Onyx & Beyond

National Book Award finalist Amber McBride (Me (Moth); We Are All So Good at Smiling) delivers a poignant yet heartening story about a Black boy trying to keep his mama's early-onset dementia diagnosis a secret in the middle-grade novel-in-verse Onyx & Beyond.

April 5, 1968, the day after MLK died, is the day 12-year-old Onyx remembers his mama misplacing road signs. The doctors said it's early onset dementia, and Onyx and his gran "worked together & kept it a secret" so Mama wouldn't be institutionalized. Two years later, Gran has died and Mama has gotten worse, so Onyx must "be like smoke & hover/ & keep Mama safe." But keeping Mama's disease a secret weighs on Onyx, who dreams of flying to the moon so he can bring back "magic rocks" that will heal her, and it might finally be time to get help. 

Onyx & Beyond is a touching story about grappling with a loved one's health while being a Black boy in America during the late 1960s and early '70s, when "there's a revolution on every corner." An author's note shares that McBride's grandmother has progressive dementia and this experience shows in how Onyx handles living with his own afflicted loved one--for example, using music to "pull the memories back to Mama/ like magic." McBride is effective with her use of repetition and different poetic forms to express Mama's confusion and Onyx's anxiety. McBride delivers a welcome message about the might of hope and importance of community in this emotional yet encouraging story. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

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