How High the Moon
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
To Kill a Mockingbird meets One Crazy Summer in this powerful, bittersweet novel about one girl's journey to reconnect with her mother and learn the truth about her father in the tumultuous times of the Jim Crow South.
"Timely, captivating, and lovely. So glad this book is in the world." —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming
In the small town of Alcolu, South Carolina, in 1944, 12-year-old Ella spends her days fishing and running around with her best friend Henry and cousin Myrna. But life is not always so sunny for Ella, who gets bullied for her light skin tone and whose mother is away pursuing her dream as a jazz singer.
So Ella is ecstatic when her mother invites her to visit for Christmas. Little does she expect the truths she will discover about her mother, the father she never knew, and her family's most unlikely history.
After a life-changing month, Ella returns South and is shocked by the news that her schoolmate George has been arrested for the murder of two local white girls.
Poignant and eye-opening, How High the Moon is a timeless novel about a girl finding herself in a world all but determined to hold her down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1943, 11-year-old Ella Hankerson's African-American mother has moved to the buzzing metropolis of Boston to become a jazz singer far away from Ella's small town of Alcolu, S.C., where she lives with her grandparents. Ella doesn't know who her father is just that he headed out west but she's sometimes teased for her white facial features, and she wonders if he could be Cab Calloway. When Ella's mom sends a telegram asking her to visit for Christmas, Ella plans to show her just how much she's grown up. Life is often dangerous and unjust for Ella and her black family and friends in the Jim Crow South, and Boston poses new challenges. Her mother works all day at the navy yard and sings in jazz clubs at night, leaving Ella in her tiny apartment, and the visit is over all too soon. Chapters alternate between Ella's narration and the stories of cousins Henry and Myrna, who live back home, where an innocent black teen is unjustly accused of two murders. Parsons' debut novel offers a complex exploration of Northern and Southern racial tensions and one girl's bumpy path toward knowing herself. Ages 8 12.
