For Lamb

Title:

For Lamb

Author:

Summary:

For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb’s mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb’s brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north--if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature. Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching. -- Amazon.

Audience:

Ages: 14-18.

Grades: 9-12.

Edition:

First Edition.

Physical Description:

297 pages ; 22 cm

Genre:

Social problem fiction.

Historical fiction.

Subject Term:

Interracial friendship -- Fiction.

Teenage girls -- Fiction.

African American families -- Fiction.

Lesbian mothers -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Jackson (Miss.) -- History -- 20th century -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Holiday House,

Publication Date:

2023

ISBN:

9780823450152

Publication Information:

New York : Holiday House, [2023]

Call Number:

YA CLINERANSOME

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003687202	New Young Adult	CLINERANSOME	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

An interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this powerful historical novel set in the Jim Crow South.

For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb's mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb's brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north-- if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature.

Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching.

Told with nuance and subtlety, avoiding sensationalism and unnecessary brutality, this young adult novel from celebrated author Lesa Cline-Ransome pays homage to the female victims of white supremacy.

A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Horn Book Fanfare Book
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Book of the Year
A BookPage Best Young Adult Book of the Year
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Author Notes

Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of more than twenty books for young readers including the award-winning Finding Langston trilogy. Her work has received a plethora of honors, including dozens of starred reviews, NAACP Image Award nominations, a Coretta Scott King honor, the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and a Christopher Award. Her work has been named to ALA Notable Books and Bank Street Best Children's Book lists and she lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The friendship between two teens, one Black and one white, sets off a series of tragic events in this potent, 1930s Mississippi--set novel by Cline-Ransome (Being Clem), told via multiple narrators. When Lamb Clark, described as "quiet as a lamb," befriends Marny, the daughter of her small town's optometrist, she's privately excited for the distraction from her family's personal drama and the opportunity to forge connection amid the racism she experiences daily. Her older brother, Simeon, who's earned a full-ride scholarship to a college up north, is eager to escape their town and is constantly at odds with their seamstress mother, Marion, who's struggling to hide her romantic relationship with her best friend, Myrtle. As Lamb's friendship with Marny unfolds, the protagonist must decide what she wants outside of her family's expectations and navigate the dangers of befriending a white girl in the Jim Crow South. The perspectives of the siblings' absent father and their charming uncle, Chime, feature throughout, providing myriad looks into their experiences with racism, and at how their personal histories reverberate into Lamb's present. In lyrical prose that displays adroit attention to historical detail, Cline-Ransome empathetically renders a perpetually optimistic protagonist whose hopeful outlook lends heartbreaking resonance to the narrative's dark themes. Ages 14--up. Agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary Studio. (Jan.)