times Square, the crossroads of the world, was EMPTY. Hospital tents set up in the East Meadow in Central Park, and the Navy docked their hospital ship in New York harbor. But the buses and trains kept going, and essential workers showed up for work every day.

I bring all this up as a way to introduce Brian Floca's newest book Keeping the City Going. It is a homage to the essential workers who kept the city going through it all. Because behind everything I mentioned were/are people who went out in a pandemic to take care of us. And not just in NYC, but all over the country.

The book is narrated in the collective voice of some children looking out their window at their almost street downstairs, reflecting on how the city has changed, and Who the few people they see might be. 

Floca has really captured the essence of New York during the lockdown and the frontline workers that we so desperately needed - from bus, subway and taxi drivers who safely carried people from place to place, to the sanitation men who kept the city sort of clean, postal workers who kept the mail going, and even the utility workers who kept us in gas, electricity, water, phones and internet for our zooming and remote learning sessions.  

Perhaps my favorite part of the book is the part about the medical and hospital personnel who worked so tirelessly to save the lives of patients who had contracted COVID-19. Probably because I come from a medical family, I really love how Floca pays tribute to all of them - the FDNY, the EMTs, the doctors, nurses, nurses aides, technicians, clerks and cleaners - because sometimes some of these essential workers were/are forgotten about. 

Floca has also included our nightly ritual of opening windows and cheering, banging on pots and pans, blowing horns and ringing bells in appreciation for the people who are kept the city going. 

In his signature style, Floca's watercolor illustrations are done in a colorful yet soft palette and are as beautifully detailed as the city he is illustrating. 

Keeping the City Going is a lovely tribute as well as a timely work documenting those days for now and for the future. And while Floca may have highlighted Brooklyn in particular and NYC in general. this is a book that can be read and appreciated by anyone anywhere who has lived through the pandemic days of 2020-2021. We were all in this together. 

This book is recommended for everyone

This book was gratefully received from the publisher Simon & Schuster.

MMGM: The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

After a very busy Christmas Eve, I decided to take it easy on Christmas day and just spend the afternoon reading a book. And The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street seemed the perfect book to spend the day with. It's a delightful New York story about a big biracial family and it begins five days before Christmas and ends on Christmas day.

The Vanderbeekers children, twins Jessie and Isa, 12, Oliver, 9 and the only boy, Hyacinth, 6, and Laney, 4 1/2, have occupied the basement and two floors of a Harlem brownstone most of their lives, along with Mama, Papa, Franz the dog, George Washington, a cat, and Paganini, a lop-eared bunny. Above them live Miss Josie and her husband Mr. Jeet, who recently suffered a stroke, and on the top floor lives Mr. Beiderman, their landlord. The Vanderbeeker children couldn't be happier living where they live. They know everyone in the neighborhood, and everyone knows them, with the exception of the reclusive Mr. Beiderman, whom they have never seen.

You can imagination the devastation the Vanderbeeker children must have felt when, five days before Christmas, they were told that Mr. Beiderman would not be renewing their lease and they would have to move by the end of the year. The children may be stunned, disappointed, angry, hurt, and perplexed, but it doesn't stop them from coming up with "Operation Beiderman," a plan to win the mysterious and mean landlord over in the hope of changing his mind. And Mr. Beiderman is an enigma to them. He hasn't left his apartment in the six years the Vanderbeekers have lived in his brownstone, he periodically has frozen meals delivered, and he keeps his windows covered with dark curtains. Papa is the only one who has seen Mr. Beiderman, since he does superintendent duties around the brownstone.

And Mr. Beiderman proves to be a hard nut to crack. Enticing him to change his mind with delicious chocolate croissants for the local bakery doesn't work, nor does the wonderful old Duke Ellington record they leave for him after learning that he likes jazz. Nor does Hyacinth's hand stitched holiday place mat, or the petition signed by everyone they know in the neighborhood. As the time until moving day gets closer and closer, will the Vanderbeeker children come up with a plan that will finally work? Or are they destined to leave behind everyone and everything they love about living in a brownstone on 141st Street in Harlem forever?

I have to admit I have a weakness for middle grade books about large, loving families like the Vanderbeekers (and of course, the Penderwicks). And I really enjoyed reading this book and I'm looking forward to reading more about the Vanderbeekers.

Some of the things I really liked about this book are:
I thought all the characters were believable and well drawn. Everyone had just the right amount of eccentricity, so that who they are feels authentic and not forced. The kids felt like real kids. They know their way around the neighborhood and they know things about their home that the adults have not idea about - how to get up to the Roof of Epic Proportions via fire escape for secret meetings, the secret floorboard in the twins bedroom, how to avoid squeaky stairs.

