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jshettel's review
3.0
Urban Cowboys in Philly? Who knew? I enjoyed the voice in this story, even if the main character was a total brat. The plot was a little too "compact" for me - wrapped up a little too neatly.
bethnellvaccaro's review
3.0
This ends being a good adventure story that I know my students will really like. I wish I had learned a little more about the actual North Philly Cowboys, but this is a fiction book for kids, not non fiction. I see the horses being ride around routinely on my way to work so I was thrilled to read a book about them. I love the illustrations in this book also. They capture the community well.
michelenwash's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sarjanie's review against another edition
5.0
I was unpacking a box of new stock at my library when I came across Concrete Cowboy (or Ghetto Cowboy as it’s also known). One glance at the cover and I immediately sat it aside in my stash of ‘first dibs’ from the box. Beautiful illustrations, based on a true story, short, and a Netflix tie-in to boot! It was exactly what I was looking for for my next easy read.
I loved that Neri wrote this like the local Philly dialect is spoken. I could hear it in my head and it gave the characters’ voices more authenticity. Just as much as it does writing like First Nations people would speak hear in Australia - Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko is on my list to read for this very reason. Neri tells it like it is, he doesn’t sugar coat the struggles these kids face. It’s great to see the representation of these voices in YA literature.
The Netflix movie is now added to my watch list! I would highly recommend this for readers over the age of 12 - it says 10 on the back but I’d wouldn’t hand it to my niece of that age just yet.
I loved that Neri wrote this like the local Philly dialect is spoken. I could hear it in my head and it gave the characters’ voices more authenticity. Just as much as it does writing like First Nations people would speak hear in Australia - Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko is on my list to read for this very reason. Neri tells it like it is, he doesn’t sugar coat the struggles these kids face. It’s great to see the representation of these voices in YA literature.
The Netflix movie is now added to my watch list! I would highly recommend this for readers over the age of 12 - it says 10 on the back but I’d wouldn’t hand it to my niece of that age just yet.
emdoux's review
5.0
I can't believe I didn't read this book until now.
4th grade book talk
Picture a cowboy for a second. You’re probably thinking of someone in the Wild West, in the desert, with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, a lasso, a horse and saddle, and some cows. Right? What color skin do these cowboys in your head have? White, but tanned from being out in the sun, right?
Cole, the main character of this book, thinks the same way you do. All the cowboys you or he has seen on TV or in movies are white – but he learns that the word cowboy started as a black word. The original cowboys were black – not white. ‘Back in the slave days,” he learns, ‘the slave who worked in the house was called a houseboy. The slaves who worked with the cows was called cowboys.’ Make sense? Black cowboys were so good at their jobs, working cattle before and after slavery, that whites stole the name for themselves. Even today, you might not think cowboys still exist – white or black – but they do.
In Philadelphia, – and Brooklyn, too – blacks in the ghetto are trying to take back the word cowboy. In poor, bad neighborhoods in Philly and in Brooklyn, blacks like Cole’s father, Harp, keep horses. They sometimes keep them inside their houses, or in yards, or they tear down walls inside abandoned houses to create barns – but right in the inner city, in whatever kids of shelters they can build - you can find horses. Men like Cole’s dad teach kids and teens how to ride, how to care for horses and how to be a real cowboy.
The black cowboys of the inner city are a real thing on the East Coast – something I had absolutely no idea bout until I read this book. I can’t imagine horses living in my neighborhood in Chicago, or my neighbors riding horses down the street for anything other than a parade… but in some neighborhoods, it really happens as a way to reclaim African American culture and provide opportunities for young people that don’t involve joining gangs or doing drugs.
Ghetto Cowboy is about more than horses living and working in the inner city – it’s a story about a troubled boy who can’t seem to stay in school or care about the direction of his own life; about a boy whose family is in pieces and whose mother has abandoned him – and it’s a story about how a giant horse named Boo helps all those pieces come together.
4th grade book talk
Picture a cowboy for a second. You’re probably thinking of someone in the Wild West, in the desert, with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, a lasso, a horse and saddle, and some cows. Right? What color skin do these cowboys in your head have? White, but tanned from being out in the sun, right?
Cole, the main character of this book, thinks the same way you do. All the cowboys you or he has seen on TV or in movies are white – but he learns that the word cowboy started as a black word. The original cowboys were black – not white. ‘Back in the slave days,” he learns, ‘the slave who worked in the house was called a houseboy. The slaves who worked with the cows was called cowboys.’ Make sense? Black cowboys were so good at their jobs, working cattle before and after slavery, that whites stole the name for themselves. Even today, you might not think cowboys still exist – white or black – but they do.
