Black Star

LoveReading4Kids Says

March 2025 Book of the Month

Black Star, the second novel in Kwame Alexander’s exceptional The Door of No Return trilogy, moves from 1860s Upper Kwanta in the Asante Kingdom (present-day Ghana) to the 1920s Jim Crow segregation era in the American South. In this dazzling novel- in-verse, Kofi, the central character of The Door of No Return, features as 12-year-old Charley’s grandfather, Nani Kofi. A man who keeps his suitcase by the door ready for when he can return to “his old home, back in Africa” aboard Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line ship.

Charley is an incredibly-drawn character who declares, “the only thing/I love doing/more than listening/to Nana Kofi’s stories/is playing ball”. She also dreams of being the first female pitcher to play professional baseball — an ambition that’s given wings by Nana Kofi’s inspiring stories of their ancestors’ courage in her present-day context of a racist environment in which she can’t cross the bridge in town: “it’s dangerous over there… for us”.

Charley’s dreams are further heightened when she’s gifted a baseball glove that belonged to a woman who played in a league that started as a result of “colored women in Philadelphia not being allowed to play in other professional leagues”. But when Charley bravely stands up to a bully and challenges him to game, an uncontrollable chain of events is unleashed.

Luminous and compelling, there’s a powerful sense of community, family and coming together throughout the novel: “I love Sunday dinner because…the air around me swells with laughter/because my family can be LOUD/because that means they’re happy/because I feel whole”. Black Star is also laden with powerful — and often moving — wisdom from Nana Kofi (“When your house becomes a cage, it is better to fly away and find another home”), and pitch-perfect in evoking that liminal space between childhood and the teenage transition to adulthood.

Joanne Owen

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