SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Fusenews
  • Reviews
  • Librarian Previews
  • Best Books
    • Top 100
    • Best Books of 2022
    • Best Books of 2021
    • Best Books of 2020
    • Best Books of 2019
    • Best Books of 2018
    • Best Books of 2017
    • Best Books of 2016
    • Best Books of 2015
    • Best Books of 2014
    • Best Books of 2013
  • Fuse 8 n’ Kate
  • Videos
  • Press Release Fun

February 19, 2008 by Betsy Bird

Review of the Day: After Tupac & D Foster

February 19, 2008 by Betsy Bird   11 comments

After Tupac and D Foster
By Jacqueline Woodson
G.P. Putnam’s Sons (division of Penguin)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-399-24654-8
Ages 10-17 (though honestly I’m just spitballing here)
On shelves now


Some authors make writing reviews easy. You pick up their book, glance at the cover, and the words pour out of you like a hard spring rain. Jacqueline Woodson is not one of those authors, and this is not a bad thing. Her books are deep little critters. Their surface concerns hint at fuller depths. Her Newbery Honor winning book Feathers was a novel that I made the mistake of reading, putting down for a month or two, and then picking up to review. I couldn’t do it. It isn’t that it wasn’t a fine book. More that I couldn’t figure out what to say about it when the time came. Fortunately, I don’t have that problem with After Tupac & D Foster. A title that feels more autobiographical than anything else, After Tupac is a lovely take on friendship, trouble, and an awe-inspiring performer whose legend only seems to grow.

He was killed on September 13, 1996, but before Tupac died there was D Foster. In a neighborhood in Queens, our narrator and her best friend Neeka meet D, a girl who is eleven-years-old like them and has seen a lot of homes in her day. The three bond almost immediately and through the course of their acquaintance try to juggle the everyday realities of family, their shared love of Tupac, and the future as it comes to them. D Foster just wants to stay in one home from here on in, but when her real mom gets her act together and wants her back, the closeness of the girls is sorely tested.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

A lot has been said in professional reviews of this title about Woodson’s choice to keep her heroine’s name out of the book. I wish the Acknowledgments or the bookflap could have said whether or not Woodson based any of this on her own feelings about Tupac when he was killed. As far as I can tell, she was probably not the age of the girls in this book when it happened. But once in a while a celebrity death hits hard and close to home. You certainly get that impression in this book, and in such a way that the reader isn’t left wondering why all these people should care about a guy they’ve never even met. And if that personal a touch has come into her book, then it would make sense to keep the main character’s name out of it. How often on a given day do you say your own name to yourself? How often do you even hear your own name, always assuming that you’re not a kid raising your hand in class? By keeping everything in the first person, we get this story through the eyes of someone who pays more attention to the people around her than she does to herself. As she herself says, “Mostly I was the quiet one in the group, The Brain. Mostly I watched and listened.” Pity the person who had to write the blurb for this book, eh?

People always have their bugaboos about books, and one of mine is that there isn’t a quintessential child or teen book out there about The Black Panthers. It just chaps my hide. So whenever I see a mention of the Panthers in a book I get all excited. Woodson rightly points out that Tupac’s mom was a former Panther, and Woodson is one of the few authors to even acknowledge the Panther programs like those offering free breakfast and prenatal care. I’ve also not seen that many fictional books for kids and teens that address Tupac and his life. As one reviewer of the book pointed out, Woodson acknowledges the man’s own homophobia, but for the most part he comes off looking pretty good here. Certainly you wish there was an accompanying CD or something that would let you hear the songs the girls are listening to.

The age range for this book is very very interesting to consider. I mean our heroines are eleven and maybe twelve during the course of the story. But the writing is definitely from an adult, or at the very least teen, perspective looking back at that time. The girls also have to deal with issues that your average everyday tween book isn’t considering. Things like having your best friend’s brother gay and in jail for a crime he never committed. Then again, nothing in this book is inappropriate for ten and eleven-year-olds either. Woodson keeps the profanities low to non-existent without sacrificing her language or dialogue.

And man, does she have an ear for dialogue and prose. It’s hard to read this book without hearing the very voices of the characters that are saying them. Who else can get away with a sentence like, “brother ain’t know me from a can of paint”? I don’t usually read a book and find myself yearning for the audio book version as well, but After Tupac & D Foster may have to be the exception. If the audio book could get the rights to actual Tupac songs too, you could end up with a bloody piece of fine art on your hands, you could! Woodson’s prose is top notch too, of course. I loved the moment when you saw the three girls becoming friends with the help of some double dutch. When Woodson ends her chapter with the sentence, “And the three of us had a rhythm going,” there’s simply nothing more to be said. Woodson doesn’t go in for long self-indulgent paragraphs or heavily repeated thoughts or themes. The editing on this puppy was top notch and there’s not a wasted word in the text.