I loved that there were no screens - none of the Vanderbeekers kids have a cell phone, and because of the move, even their Internet is turned off. Which means - no easy answers about the mysterious Mr. Beiderman. Learning he has once been at City College, they had to walk to the college in the hope of finding information.

The main message the Vanderbeekers learned is to never never assume a person is who they appear to be. Jessie has to learn this about her twin sister Isa the hard way, and all of the kids have to learn it about Mr. Beiderman.

My favorite part, however, is this - if it takes a village to raise children, this book shows us that the village can easily be the neighborhood right outside our front doors. This is a lesson I learned when my Kiddo was growing up and so many friends and neighbors added so much to her life. And Karina Yan Glaser depicted it so perfectly, it was like a gift on Christmas day.

If you haven't read The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, you might want to give it a read. If you have already read it, lucky you.

Be sure to check out the other Marvelous Middle Grade Monday offerings, now being carried on by Greg at Always in the Middle. 

This book is recommended for readers 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson

All Amara Baker wants for her twelfth birthday is to accompany her father, a Nike executive, on his next business trip to New York so she can get to know his side of the family better. Maybe she can even learn why her dad hasn't spoken to his dad since the day she was born, which also happened to be the day her father's mother, Grandma Grace, passed away. But Amara's mother, nearing the end of her pregnancy, is not willing to let her go.

Adding to Amara's desire to know that side of her family is an assignment by her teacher called the Suitcase Project. Students are expected to create a time capsule that explores their past, present and future with items that represent who they are, where they are from and what their dreams for the future are. But just when Amara gives up hope of getting to New York, her mother changes her mind and says she can go. And maybe, just maybe, while she is there, Amara can get her dad and grandpa talking so they can mend their rift.

Until arriving at her grandfather's Harlem brownstone, Amara had only spoken to Grandpa Earl, a former basketball coach, on the phone for special occasions. And although her father manages to avoid him, Grandpa Earl and Amara immediately bond. Amara is excited to see the places where her dad grew up in Harlem, and Grandpa Earl can't wait to show her his favorite places, too. No sooner does the week begin, and her dad runs into an old friend who spills the beans about her dad writing poetry in high school, something Amara didn't know about him.

Over the next few days, Amara begins to learn what happened between her dad and Grandpa Earl, even as she begins to formulate how she will present the family history she is discovering on this visit, in part by snooping, in part from Grandpa Earl talking to her and in part from being taken.
to iconic places in Harlem that represent so much of African American history, in a way she has never experienced it at home in Beaverton, Oregon.

But Amara also spends a lot of time with her cousins, Nina, 16, and Ava, 14. She and Ava don't really get along. Sightseeing for Ava is going to H&M, not visiting the murals, statues, and other places she sees all the time. After a family visit to the cemetery where Grandma Grace is buried, the tension between Amara and Ava comes to a head when Ava refuses to "babysit" her cousin again. Angry, Amara decides to make her own way to the East Village and find a place called the Nuyorican Cafe, a place, she had discovered while snooping in her dad's old bedroom, where her dad had wanted to read his poetry on open mic night when he was in high school. But when she finds herself in the Bronx at the Yankee Stadium stop on the subway, Amara realizes she's gone the wrong way. But maybe it's the right way for past hurts and anger to finally be dealt with.

Some Places More Than Others is a really well-crafted coming-of-age novel that explores who we are and how we fit into the world of family and into the wider world, past and present. For Amara, New York and her family there are a whole new world and she can't get enough of it. And everything excites her, unlike her cousins who take it all for granted, not understanding Amara's need to linger and take pictures of what she's seeing for the first time:

"...I am starting to understand by Big T is always saying there's no place like New York. No place else that constantly reminds us that we are important, they we come from a people who sacrificed and fought and protested for us to be able to walk these streets free. What is it like to be reminded of this everyday?" (pgs. 102-103) Watson's message is very clear here - do not forget who you are and where you come from.

I think that Amara is a well-intentioned, but flawed character who nevertheless really understands what her week in New York means for her life, as she says "I want to feel like...there's a history keeping me moving, living. Like the journey I am on has many footprints, may stories coming with me." (pg. 103) Her awakening is such a wonderful part of this story.

I also felt that in Watson's hands, Harlem becomes another exciting character in Amara's identity quest. She has captured all it's beauty from the quiet reverence of the Schomburg Center to the hustle and bustle of 125th Street, and the streets named for famous African Americans - Frederick Douglas Boulevard, Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, Malcolm X Boulevard, among others. And by the time you finish this novel, you will really appreciate the title of this novel.

Be sure to read Amara's poem at the end of the novel to find out what she puts in her Suitcase Project.

What would you put in a Suitcase Project?

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

Thanks to author Renée Watson for posting Amara's Walking Tour of Harlem on @reneeauthor for those who would like to experience Harlem as Amara did (and yes, it is totally rewarding):