After Tupac & D Foster
by Jacqueline Woodson (Author)
Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend's lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the girls envious. Although all of them are crazy about Tupac Shakur's rap music, D is the one who truly understands the place where he's coming from, and through knowing D, Tupac's lyrics become more personal for all of them.
The girls are thirteen when D's mom swoops in to reclaim D--and as magically as she appeared, she now disappears from their lives. Tupac is gone, too, after another shooting; this time fatal. As the narrator looks back, she sees lives suspended in time, and realizes that even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.
Locate at a Library Near You WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online.
Find books about:
Publishers Weekly
School Library Journal
Gr 6-10 D Foster, Neeka, and an unnamed narrator grow from being 11 to 13 with Tupac Shakur's music, shootings, and legal troubles as the backdrop. Neeka and the narrator have lived on the same block forever and are like sisters, but foster child D shows up during the summer of 1994, while she is out "roaming." D immediately finds a place in the heart of the other girls, and the "Three the Hard Way" bond over their love of Tupac's music. It seems especially relevant to D, who sees truth in his lyrics, having experienced the hard life herself in group homes and with multiple foster families. Woodson's spare, poetic, language and realistic Queens, NY, street vernacular reveal a time and a relationship, each chapter a vignette depicting an event in the lives of the girls and evoking mood more than telling a story. In this urban setting, there are, refreshingly, caring adults and children playing on the street instead of drug dealers on every corner. Readers are right on the block with bossy mothers, rope-jumping girls, and chess-playing elders. With Tupac's name and picture on the cover, this slim volume will immediately appeal to teens, and the emotions and high-quality writing make it a book well worth recommending. By the end, readers realize that, along with the girls, they don't really know D at all. As she says, "I came on this street and y'all became my friends. That's the D puzzle." And readers will find it a puzzle well worth their time."Kelly Vikstrom, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD"
Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Review quotes
JUV013050 - Juvenile Fiction | Family | Orphans & Foster Homes
JUV031040 - Juvenile Fiction | Performing Arts | Music
African Americans
Friendship in adolescence
Shakur, Tupac
African American teenage girls
Queens (New York, N.Y.)
Coming of age
