Joyce Carol Thomas
Amistad (2008)
ISBN 9780060253752
Reviewed by Genevieve Chatel (age 8) for Reader Views (11/08)
The theme of this book is that everybody is beautiful no matter what and that it is okay to have different color skin. Each poem is different in its own way and I noticed in this book that the author talked about different colors of black skin, like golden skin or coffee-black skin or cranberry black skin.
In the poem “Skin Deep,” the author mentions the line “Put yourself in someone else’s skin” and pretend like you feel like that person feels. The poems made me really think about putting myself in someone else’s skin and it made me think for the first time about how it would feel to be black.
One of my two favorite poems in this book is ‘Snowberries.’ And the line that I really liked in this poem is “And I want to be as black/ as midnight/ and moonless water/ So no words can wound me.”
The other poem I like is ‘Nightshade.’ It says “I feel as purple/ As nightshade/ Of an eggplant/ That the great berry among berries/ Smooth skinned.”
I like the pictures in “The Blacker the Berry: Poems” by Joyce Carol Thomas because they looked like grainy old photos or jean material. Also, they look really life-like, and these pictures remind me of old paintings. The children in these pictures seem very happy.
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