A Few Thoughts about Eb & Flow by Kelly J. Baptist

Last night I was looking at Betsy Bird's coverage of the American Library Association youth media awards. As can be expected, a few books were not given any awards. She wrote:

For my part, I would like to honor the books that I loved and wished would get something, but didn’t. Imagine me playing taps as I read off their names. They were good books. They were great books. They will be remembered in other ways. don’t you even worry about that.

One of the books she listed was Eb & Flow. This book is the story of two tweens Ebony (Eb) and De'Kari (Flow) who are each serving a ten day suspension for fighting. The novel is told in verse and each short section (stanza) is a first person perspective, switching from Eb to Flow throughout the book. The story begins shortly after the fight between the two and, other than a very few pages at the very end, the two do not interact, which I did not expect.

The novel is fast paced; I breezed right through it. Since the book is constantly switching from the perspective of one character to another it also includes a wide variety of tones and emotions. I took a picture of one section of the book where Eb goes from bored to turning a math worksheet into silly humor.

I thoroughly enjoyed Baptist's book. If you have not read a children's book in some time but would like to, then I would suggest you look for a copy of Eb & Flow at your local library or bookstore.