Toning the Sweep

by Angela Johnson

Overview

Winner of the Coretta Scott King AwardA School Library Journal Best BookA Booklist Editor's Choice

One Last LookEmmie and her mother are headed for the desert to help Grandmama Ola pack up her life. Box by box, the pieces of Ola's past are neatly tucked away, and a collection of memories is opened. As the end of their final visit draws closer, Emmie, Mama, and Ola come to terms with the history they share. Each holds on to a separate truth -- a truth about life, about death, and about themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338325775
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	06/26/2018
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Angela Johnson was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, but raised in Windham, Ohio; the only girl in a family of five. She now lives in Northeastern Ohio in a 100-year-old house full of plants. When not writing, she travels. On one of her trips to the California desert, the inspiration for her first novel, Toning the Sweep, came about.

Editorial Reviews

PW , in a starred review, praised this ``thoughtfully nuanced and penetrating'' novel about three generations of women from an African American family who must cope with a beloved grandmother's illness. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 6-9-Before Emily's grandmother leaves her beloved desert home, possibly for the last time, the sensitive teen sets out to record the memories of the woman, her friends, and relatives on video. While documenting the reminiscences, she learns about her African American family's past and gains the strength to say good-bye. A powerful story about connections and coping. (Apr., 1993)

School Library Journal

Grandmama Ola left Alabama and moved to the desert in 1964. That was right after Grandaddy's funeral. Emily's mama, who was 14-years-old at the time, hated the desert and left angrily after three years. Emily, who narrates the story, is 14, and loves the desert and Grandmama, though her relationship with both is changing. This will be Emily's last trip out west, at least to visit Ola, who is going to live with Mama and Emily in Cleveland. Ola is dying of cancer. The juxtapositions of past memories and the present in this powerfully moving book are as fluid as a dancer's movements. A celebratory dance of life, reflecting the ending of childhood and the beginning of womanhood and selfhood, the story is about African American history, the pain of it (Grandaddy had been lynched and Mama had found him) as well as the joy (with a camcorder, Emily tapes Ola and her many friends sharing and laughing). With ingenuity and grace, Johnson captures the innocence, the vulnerability, and the love of human interaction as well as the melancholy, the self-discovery, and the introspection of adolescence.

Quraysh Ali