This is a really interesting poetry collection - one that's more on the narrative side of things than is typical for poetry. 11 year old Lonnie is in foster care, separated from his little sister after their parents die suddenly in a fire. He's (understandably) very closed in on himself, and then a school teacher starts encouraging him to write poems. They're not in any sort of linear order - past and present experiences are all mixed up - but over the course of the book, the poems do form this overarching sense of hopefulness, as Lonnie bonds with his foster mum and foster brother, works through his emotions about his parents' death, and finds a way to reconnect with his sister, even though she's fostered in another family. All credit to Woodson, this must have been difficult to write. Poetry's challenging at the best of times, and trying to write poetry from the perspective of a traumatised pre-teen just increases the difficulty level. You can see the adult judgement coming through in the structure of the book, but the poems themselves seem convincingly and touchingly young.