A great little Woodson book, and one that I think would be perfectly acceptable in the children’s section of any library. Profanity, if there is any, is negligible (and certainly not memorable) and the violence is always in the past. This is just a really good story about friends, keeping them, losing them, and how you never really know what’s going on in another person’s brain. An ode to the cusp of adolescence without fudging the inner details. Woodson through and through.

On shelves now.

Notes on the Cover:
Seems to me that if your whole book keeps talking on and on about Tupac’s sexy brown eyes, it would make a certain amount of sense to play them up on the cover.  I mean, there are going to be some kids out there who will read this book and not have a clue who Tupac is.  I liked the snow angel since that scene was maybe the climax of the book.  And I suppose that putting a blue faded Tupac above it makes him look ghostly, which is part of the point.  Still, would have been nice to make out his eyes a little more clearly.

Other Blog Reviews:
Chasing Ray

Professional Reviews:
The Washington Post

Filed under: Reviews, Reviews 2008

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
2008 middle grade fiction2008 reviewsG.P. Putnam's SonsJacqueline Woodsonmiddle grade fictionmiddle grade realistic fictionmiddle school novelsmulticultural middle gradeNewbery Honor winnersPenguinrealistic fiction

About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

February 2013

Review of the Day: Hank Finds an Egg by Rebecca Dudley

by Betsy Bird

December 2008

Review of the Day - Dark Fiddler: The Life and Legend of Nicolo Paganini by Aaron Frisch

by Betsy Bird

October 2008

Review of the Day: Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

by Betsy Bird

August 2008

Review of the Day: The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski

by Betsy Bird

March 2023

Review of the Day - Bear and Bird: The Picnic and Other Stories by Jarvis

by Betsy Bird

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

U.S. Gov: ‘All Books Must Have Round Corners’

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Review of the Day – Bear and Bird: The Picnic and Other Stories by Jarvis

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Review: Swim Team

by Esther Keller

Heavy Medal

March suggestions: early Mock Newbery possibilities

by Emily Mroczek-Bayci

Teen Librarian Toolbox

Write What You Know. Read What You Don’t, a guest post by Lauren Thoman

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey Try Something New

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

These Books Picture the Music | Read Woke

Hippity Hoppity Easter's On Its Way! 7 Board & Picture Books Starring the Easter Bunny

Zines: Cut-and-Paste Publishing by and for the People

SLJ Average Book Prices 2022

2 Middle Grade Novels That Explore Climate Change in Different Ways

About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. geenicca says

    October 27, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    lol

  2. wtf! says

    November 3, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    wtf

  3. hiss says

    November 9, 2008 at 9:27 am

    hiss

  4. ? says

    November 9, 2008 at 9:28 am

    good

  5. Salixa says

    January 4, 2009 at 10:27 am

    Fail. Horrible.

  6. wth???? says

    March 4, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    Horrible book. It was so racist and it sucked.

  7. B says

    September 4, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Not so good. I thought it was very hard to understand because of the bad grammer used throught out the book and it is most definately NOT a good book for eleven or twelve year olds due to adult subject matter. Two thumbs down on this one.

  8. Fuse #8 says

    September 4, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    I respectfully disagree. In that I can’t quite determine what subject matter in the book could be called “adult”.

  9. micah mosby says

    September 11, 2009 at 9:34 am

    this is a good book, for all you haters out there.

  10. . says

    October 5, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    this was a great book based on a true story type tupac in on google before you judge.

  11. Miky says

    January 1, 2010 at 1:36 am

    Great great great book

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

  • External Links

    • A Fuse #8 Production Reviews
  • Follow This Blog

    Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

    This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

    This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

    Primary Sidebar

    • News & Features
    • Reviews+
    • Technology
    • School Libraries
    • Public Libraries
    • Age Level
    • Ideas
    • Blogs
    • Classroom
    • Diversity
    • People
    • Job Zone

    Reviews+

    • Book Lists
    • Best Books
    • Media
    • Reference
    • Series Made Simple
    • Tech
    • Review for SLJ
    • Review Submissions

    SLJ Blog Network

    • 100 Scope Notes
    • A Fuse #8 Production
    • Good Comics for Kids
    • Heavy Medal
    • Neverending Search
    • Teen Librarian Toolbox
    • The Classroom Bookshelf
    • The Yarn

    Resources

    • 2022 Youth Media Awards
    • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
    • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
    • Summer Reading 2021
    • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
    • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
    • Summer Programming Survey
    • Research
    • White Papers / Case Studies
    • School Librarian of the Year
    • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
    • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

    Events & PD

    • In-Person Events
    • Online Courses
    • Virtual Events
    • Webcasts
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Media Inquiries
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Content Submissions
    • Data Privacy
    • Terms of Use
    • Terms of Sale
    • FAQs
    • Diversity Policy
    • Careers at MSI


    COPYRIGHT © 2023


    COPYRIGHT © 2023