Midnight Without a Moon by Linda Williams Jackson- OPTIONAL

Midnight Without a Moon, by Linda Williams Jackson, 312 pages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. $16.99. 

Language: PG-13 (4 swears, crude language, racial slurs); Mature Content: PG-13

HS- OPTIONAL

Rose is 13yo and living in Mississippi in 1955. It’s a hard, cruel, difficult time to be African American. She is contemplating her life and her place in it as she hears about more and more violence and murders that are being committed against her people. She is frightened and confused. Emmett Till is one of the young people in the book who is murdered and real life mirrors fiction as the people in Rose’s community grapple with the idea of change and the rights they should or shouldn’t have. Rose’s struggle is within her family and how she is treated. She is raised by her extremely tough and frightening grandmother, but yearns to leave Mississippi and live with her aunt in St. Louis. In the end, she has to decide where her presence can have the most impact on her family and her racial community.

 This is one heavy book for young adults. I kept waiting to get to the point where there was some hope or light for Rose and just when there was a small glimmer (moving to St. Louis), she makes the much more adult choice of staying in Mississippi than I can imagine any thirteen year old actually being mature enough to make. There are a lot of racial slurs in the book and a lot of violence (particularly from the grandmother). I could barely make it through. I kept at it only so that I could finally get to end. I will say, that there is likely very much that is historically accurate in terms of some of the events that are portrayed and many of the behaviors are likely very true to life as well, which is good for young adults to experience. The age of the main character just doesn’t mesh well with the age of the readers that can handle this book. It would be very difficult for me to recommend to any of my students. 

Reviewed by Shay, School Librarian