After Tupac and D Foster

Jacqueline Woodson usually writes insightful, introspective novels, and this one is no exception. It is a historical novel, set in the 1990s. The rapper Tupac Shakur is used as a cultural reference point, which was hard for me to get at first, until I thought about how John Lennon's life and death affected the people in my high school. Set against this background, three friends try to seek their identity. D is a foster child, and is trying very hard to get ahead. The other two girls have loving, supportive families, although there are problems as well. One brother, who is gay, is in jail for being in the wrong place in the wrong time. Another brother is trying to get into college. This is a short book, rather lyrical in quality (there is some dialect, but it didn't make me crazy, which is saying a lot!), and the introspection works. It does in very few books. I don't know how many students will still know who the titular singer is, but I do think it will be a popular book, especially for fans of this author's If You Come Softly, which the girls love.

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