Bronx Masquerade

4Q 4P

For the teenagers in the project housing of section of the Bronx, there is no hope, no future, and no individuality, and everyone is forced to masquerade as something else. High school teacher Mr. Ward offers them a chance to express who they really are in a weekly poetry reading called Open

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Mike Friday. One by one, each student is forced to realize their own masquerade, and recognize the depth of their classmates' lives.

Beautifully written poetry and an honest look at the seemingly hopeless experience that is contemporary life in poverty-stricken New York. The fact that ethnic groups other than African Americans are represented makes this an effective book. I also liked that multiracial characters were able to read their poetry, since YA literature tends to place characters into one ethnic group without any room for diversity.

The only thing that kept this book from being 5Q 5P is that there are so many characters with non-mainstream names that they're hard to keep in track. Also, the student named Tyrone seemed to get more speaking time than anyone else, but not enough development to be the protagonist of the story.

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Very relevant to the high school/middle school classroom. No over-arching narrative but the poems are lively and engaging. Also, it scores points for depicting young people from a variety of different backgrounds.

Bronx Masquerade is a Coretta Scott King award winner. I like the format Nikki uses to tell this story: the short narrative that precedes each poem gives us insight into the character's life and then the issues or challenges the character is confronting is spotlighted in a poem he/she wrote, very

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effective.

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Wow. I wasn't expected to be so moved by this short, poem-filled novel. Containing poems interspersed with short narrative chapters, we get surprising insight into all of the characters who write and perform their poems. It's a little idealistic, maybe, but I was inspired by the idea that poetry

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could bring a whole classroom full of different, biased, and damaged students together. A very powerful read.

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This novel reads like a collection of short stories and poems written by a variety of high schoolers in an English class in the Bronx. Nikki Grimes' characters are incredibly realistic and their concerns are true to life. This book will be a hit with students ages 12 and up-- especially urban

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youths. This would be a great book to read before introducing a poetry unit or slam poetry event.

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A diverse group of students in a Bronx high school take turns narrating their stories in first person and sharing their poetry for their English class' Open Mike Fridays.

The structure of this novel is unique. Each “open mike” Friday shows the passing of a week, and there are 26 weeks featured. Tyrone, a student who wants to write rap, begins and ends the narrative of the book. He goes from being ready to check out of school to anticipating the next school year.

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His viewpoint on his fellow students is interspersed through the book like a thread that keeps this patchwork of poems together. Each student featured on “open mike” is introduced in a previous short chapter written in their viewpoint. So the limited third person viewpoint, changes from student to student depending on whose poem are read on “open mike” Fridays. Readers learn about the student poet by their reaction to other student poems and a chapter in their viewpoint where short scenes capture their fears, goals, and struggles. Through poems that show their vulnerabilities, these students form a close bond with each other. The book demonstrates the power of poetry to transform.

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Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes is a spectacular book that tells of a group of high school students enjoying a lesson of poetry. Each student has a certain talent and a story to tell. These students find poetry as an outlet to express themselves and reveal who they really are. Bronx Masquerade is

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a wonderful book about a group of high schoolers being themselves and expressing who they really are.
I would recommend this book to any teacher who is unsure of how to approach poetry with his or her students. This book really encourages students to look to poetry as a way to express oneself and also to reveal much detail of a certain event. It also is great for helping young students to feel less awkward about being themselves. This story shows a great deal of how much poetry can affect a person's life. Bronx Masquerade is perfect for any classroom.
I really enjoyed this book. Bronx Masquerade gave a great interpretation of how life is in high school. The poetry also in the book was very beautiful and made the book very diverse. This story was so eloquently put and goes above and beyond when discussing poetry and other talents found in students. Bronx Masquerade was a wonderful book that I would highly recommend to anyone.

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Plot Summary:
"Bronx Masquerade" by Nikki Grimes captures the voice of eighteen inner city kids and shares their stories through the medium of poetry. Wesley Boone motivates his high school English class by volunteering to read his poem aloud in class. Once Wesley reads his poem, the rest of his

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class is eager to be given a voice as well. The class then holds an "open mic" every friday which allows different students in the class to showcase their talent by expressing their own personal struggles through poetry. One by one, eighteen students take on the risky challenge of self-revelation.