In Philadelphia, – and Brooklyn, too – blacks in the ghetto are trying to take back the word cowboy. In poor, bad neighborhoods in Philly and in Brooklyn, blacks like Cole’s father, Harp, keep horses. They sometimes keep them inside their houses, or in yards, or they tear down walls inside abandoned houses to create barns – but right in the inner city, in whatever kids of shelters they can build - you can find horses. Men like Cole’s dad teach kids and teens how to ride, how to care for horses and how to be a real cowboy.
The black cowboys of the inner city are a real thing on the East Coast – something I had absolutely no idea bout until I read this book. I can’t imagine horses living in my neighborhood in Chicago, or my neighbors riding horses down the street for anything other than a parade… but in some neighborhoods, it really happens as a way to reclaim African American culture and provide opportunities for young people that don’t involve joining gangs or doing drugs.
Ghetto Cowboy is about more than horses living and working in the inner city – it’s a story about a troubled boy who can’t seem to stay in school or care about the direction of his own life; about a boy whose family is in pieces and whose mother has abandoned him – and it’s a story about how a giant horse named Boo helps all those pieces come together.
tami_provencher's review
4.0
Ghetto Cowboy is one of the Lovelace nominees this year that has surprised me--in a great way! As Ghetto Cowboy opens 12-year-old Cole is being driven by his mother from their home in Detroit to Philadelphia--where his father lives. Although we are never given the specific details of Cole's behavior which impelled his mother to decide he might be better off with the father he has never known, we do learn that Cole's actions have earned him a school suspension and required attendance at summer school in order to pass to the next grade. He has clearly been acting in a way his mother feels incapable of managing. The rawness of both Cole's pain and his mother's in that car in the first chapter rises like steam off the page to the reader.
Cole's father is a cowboy. When Cole first enters his father's run-down apartment in the Philadelphia 'hood' he finds one of the walls broken through into the long-abandoned apartment next door and a horse in residence there. Cole--and the reader--begin to learn about the Cowboy Code and way of life that has existed in this inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood and the difference that it makes in the lives of its community members:
Ghetto Cowboy is remarkable in two ways: (1) I had no idea this entire cowboy culture still exists--and this IS contemporary fiction based on a true cultural phenomenon; and (2) it tells an amazingly tender and accessible story of a young boy deciding who he will be--who and what he will listen to and value. Cole's story, his insights into himself and his parents are touching and realistic:
Ghetto Cowboy could be used in a classroom in a number of ways from history to social justice conversation. It has ramifications in racial, economic and political arenas through ideas and examples that are accessible to the middle school audience for which this work is intended. For the same reasons Ghetto Cowboy is an excellent read-aloud or independent read at home. I am grateful to G. Neri's work for giving me knowledge and insight I did not have before reading Ghetto Cowboy and which will inform my beliefs, choices and actions going forward.
Cole's father is a cowboy. When Cole first enters his father's run-down apartment in the Philadelphia 'hood' he finds one of the walls broken through into the long-abandoned apartment next door and a horse in residence there. Cole--and the reader--begin to learn about the Cowboy Code and way of life that has existed in this inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood and the difference that it makes in the lives of its community members:
"Save one kid by getting them into horses and it's all worth it," Harp says to me...."You never know what someone will do with his life once he finds himself."
Ghetto Cowboy is remarkable in two ways: (1) I had no idea this entire cowboy culture still exists--and this IS contemporary fiction based on a true cultural phenomenon; and (2) it tells an amazingly tender and accessible story of a young boy deciding who he will be--who and what he will listen to and value. Cole's story, his insights into himself and his parents are touching and realistic:
Helpless. I think of all the times I felt that way. Most of the time maybe. I thought I was the only one feeling like that. And there she was, feeling the same thing all along.
Ghetto Cowboy could be used in a classroom in a number of ways from history to social justice conversation. It has ramifications in racial, economic and political arenas through ideas and examples that are accessible to the middle school audience for which this work is intended. For the same reasons Ghetto Cowboy is an excellent read-aloud or independent read at home. I am grateful to G. Neri's work for giving me knowledge and insight I did not have before reading Ghetto Cowboy and which will inform my beliefs, choices and actions going forward.
libscote's review
4.0
Loved this book and I'm not even a horse person! I loved that it was based on actual urban horse farms, which I had no idea actually existed. If you get a chance to listen to the audiobook, it's quite good.
geekydrea's review
I liked this one a lot more than I thought I would. I think the urban cowboys is an interesting topic and is a good choice for tweens looking for street lit.