Book Descriptions
for Star Child by Ibi Zoboi
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
“Our collective stories / are out there in the universe / and they become part of her / constellation / her vision for the future / born out of the imagination / of a little brown girl / who dreamed up new worlds.” (from “Stargazing”) An inspired biography uses poems and prose to explore the life of groundbreaking African American speculative and science fiction writer Octavia Butler, whose writing helped define what is known as Afrofuturism. The engaging work reveals the life of a singular child who became a visionary writer, one who didn’t see herself reflected in the science fiction she grew up reading and watching and so created new worlds and works that have given countless others what she lacked: stories centering Black and brown characters, usually women. The narrative is framed around the motif of stars and the universe, with both the prose chapters and the poems connecting thematically and, in the case of concrete poems, structurally to the theme. Substantial quotes from Octavia Butler are incorporated throughout, set off typographically from author Ibi Zoboi’s poems and prose. A final chapter, “Kindred,” shifts from third to first person as Zoboi talks about her own experience as a reader of Butler, and as an aspiring writer who got to meet and work with her at a writer’s workshop, underscoring that Butler is most certainly a writer whose life connects to that of contemporary readers even as she created work that is forward thinking and timeless. (Age 12 and older)
CCBC Choices 2023. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2023. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
A Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
A Walter Dean Myers Honor Book
From the New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist, a biography in verse and prose of science fiction visionary Octavia Butler, author of Parable of the Sower and Kindred.
Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers fifteen years after her death.
A Walter Dean Myers Honor Book
From the New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist, a biography in verse and prose of science fiction visionary Octavia Butler, author of Parable of the Sower and Kindred.
Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers fifteen years after her death.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
