Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks

Jason Reynolds's Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks is a book of linked stories for 11 year olds, all set on the way home from one American middle school.

What happens

Each story starts when the bell rings at Latimer Middle School. Then it follows a different group of kids along the same few streets. The same teachers, shops and corners keep popping up, and characters wander through each other's stories (spotting them is half the fun).

In the first one, best friends Jasmine and TJ walk home together for the first time in a month. Jasmine has been off school with a sickle cell crisis. TJ has a theory that people are basically bogeys, and it involves dust, water and last Sunday's sermon. She'd rather be a water bear, the tiny creature that can survive being sent into space.

In the next, four kids who call themselves the Low Cuts pool ninety cents of pinched loose change. They turn it into penny sweets, sell the sweets in a pool hall and rush after the ice-cream van. It's funny and slick right up until you find out who the ice cream is for.

It really does feel like walking home alongside these kids. You hear exactly how they talk, slang and teasing and all. It might take your reader a page or two to tune into the voice (it's written in very American speech), but once they do, it flows.

There's a lot of real life in here, so it's worth a look before you hand it over. Some of the kids have parents with cancer, and one mum is just starting chemo again. There's bullying, including rude drawings on a boy's shirt, plus money worries and a bit of mild language. Nothing is graphic and it's all written with a lot of heart. A sensitive reader might still want to talk some of it through.

If your reader likes short chapters they can dip in and out of, and stories about ordinary kids with big things going on, this is a gem. Who doesn't remember the journey home being the best bit of the school day?

What to read next

For more of Reynolds's voice, Ghost is a brilliant next step. It's told by a boy who knows every world record in the book and has never once had to practise running, until he wanders past a track team training in the park.