In the revelatory prose poem Southwest Sunrise, Nikki Grimes (Between the Lines; Ordinary Hazards) relocates narrator Jayden, an African American boy, from his home in New York City to somewhere that couldn't be less New-Yorky. He has two questions, for starters: "Why are we here?/ What's so great about/ New Mexico?"
At first, the answer seems to be "nothing." But Jayden finds himself admitting to some curiosity when "I wake up to/ a knife of sunlight/ slicing through the room/ Dad says is mine." Jayden looks out the window and sees a mountain. He has another question: "Who put that there?" Jayden's transition to his new life won't be seamless--"I still miss the feeling of wow/ craning my neck to study/ the tops of skyscrapers"--but he finds comfort in making connections between the two worlds he has known: "the river of sand/ washes up bleached bones/ like seashells/ at Jones Beach:/ rib, bird's skull, turtle shell." When he sees the "red rock pillars/ holding up the sky," he doesn't have a question but a full-voiced statement: "Daddy should've told me/ this new place has/ its own skyscrapers!"
The hallmark of Southwest Sunrise is the faith it puts in readers to answer Jayden's questions. Regarding his initial one, "Why are we here?," Grimes hints that the boy's old neighborhood was dicey: he refers to his "barless window" and he shivers from "the silence/ unbroken by/ the familiar sound of sirens." As for "What's so great about/ New Mexico?," Wendell Minor (Galápagos George; Daylight Wildlife Starlight), whose awards combined with Grimes's could fill a trophy case, answers with gouache watercolors that call to mind the rippling expansiveness of Georgia O'Keeffe's famous homages to the book's landscape. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author