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cocoonofbooks 's review for:
Concrete Rose
by Angie Thomas
Just phenomenal. I'm so glad Thomas decided to give us Maverick's story. As I said with The Hate U Give, Thomas writes books about Black teens for Black teens. This book portrays the stark realities of being a parent (specifically the challenges of being a teen parent), and it also provides sympathetic insight into why a poor teenager in the city might belong to a gang and sell drugs, but in neither case does it feel like the book was written around an Agenda. For example, it might make a teenager think twice about having unprotected sex, but it should also provide an empathetic mirror for teen parents who pick it up. And Maverick just feels like a teenage boy — trying his best to figure out who he is and making stupid decisions along the way but ultimately attempting to be guided by the values he's been taught by his community (a challenging mission when he's getting conflicting messages from different sources).
It was also just delightful to read this as a prequel to The Hate U Give because of all the sly foreshadowing Thomas sneaks in. (And I loved the brief crossover with Dear Martin!) She also takes advantage of this being set two decades ago to make some subtle jokes (like Mav saying he might open a music store since tapes and CDs aren't going away!). I'm six years younger than Mav so I was in middle school during the time period covered in this book but I still appreciated the late '90s references, for which Thomas thankfully used restraint — I get irritated when authors overdo it with the year-specific references. This is already an excellent book in its own right, but the many Easter eggs for readers of the original book and/or '90s kids made it that much more delightful.
One other aspect I appreciated about this book was that Thomas includes practical parenting advice, like how to burp a baby and the importance of tummy time, through the advice Mav gets from older adults and from the parenting books he reads. It was a subtle way to ensure that teens who read the book, should they find themselves with a child and without adult support and advice, have some foundational information on caring for a child.
This made me want to go back and reread The Hate U Give for details I'd forgotten; for example, we never get to find out exactly what fall Mav took for King that let him out of the gang (and I can't remember how much that's detailed in the original book). This was a fantastic prequel and I hope many readers of the original book will pick it up! I highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by the excellent Dion Graham.
It was also just delightful to read this as a prequel to The Hate U Give because of all the sly foreshadowing Thomas sneaks in. (And I loved the brief crossover with Dear Martin!) She also takes advantage of this being set two decades ago to make some subtle jokes (like Mav saying he might open a music store since tapes and CDs aren't going away!). I'm six years younger than Mav so I was in middle school during the time period covered in this book but I still appreciated the late '90s references, for which Thomas thankfully used restraint — I get irritated when authors overdo it with the year-specific references. This is already an excellent book in its own right, but the many Easter eggs for readers of the original book and/or '90s kids made it that much more delightful.
One other aspect I appreciated about this book was that Thomas includes practical parenting advice, like how to burp a baby and the importance of tummy time, through the advice Mav gets from older adults and from the parenting books he reads. It was a subtle way to ensure that teens who read the book, should they find themselves with a child and without adult support and advice, have some foundational information on caring for a child.
This made me want to go back and reread The Hate U Give for details I'd forgotten; for example, we never get to find out exactly what fall Mav took for King that let him out of the gang (and I can't remember how much that's detailed in the original book). This was a fantastic prequel and I hope many readers of the original book will pick it up! I highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by the excellent Dion Graham.