Yolonda's Genius (Newbery Honor Book)

Yolonda's Genius (Newbery Honor Book)

By Carol Fenner

2 ratings 3 reviews 4 followers
Interest LevelReading LevelReading A-ZATOSWord Count
Grades 4 - 8Grades 3 - 8V4.840524
Yolanda is a great big girl and strong for her age, bigger and stronger and smarter than anyone else in the fifth grade. She is cool and streetwise, too, and afraid of no one. It's easy for her to watch out for her little, first-grade brother, Andrew. But their mother, a legal professional and a widow, is concerned about crime and drugs in her children's Chicago school. She moves them all to a smaller and, she hopes, smaller town.

Yolanda, at first, is scornful of her new town. And Andrew, who never talks much, is having trouble learning to read. What he loves to do is play on the old harmonica given to him as a baby by his father to teethe on and which he's kept blowing ever since. He can imitate any sound he hears, like bacon sizzling, or express any mood he feels, like the freshness of an early morning. Yolanda understands that that's the way he "talks." She is convinced Andrew is a true genius with a great musical gift. But no one else believes it--not her mother, nor Andrew's teachers, not even wonderful Aunt Tiny in Chicago. Yolanda sets out to open up adult eyes, a task whose strategies will call on far more than her physical toughness. Her plans crystallize on a visit back to Chicago to enjoy the great annual blues festival with Aunt Tiny.

Carol Fenner, whose previous book "Randall's Wall" has reached a wide audience throughout the country, has created a daring heroine in Yolanda and a warm portrayal of an African-American family in a story that moves with mounting intensity to a dramatic, believable, and a wholly satisfying conclusion.

Publisher: Aladdin
ISBN-13: 9780689821721
ISBN-10: 0689821727
Published on 6/1/1998
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 224

Book Reviews (3)

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I think about this book is that it is about that you believe in and how much you care about. the book is about how yolonda's thouht her brother is a genius with the harmoica that there dad give to her brother andrew.

vmora vmora

i love this book it is cool