You should let others hear it.” Not only does Garvey find his voice as part of the chorus, he finds new friends, pride in who he is, and the power to stand up to others who would tease him. Garvey’s life changes when his best friend suggests that he join the school chorus: “Your voice is choice. In a little book of little poems, Grimes tells a big-hearted story of Garvey (named after Marcus Garvey), an overweight boy tormented by name-calling at school: “lard butt, fatso, Mister Tubs.” Of his size, he says, “My mom, dad, and sis / could fit inside my shadow / and - poof - disappear.” Garvey yearns for a better connection with his father, who wants him to play football and stop being so soft, but: “Mom’s got a talent / for origami, but she / can’t fold me into / the jock Dad wants me to be.” Employing the Japanese poetic form of tanka - five-line poems (or, here, stanzas) with haiku-like syllable counts - Grimes reveals Garvey’s thoughts, feelings, and observations, the spare poetry a good vehicle for a young man’s attempts to articulate the puzzle that is his life.
In an author's note, Grimes explains how some of the original poems, carefully written using the traditional tanka syllable count and format, needed to be adapted for a visual medium with speech bubbles the occasional loss of flow from the original is easily compensated for with the emotionally rich illustrations.Intermediate, Middle School WordSong/Boyds Mills 108 pp. The digital illustrations are arranged to retain the feeling of vignettes building to a whole, using empty space, page transitions, and thoughtful panel sizes to support the structure of the poems.
His relationship with eating changes, and he adjusts to moderate exercise and a more measured approach to food, although (refreshingly) Garvey does not condemn his earlier behaviors nor obsess over the exact extent of his weight loss. When he finally finds the school chorus, it is a revelation: here is a way to engage with the world, to share his gifts, to negotiate his hurt, and to maybe even relate to his father who also has a strong connection with music.
Garvey knows that binge eating is not a healthy solution for navigating the pain of feeling like a constant disappointment to his father who has clear expectations about what a Black man should be, or for handling bullying and isolation at school, but he doesn't have a better therapeutic tool. Grimes' award-winning tanka poem narrative about a boy struggling to find a place for himself in his family and the world is adapted in this captivating, visually impressive graphic, which looks at Garvey from a slightly different perspective.
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