A Place Inside of Me written by Zetta Elliott and illustrated by Noa Denmon

Genre: Juvenile Picture Book, Poetry

Age Group: 4-7 years old

Summary: In this powerful poem the emotions of a Black child are explored as their community is rocked by a police shooting.

This book caught my eye while surfing through social media and coming across it on a publisher's Instagram page. The title and cover conveyed to me that it would be an uplifting read. With its colorful, warm imagery and beautiful language, that is exactly what this book, a Caldecott Honor winner, does.

Review:

Elliott walks us through the perspective of a young Black boy who is experiencing a police shooting that has rocked his community. I love how Elliott focuses on the emotion of the boy. We rarely see the emotions of young boys, especially young Black boys, being on display for us to experience and explore as they encounter something that has become all too real and part of their daily lives. It is through this poem that we experience the wave of emotions that overcome this young Black boy, from joy to sorrow to anger.

We experience swift changes of mood as we read through the poem. The boy goes from joy to sorrow at the news of hearing about yet another police shooting while he is at the barbershop. From this sorrow, Elliott moves to fear and anger. In this young boy’s reactions, Elliott is walking us through some of the stages of grief. While we do not know if the boy and the victim were close there are shared connections of being of their community and being young and Black. And yet the boy works through that anger to find that there is still a yearning to be free and pride to be felt. The poem took one through a low, sorrowful pit of anger and is now trying to lift one up out of that muck creating this example that one does not need to be consumed by anger.

The artwork within this title is beautiful. On certain pages, the illustrator will have dull light blue backgrounds so that the main characters will pop amongst the pages. I also notice how the illustrations align with the emotion taking place, but the coloring does as well. When Elliott speaks of joy, Denmon includes a background bursting with yellow flowers and roses. When Elliott speaks of sorrow, Denmon added shades of blue throughout the pages to create a stark contrast to the brightness of joy that had been created on the previous page. Denmon displayed illustrative work that should be placed on murals for all to see when Elliott speaks of pride, triumph and beauty as she features the greats interlaced with those of the fictional community of the book.

Elliott, Z., & Denmon, N. (2021). A Place Inside of Me. Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers.