Review of the Day: City Summer, Country Summer by Kiese Laymon, ill. Alexis Franklin

City Summer, Country Summer
By Kiese Laymon
Illustrated by Alexis Frankin
Kokila (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$18.99
ISBN: 9780593405567
Ages 4-7
On shelves now

I don’t trust adult authors to write books for kids. Not normally. My fears, I will have you know, are well-founded. There is a perception amongst the literary community of adults that writing a book for kids is an easy affair. I recall hearing that one such adult author told a children’s books creator that he was good, but why was he wasting his talents writing for kids? “You’re like a gourmet chef making baby food!” As a result, I’d even go so far as to say that the bulk of books written by the literary elite for children are either pablum, or so wrapped up in their own cleverness (I’m looking at you, Donald Barthelme) that they leave no room for the child readers themselves. But there are, I will admit, the occasional exceptions. And, in the case of Kiese Laymon and the book City Summer, Country Summer, the occasionally exceptional.

A rite of passage? In a sense. One kid (dubbed “New York” by the other kids) is sent down South to stay with Mama Lara. Meanwhile, just next door, a boy (dubbed “Country”) and his brother are doing the same thing, but they’re coming from Mississippi and staying with their own grandmother. So when, one day, the brothers are getting their cardboard slide ready to use on the underpass on Highway 35, New York comes along. At first he tags along, but in the woods New York gets homesick for his newborn sister, his bodegas, and his city. When he runs back to his grandmother’s, the other two follow, and they all end up in the garden between the grandmothers’ houses. And when it turns into a game of Marco Polo and laughter and grandmas with hoses and food, that’s when they realize they’ve learned a new way to say “I love you” and “I’m afraid” to one another, until the day New York goes home.

I once served on a book committee that was very seriously dedicated to the idea of creating a book list of the greatest children’s books in the English language of all time. To accomplish this task, the participants decided that the best way to go about it was to break everything up into types. So you’d have your books on moving house, on your dog dying, on the first day of school, etc. I remember a lot of these categories. What I don’t remember is one of them being dedicated to summer vacations. The last day of school? You betcha. And vague summery activities? No doubt. But I’m talking about summer vacations specifically, when children are schlepped from one place to another without so much as a by-your-leave. Kiese Laymon is perfectly aware of what that feels like. And, in a sense, his book is steeped in nostalgia. That’s not a bad thing. I get the same vibes from this book that I do when I read Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. The trick is to determine whether or not the writing is just as interesting to kids as it is to adults. And that’s a hard thing to figure out, honestly. Because for a picture book to work it needs to satisfy a number of key points.

First and foremost, there’s the writing. Is it good? Is it interesting to kids? Well, Laymon’s writing, at first, feels like an essay he wrote that he adapted into a picture book down the line. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that technique, and in this case that feeling comes through in part because of the sheer beauty of some of the sentences. Lines like, “Whether it was absolute fear or exquisite satisfaction, wandering through the cool spots in those Mississippi woods was too much for New York’s body.” Or how about, “We tried to make ourselves laugh because laughing was how we worried, how we consented to love, and how we said I’d like you to love me.” I’ve never had a problem with presenting kids with books where they need to sit and parse and ponder and break down some of the sentences that they encounter. In fact, this is a perfect book to read with a kid and, along the way, pause and ponder one sentence or another. “What do you think the author means by that?” Mostly that technique should work, though it’s not going to make it easy for you when you encounter something like “Not safety. Safeness. And safeness sounded like love.” So yes, I do think the plot and the fun of the book is interesting to kids. It’s just not going to take it easy on them or anything.

Imagine you’re a picture book editor. You have in your hands this manuscript and you are charged with finding just the right illustrator for it. You can go any number of different directions. Something a little cartoony or silly, but with a serious edge, perhaps? But no. Interestingly, realistic fiction in picture books about Black boys, which is to say books with a serious edge, tend to eschew artists like, say, Reggie Brown in favor of folks a little more like James Ransome. Traditionally, this has always been the case and City Summer, Country Summer is no exception. There seems to be an unspoken understanding that for books that contain a certain amount of seriousness, realism is usually the best way to go. Now interestingly, this is artist Alexis Franklin’s first picture book. Franklin tends to specialize in portraiture, a skill she brings to each of these pages. Her boys wear distinctive yellow, blue, and red, but if you’re drawn to anything in this book it’s their faces. Early on there’s a shot of New York cutting the two brothers a look that could be interpreted in over 13 different ways. Generally speaking I greatly enjoyed the stark realism of the kids alongside a more impressionistic look at the garden vegetables. Franklin is a digital artist, a fact that you could probably completely forget, except for two images where the Country boys are duplicated exactly on two different pages. That choice threw me a bit, but I had to assume it was intentional. In one shot, New York is hidden, observing them from a distance, and in the next you’re much closer to them, seeing things from their point of view. Perhaps we’re meant to get almost the same scene from two different viewpoints.

To be perfectly frank, I’ve read middle grade novels where Black boys are sent South for the summer to stay with their grandparents, but they tend to be historical and more as a vehicle for talking about Jim Crow then familiar, family experiences. This book is different. It feels and looks timeless. It could be set thirty years ago or it could take place today. I suppose that’s part of why it works as well as it does. It offers something enviable for the kids reading it. The freedom the boys on the page get to experience. The friendships made. Sure, there’s the awkwardness and homesickness that comes with being far away from everything you know, but there’s also racing down a hill on a cardboard sled or running through the woods and realizing how cool the shadows feel on your skin. Add in delicious language that satisfies the need for something beautiful while also inspiring questions and conversation, and art containing characters that linger in the memory long after you’ve closed the cover, and I’ll say it. This book is one of the best. A beauty, kid-friendly, fun, touching, and there’s just the barest hint of bittersweetness at its core. In short, the perfect summer picture book.

On shelves now.

Source: Read copy checked out from library.

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