about the book
Sometimes they called her a witch or freaky or even worse. Twelve-year-old Lanesha is used to the taunts by now. She is different. She sees ghosts.
Lanesha’s seventeen-year-old mama died giving birth to her. Sometimes Lanesha sees her mom’s ghost upstairs in the bedroom, still lying there with her big round belly, as if Lanesha wasn’t even born yet. A light-skinned rich Fontaine girl, her mama fell for a dark-skinned poor Ninth Ward black boy. Lanesha doesn’t even know her daddy’s name.
And her rich relatives, well they don’t want anything to do with her. Her skin is way too dark and her light green/gold flecked eyes are just too strange…and she was born with a caul, a netting of skin over her face. Lanesha freaks them out, too.
Mama YaYa, the midwife who birthed her, gives Lanesha everything she needs, though money is nearly nonexistent in their poor Ninth Ward home. Full of quirks, tiny, wrinkled as an old brown walnut, Mama YaYa fosters Lanesha’s gift of Sight and helps her with age-old African wisdom. You see, Mama YaYa is gifted too. She can see the future.
And that vision is telling her a really nasty storm is on the way. They call the Storm Katrina, and say everyone is supposed to leave New Orleans. With no money and no car, there ain’t no way Lanesha and Mama YaYa can evacuate. But Lanesha, smart and resourceful, does her best to pull supplies together, and her very supportive neighbors help as much as they can.
Mama YaYa assures Lanesha she will make it through the storm just fine…but she’s not saying much about herself. Maybe mama’s ghost can tell Lanesha what she needs to know?
about the author
Jewell Parker Rhodes grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, feeling insecure and not very smart, cool, or creative. But she did like to read a lot, and she especially liked to write. She created her very first book at the age of eight. Day 26 was done on yellow construction paper. But she wasn’t inspired to write another children’s book until 43 years later!
After the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008, Jewell just couldn’t imagine what the New Orleans’s children were going through. Remembering her own feelings of fear and displacement after experiencing the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, she felt compelled to write about Lanesha. Mama YaYa’s character is based off Jewell’s own grandmother Ernestine, a conjurer woman who practiced holistic healing. Grandmother Ernestine was a great story teller.
Besides her two books for younger readers, Jewell also writes adult historical novels and guides for creative writing. She teaches creative writing at Arizona State University and travels globally to teach writing to middle grade, high school, and college students. Jewell has also written an award-winning play, Voodoo Dreams, and is working on her next theater production.
Sources:
Author website
Author biography : Beyond the Pale Books
Also by Jewell Parker Rhodes:
Sugar. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. 2013.
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Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes
In 1870, the Civil War is ended and Reconstruction brings huge changes to the Louisiana sugar plantation where Sugar has always lived. With her father sold and her mother dead, Sugar truly does not feel free, but her secret friendship with Billy, the son of her former master, and the arrival of Chinese workmen on the plantation makes her see things in an new light.