Teaching Connections:
As a future teacher, this book would be a great way to get students interested in reading poetry. Poetry is a hard subject to teach because students often have a hard time understanding it. "Bronx Masquerade" would be a perfect leeway to introduce a poetry lesson. After the students have read the book, we could hold a classroom "open mic afternoon" like they do in the story to allow students to express themselves as well.

Reader Response:
I enjoyed the book. It was an easy read and was entertaining. I liked the insight it gave into the minds of youth living in an inner city. I would suggest it to any teachers looking for a good way to introduce poetry in a "fun way" in the classroom.

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A beautiful rhythm of person and poetry, following the emergence of understanding in a mixed class of high-schoolers in the Bronx. Each of these students--black, white, Puerto Rican, Italian, and all shades in between--believe themselves to be alone, some more than others. Each feels not quite

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right, or outcasted, or ugly, or worthless. Yet when their English teacher starts to set class time aside for weekly poetry slams, the kids aren't afraid to let themselves out on paper. Through lines and beats, each student finds a means of expression which begins to connect student to student. Suddenly, people aren't feeling as alone. Now, people realize just how wrong their judgements of their classmates have been. Suddenly, they find a family...una familia...a place where they are understood, for better or worse.

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Plot summary:
Bronx Masquerade by Coretta Scott King is about a group of teenage students in Mr. Ward’s class who decided to make school fun by writing poetry. The main character convinces Mr. Ward to have poetry readings every Friday for the class. Through these poetry readings we get to see

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through the eyes of the students of what their lives are like. We get to hear of what these students go through on a daily basis. The students form a deep connection with one another as they open up through their writings of poetry.

Teaching Connections:
One connection I thought of while reading Bronx Masquerade is how it is similar to Freedom Writers. Like in freedom writers the students stand up and read their own writings, the students in Bronx Masquerade get to stand up and read poetry they have each written about their lives. One theme that can be taken away from this book is the theme of unity in diversity. All of the students had something different to share about their lives because they are all different. In turn, by the end of the novel all of the students become friends, or “unified” with one another because of their differences that they decided to embrace and write poetry about.

Reader Response:
I really like Bronx masquerade. It was a quick and easy short read and it had a good theme to it. Like previously stated, this book reminded of Freedom Writers because of the way the students were influenced by one another to keep writing to share about their lives and tell the class about it through some form of writing. For this book it was poetry. I liked how the book had only one main character (which was the narrator) throughout the whole book, but we also got to hear stories of the other students’ lives as well. I liked how the teacher, Mr. Ward, encouraged students to express themselves through writing poetry so the students were excited about coming to class daily and being able to participate in “open mike Fridays.” I would recommend this book to any young adult reader!

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Inspiring, heart-breaking, intriguing and funny. The characters introduced through their poetry and vignettes are developed in an interesting way. One of the better novels that uses prose as the medium. There are an awful lot of characters to keep track of, but they inter-relate in interesting ways.

One of the chapters in this book was selected for the NY state ELA exam last year, so I figured it may be full of good writing just right for my students. I never got to see the story itself (just the questions) because Grimes wouldn't allow the state to publish the excerpt for the archives.

It was

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actually a quick read, but it did float around my school bag for the duration of 2 renewals (2 months?). The poetry was the best part, but the voices seemed a bit forced. I don't foresee my rural students choosing nor sticking with it, but I imagine that, provided the voices are indeed authentic, inner-city kids would find much to relate to. The problem was that I can't really tell if the voices were authentic because I may be guilty of stereotyping inner-city kids (a problem that most of the kids expressed in their poems). I'd like to believe that this could represent true voices and I feel the need to watch the movie "Freedom Writers" to broaden my horizons on this topic.

Bronx Masquerade would be an excellent teaching tool in a middle school to high school classroom as it is an easy example for practicing identifying common themes (a concept difficult for the average 7th & 8th grader). The underlying theme of almost each kid's story was the need to find one's true self (like every teenager), the need to be understood and appreciated as a unique individual, and a desire to exceed expectations and succeed in life. The best poem, if you were to read only one, is the one called "5 O'Clock News Feed" (I think) in which 3 kids supposedly come together to rap about how the news gives blacks and teens a bad reputation. That piece alone is worthy of my 3 stars.

In sum, I recommend the book to ELA teachers, and that's about it. They'd know into whose hands to place a copy. In my school, I'd say none yet.

