{"id":37487,"date":"2024-04-25T21:32:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T01:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37487"},"modified":"2024-04-25T21:32:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T01:32:35","slug":"review-of-leaving-lymon-by-lesa-cline-ransome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37487","title":{"rendered":"Review of Leaving Lymon, by Lesa Cline-Ransome"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Leaving Lymon<\/em><\/p>\n

by Lesa Cline-Ransome<\/p>\n

Holiday House, 2020. 199 pages.
\nReview written April 1, 2020, from a library book
\nStarred Review<\/p>\n

Leaving Lymon<\/em> is a \u201ccompanion novel\u201d to Finding Langston,<\/em> but there\u2019s no need to read one or the other first. In fact, for me having read Finding Langston<\/em> long enough ago that I remembered it without the exact details ended up confusing me. Since the names \u201cLangston\u201d and \u201cLymon\u201d are so similar, I wrongly thought for quite awhile that this was telling the backstory of our hero in the earlier book. I was wrong \u2013 it\u2019s telling the backstory of the bully in the earlier book.<\/p>\n

But aside from my confusion about where I\u2019d seen this kid before, this is a wonderful and emotionally gripping novel about a black kid with a tough family situation growing up in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

It starts in 1938 when little Lymon visited his father at Parchman Farm in Mississippi. Lymon didn\u2019t know it at the time, but that farm was really a state penitentiary where the prisoners were rented out to do hard labor.<\/p>\n

Lymon\u2019s being raised by Grandpops and Ma (his grandma), and Grandpops encourages his love of music. But when Lymon starts to school, the letters all get mixed up in his head, and Grandpops starts getting sick.<\/p>\n

After Grandpops dies in 1942, Lymon and Ma have to move to Milwaukee with Aunt Vera.<\/p>\n

School never did get much better after the first day. Nice as Miss Arthur was, she wasn\u2019t Little Leonard or Fuller or even Miss Stokes. Out on the playground, sometimes I joined in with the other boys playing tag or kickball, but when it came time to walk home, seemed like everybody went to one part of town and I went to another. Even though I was never \u2018shamed about having a daddy at Parchman, I was \u2018shamed now \u2018bout Ma and her swolled legs and not having any people in Milwaukee \u2018sides her and Aunt Vera\u2019s family. In Vicksburg, it felt like just \u2018bout everybody was family. And if they weren\u2019t, they knew the type of people I was from.<\/p>\n

In class, I worked on my letters, nice and slow, like Miss Arthur told me, but they didn\u2019t look nothing like the other boys\u2019 letters. Most times, when we finished lessons, I turned over my paper, hoping no one would see I was still writing like a baby. Seemed like I was playing a game of Mother May I? where I took one baby step while everybody else in class took five.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lymon\u2019s Daddy does get out of Parchman and starts coming around. But he\u2019s a musician chasing gigs and never stays long. So when Ma gets hospitalized with her diabetes, Lymon\u2019s Momma comes from Chicago and takes him back with her. The situation with his stepfather is never good \u2013 and that\u2019s how Lymon ends up being a bully to Langston in Chicago.<\/p>\n

But this story goes beyond that and what happens to Lymon after he leaves that class. We cheer for Lymon as he discovers more music and gets to a day when he stops being left.<\/p>\n

By the time I finished, then I remembered Lymon in the other book \u2013 a character I never would have guessed anyone could get me to care about. But Lesa Cline-Ransome pulls it off and gives us a powerful story where we understand all Lymon is up against and become convinced that he\u2019s going to manage to triumph in the end.<\/p>\n

HolidayHouse.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I\u2019m posting the oldest reviews I\u2019ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They\u2019re still good books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaving Lymon by Lesa Cline-Ransome Holiday House, 2020. 199 pages. Review written April 1, 2020, from a library book Starred Review Leaving Lymon is a \u201ccompanion novel\u201d to Finding Langston, but there\u2019s no need to read one or the other first. In fact, for me having read Finding Langston long enough ago that I remembered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,32,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-historical","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37487"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43665,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37487\/revisions\/43665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}