author: Matt de la
Peña
illustrator: Christian
Robinson
Putnam, 2015
all grades
Last Stop on Market Street is
a stunning contribution to the legacy and future of book art
and storytelling for children; no wonder, then, that it has won
a Newbery Award, Caldecott Honor, and Coretta Scott King Illustrator
Honor. With distinctive, poetic text by Matt de la Peña and
evocative illustrations by Christian Robinson, Last Stop on Market
Street reveals the creative potential of a powerful cross-cultural
author-illustrator partnership. In words and pictures, it embraces substantive
diversity in children’s literature, diversity that not only helps us see
ourselves and one another, but that also asks that we make our world anew.
On a Sunday after church,
CJ and his Nana begin their weekly journey across town on a public bus,
eventually disembarking at the last stop on Market Street, where they walk down
a broken-down street with broken-down buildings until they reach their destination:
a soup kitchen. Along the way, they encounter an array of people, including the
bus driver, a blind man, a woman holding a jar of butterflies, teens plugged in
to their iPods, and a guitar player.
Sitting inside the bus,
watching as others travel by car, bicycle, and skateboard, CJ questions the
differences he notices between his own life and the lives of others. As she
answers him, Nana demonstrates thoughtfulness and regard for variation in the
natural world and in our flawed but beautiful human communities.
Last Stop on Market Street follows
a child’s discoveries as he ventures beyond home. A traditional European
storyline would feature a child’s adventures into inviting spaces full of
wonder and delight, riches at the ready. Here, though, CJ and Nana do not
journey through a readymade world; rather, they make the world as they
go along. For CJ, part of that making is reckoning with his own desire for
belonging in a world marked by disparities.
Whereas many reviewers see
Nana’s wisdom as what determines the book’s value, I want to focus on CJ’s
questions. Specifically, I want to consider how these questions make Last
Stop on Market Street deserving of the year’s most prestigious awards
as well as how they might be reoriented for adults reviewers to enable more
generative thinking about book evaluations when diversity matters.
Across the book, CJ asks
his grandmother six questions:
• “How come we gotta wait
for the bus in all this wet?”
• “Nana, how come we don’t
got a car?”
• “How come we always gotta
go here after church?”
• “How come that man can’t
see?”
• (Implicitly asking for
an iPod): “Sure wish I had one of those.”
• “How come it’s always so
dirty over here?”
On the face of it, CJ is
asking for what kids (and adults) often desire: to be unconstrained and
worry-free, to have easy access to pleasure and fun. Stories can create this
kind of world for children; and many adults think this is what stories for
young readers should do. Instead, Last
Stop on Market Street honors the realities that exist beyond
the readymade worlds of comfort and privilege. CJ doesn’t want to
imagine himself far away from what he sees, but he does want to know why the
world is as it is and where he belongs in it. Gaps in resources and
opportunities are as present in CJ’s reality as the lowering and lifting
of the bus making its stops. He is right to ask questions, and his Nana never
undermines the legitimacy of his questions. Rather, she answers them by
modeling attentiveness, wonder, and reverence for the lovely particularity of
their human encounters on a rainy Sunday.
Robinson’s illustrations
show a distinctive entry point, midpoint and eventual endpoint for each of
CJ and his Nana’s interactions. Eyes meet, hands touch, bodies tilt
forward, lean over, straighten up, respond. The rhythm of people making room
for one another and attending to one another animates every scene. Nana
creates opportunities for CJ to notice, to attend thoughtfully to
his world. While CJ’s questions highlight important material differences
between people, Nana directs his attention to the unique, often momentary,
connections that are possible when we engage with others. Without undermining
the reality of material disparities, these connections show that all people
have the potential to draw beauty from ordinary experience. And they show
that beauty is in the making, in the shared work of creating these connections,
as when Nana, CJ, and the blind man all close their eyes to listen to the
guitar player’s song.
Throughout the book, with
his Nana’s guidance, CJ becomes immersed in making the world around him through
actual and metaphorical interactions.
Usually, when considering how diversity is
represented in children’s literature, reviewers ask some variation of the
following two questions:
• How accurate are
representations of language, culture, setting, and relationships?
• Are characters fully
realized and shown to have agency?
While these questions
highlight character strengths and authorial insight, they miss the significant
ways an author places characters in an unequal world, which is where all
children live.
Last Stop on Market Street offers
us some clues about the new questions we could be asking. In an
effort to encourage reviewers to look beyond the standard concerns when reading
and evaluating diverse representations in children’s literature, I have
translated CJ’s questions into the following “adult” questions:
• How is difference
constructed, and what does it mean for a character’s belonging in an unequal
world?
• How is material wealth
acknowledged or taken for granted in a story, especially at a time of extreme
poverty for fully a third of the children living in the US?
• How are characters’
lives and perspectives interrelated and interdependent? How are these
interconnections shown in text and image?
• How and by whom are
perceptions of difference transformed, and with what implications for future
relations?
• How are disparities in
the funding and support of community infrastructures acknowledged? Are
inequities seen to have a material effect on children’s opportunities
to explore and become their fullest selves?
These questions beckon
from beneath CJ’s apparently simple queries. Like Nana, Last Stop on
Market Street underscores their relevance with equal parts gentleness
and insistence. We should pay attention to the questions, let them take root in
us. We should also pay attention to the world- making that unfolds in their
wake, both in the book, as CJ and Nana partner in treasuring the particularity
of each encounter, and in the future we are beginning to envision for
children’s literature.
Last Stop on Market
Street is an award-winning book, not only because the language is lyrical
and the illustrations are alive with rhythm and warmth, but also because it is
a groundbreaking story. It is a story where it matters that CJ is a Black child
spending Sunday with his grandmother. It is a story where it matters still more
that CJ and his Nana ask each other hard questions and make space for complex
answers. It is a story where it matters that we, too, might learn to make our
world as we go along.
Thank you, Matt,
Christian, and the Newbery Committee for taking up the imaginative work of
making the world of children’s literature what it can be. As for the rest of us
who care about children and the worlds they grow up in, let’s heed Nana’s
invitation at the end of Last Stop on Market Street: “Now,
come on.” There are more worlds to make, more encounters to be had as we
discover all the ways that diversity is fundamental to human experience.
So, friends? Come on. Our
bus is here.
—Patricia Enciso
(published 1/26/16)
This review, in a slightly different
form, first appeared in Latin@s in Kid
Lit (latinosinkidlit.com). We thank Latin@s in Kid Lit for
permission.