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Booktalk draft: paragraph 1, p 8. That's Tyrone. He goes to high school in the Bronx. Also in his class are Raul, who wants to be a painter and poet. Lupe, who longs to have a baby and Gloria who does, but doesn't want to see Lupe to make the same mistake she made. There's Sheila, one of only four

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white kids in the class who wishes she weren’t so different from the others. And there's Sterling, also known as the Preacher, who believes God will help him off the streets and into college. ....... When their teacher Mr. Ward starts up Open Mike Fridays
for the kids to share their poetry....uncovering the faces they've been hiding in this BRONX MASQUERADE]

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Fascinating. Sometimes books are improved as an audiobook. Sometimes they are diminished. This particular book I do not think could stand as anything other than an audiobook. The words, as spoken by the readers, are magic. They are spellbinding and captivating. The story told is melancholy on the

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whole, but holds bursts of hope that shine between the stories like rays of light.

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This is such a good story. I wanted it to be true. The story is about a group of kids from the Bronx who are studying the Harlem Renaissance. The English teacher, Mr Ward, starts an open Mic on one day of the month and the students can read their poetry or present their artistic expressions.

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Through this vehicle, the kids in this class begin to know the other students and learn they have more in common than they have differences. The students learn to have hope for the future. It's a great story. An award winning work (Coretta Scott King Award book in 2002.

Rating: 4.62

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Winner of a Coretta Scott King Award and first published in 2002, this book was reissued in 2017 with a new introduction from Nikki Grimes in preparation for the companion novel Between the Lines. The kids in Mr. Ward's high school English class have nothing in common: different races, religions,

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backgrounds, interests. Most of them aren't that interested in school, let alone getting to know each other. But then Mr. Ward starts Open Mike Fridays and they begin to reveal, bit by bit through poetry, who they really are. Can it really make a difference in helping them understand other points of view? Yes. Eighteen unique voices (with the strongest voice of Tyrone connecting them) tell their stories through personal accounts for the reader and poems for their peers. I'll recommend it to both middle and high school students. It might get some of them to leave their own private "masquerades" and give them courage to show their true selves to the world.

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Aspiring rapper Wesley “Bad Boy” Boone starts the book off by admitting “I ain’t particular about doing homework, you understand.” But when the teacher assigns an essay on the Harlem Renaissance to Wesley’s Bronx high school class, Wesley decides to write some poems instead. Why write

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prose about a poet like Langston Hughes? But then the teacher asks him to read it aloud in front of the class, and it turns out to be surprisingly popular. His classmates, black, white, Hispanic, all want their chance too. So, each Friday becomes “Open Mike” poetry readings in class.

As the students read their poems to the class they reveal parts of themselves that their classmates had never known, and it sparks some friendships that previously would have been unlikely. Grimes alternates internal prose monologues by the students with their poems in this Coretta Scott King Author Award winning book. Wesley's homey Tyrone, a very reluctant student and frequent skipper of classes and school, suddenly takes an interest in what’s going down there, and serves as the Greek chorus by commenting on the poems and on his classmates as the story moves through the school year.

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Coretta Scott King Award YALSA's Best Books for Young Adults 2002. RGG: A combination of "fictional" memoir and poetry; "inner-city" high school students reveal themselves through poetry.

Eighteen teenagers from all walks of life use poetry to tell it like it is. In the form of a poetry slam each student in Mr. Ward's class gets an opportunity to share a piece of him or herself. Not all are eager for the spotlight, but the more students stand up and share, the more the others get to

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thinking this poetry thing isn't such a bad idea.
All of these students pull courage from their classmates and try it on for themselves. One by one they are pulled to the front of the classroom to stand up strong. By doing so they reveal glimpses of lives their classmates knew nothing about.
Mr. Ward's Open Mike class gains momentum when a reporter gets wind of the class and makes a visit.
Best surprise: Grimes features real life poet Pedro Pietri.

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Summary:
High school student Wesley Boone writes a poem for his English class and reads it aloud in a poetry-slam style. His classmates take an exceptional liking to this kind of poetry and request that there be weekly sessions. The eighteen students in the lass take turns individually challenging

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themselves in portraying self revelation. The eighteen teenage students expose about themselves what lies underneath their own exteriors.

Review:
Bronx Masquerade models to readers how to express yourself through writing, such as poetry. The chapter book also tackles an important lesson of identity of self and of others without regards of exterior, which is a commonly misinterpreted in the reading age group.

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Interesting look at bringing people together, seeing others perspectives and how similar people are
I enjoyed this as an adult and think it would be even more great for younger readers.