Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

About a year or two ago my fellow book blogger Jane at her excellent website Reading, Writing, Working, Playing reviewed Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome (2018).  Jane gave this novel a positive review and I agree.  Finding Langston is an award winning young adult novel.  It's geared towards middle school kids but can be read and appreciated at any age.

The book is set in 1946 and the narrator, eleven year old Langston, has recently moved with his father from Alabama to Chicago.  Langston is having a tough time.  Chicago is a big intimidating city and the kids at his new school are mean.

But mostly, Langston misses his mother who recently passed away.  His father works hard and is exhausted at night.  He doesn't talk much and is dealing with his own grief at his wife's death.  Langston, therefore, is on his own spending his days going to school, dodging the bullies, and missing his Mom and the way things used to be with his family in Alabama.

And then one day Langston spots a library and decides to go inside.  He sees a book by a writer with his first name and becomes curious.  It's a book of poetry by Langston Hughes and he is transformed.  From there he goes on to look up other writers from the Harlem Renaissance and by the time the book ends young Langston has grown in so many ways.

Finding Langston is about the power of books to change our lives as they did for eleven year old Langston.  He found the poet he was named after and in doing so he found himself.