Module #4: Last Stop on Market Street

Module #4:  Last Stop on Market Street

Book Summary:

Last Stop on Market Street is a 2016 Newbery Medal winner.  The book is eye-catching with its orange cover and big bold title. The illustrations depict every day city life. This is the story of a little boy named CJ and how his Nana shows him how to see beauty in things that appear gloomy or strange. In the midst of a wet and dirty urban city, CJ realizes that beauty can be found if you bother look.

APA Reference of Book:

De la Peña, M. D., & Robinson, C. (2015). Last stop on Market Street. New York, NY: Penguin Random House LLC.

Impressions:  I picked this book, because it was this year’s Newbery Medal winner. Reading Anita Silvey’s article “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?” (2008), I wondered if this book would be good.  I really enjoyed reading this book. It is simple, yet very effective when Nana explains to CJ various things in the city - from a tree drinking water from a straw, to discovering that you can see with your ears. The illustrations capture CJ’s energy and his Nana’s serenity and love of life. I feel many readers young and old will relate with CJ and his travels with his grandmother. Grandparents always appear to be full of magic and wisdom. It actually made me teary eyed and I love the ending, particularly because the pair become part of the magic and part of the beauty the city has to offer.

Silvey, A. (2008). Has the newbery lost its way? (cover story). School Library Journal, 54(10), 38-41.

Professional Review:

Last Stop on Market Street M a tt d e la P e n a , illus. by C h ris tia n R o b in so n . P u tn a m , $ 1 6 . 9 9 IS B N 9 7 8 - 0 - 3 9 9 - 2 5 7 7 4 - 2 Like still waters, de la Pena (A Nation’s Hope) and Robinson’s {Gaston) story runs deep. It finds beauty in unexpected places, explores the difference between what’s fleeting and what lasts, acknowledges inequality, and testifies to the love shared by an African American boy and his grandmother. On Sunday, CJ and Nana don’t go home after church like everybody else. Instead, they wait for the Market Street bus. “How come we don’t got a car?” CJ complains. Like many children his age, CJ is caught up in noticing what other people have and don’t have; de la Pena handles these conversations with grace. “Boy, what do we need a car for?” she responds. “We got a bus that breathes fire, and old Mr. Dennis, who always has a trick for you.” (The driver obliges by pulling a coin out of CJ’s ear.) When CJ wishes for a fancy mobile music device like the one that two boys at the back of the bus share, Nana points out a passenger with a guitar. “You got the real live thing sitting across from you.” The man begins to play, and CJ closes his eyes. “He was lost in the sound and the sound gave him the feeling of magic.” When the song’s over, the whole bus applauds, “even the boys in the back.” Nana, readers begin to sense, brings people together wherever she goes. Robinson’s paintings contribute to the story’s embrace of simplicity. His folk-style figures come in a rainbow of shapes and sizes, his urban landscape accented with flying pigeons and the tracery of security gates and fire escapes. At last, CJ and Nana reach their destination— the neighborhood soup kitchen. Nana’s ability to find “beautiful where he never even thought to look” begins to work on CJ as the two spot people they’ve come to know. “I’m glad we came,” he tells her. Earlier, Nana says that life in the deteriorated neighborhood makes people “a better witness for what’s beautiful.” This story has the same effect. Ages 3-5.

Last Stop on Market Street. (2015). Publishers Weekly, 262(49), 27.

Library Uses:  This book could be used for urban city themes.  It can be used to show the use of public transportation, books with ethnic principal characters, volunteering and activism, as well as child and grandparent relationships.