The Stars Beneath Our Feet

Starred review from July 10, 2017
Wallace “Lolly” Rachpaul, 12, is still reeling from the murder of his older brother, Jermaine. The only thing that makes him feel better is building with Legos, and after his mother’s girlfriend, Yvonne, gives him two trash bags full of loose Legos for Christmas, he lets his imagination soar. When Lolly’s creation outgrows his West Indian family’s Harlem apartment, he moves it to the rec center. Encouraged by the facility’s director, Mr. Ali, Lolly and Big Rose, a girl with autism, begin to build “the alien metropolis of Harmonee.” Outside the safety of the rec center, life for Lolly and his best friend Vega is getting more complicated. Two older boys, Harp and Gully, are hassling them, and their menacing presence escalates into an act of violence. Debut author Moore delivers a realistic and at times brutal portrait of life for young people of color who are living on the edge of poverty. At the same time, Moore infuses the story with hope and aspiration, giving Lolly the chance to find salvation through creativity. Ages 10–up. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House.

Starred review from June 15, 2017
Multicultural Harlem lives again in this daringly diverse tale of growing up against the odds and the imaginative, healing possibilities that we can create through the choices we make. Moore turns his back on the newly whitewashed Harlem, taking readers to the St. Nick projects to meet brown-skinned West Indian (Trini, to be exact) Wallace "Lolly" Rachpaul, full of contradiction and agency. Moore surrounds Lolly with a grand ensemble of characters that echo the ample cross sections and cultural milieus of the big city. There's Lolly's mother, who has embraced her queer sexuality with toy-store security guard Yvonne, who becomes a secondary caregiver after the tragic loss of Lolly's older brother, Jermaine to the drug-hustling crew underworld of Harlem. Lolly hopes that he and his dark-skinned Dominican best friend, Vega, can resist its allure. Mr. Ali is the veteran social worker with marginal resources and a big heart, refashioning his little basement space to unravel the traumas and difficult choices that could lead astray the black and brown youth he serves. And don't forget Big Rose (who doesn't like to be called Big). Then there are Lolly's Legos, which, block by block, help him imagine a healthy future. These characters are vibrantly alive, reconstituting the realness that is needed to bring diverse, complicated stories to the forefront of our shelves. A debut that serves as a powerful instructive for writing from and reading the intersections--125th Street-size intersections for all readers to enjoy. (Fiction. 10-14)

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January 1, 2018
Twelve-year-old Lolly's father has left, his older brother was shot and killed, and he's being threatened by the East Side crew. His world turned upside down, Lolly builds another world from LEGOs at the community center, where new friends support him. Debut author Moore's affection for these characters and the Harlem setting is palpable, and Lolly's first-person point of view conveys his inner turmoil.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2017
Twelve-year-old Lolly Rachpaul loves his Harlem neighborhood, that big glowing crossword puzzle bisected by 125th Street. ( If Harlem was a human body, then 125th would be its pumping heart, throbbing all the time. ) But Lolly's life isn't going well. His father has left, he's being threatened by Harp and Gully of the East Side crew, and his older brother Jermaine is dead--he became a street pharmacist and was shot and killed. What do you do when your world turns upside down? Lolly builds another world, a LEGO world, constantly growing and evolving. And when it overtakes the apartment in the St. Nicholas Houses he shares with his mother and her girlfriend Yvonne, he builds it during afterschool at the community center instead. There he slowly befriends Big Rose, an outcast, and is supported by program director Mr. Ali, who talks to him about Jermaine. Debut author Moore's affection for his characters and his Harlem setting is palpable, and Lolly's first-person point of view conveys his inner turmoil, especially effective when he and his friend Vega decide to take matters (and a gun) into their own hands to stop Harp and Gully's harassment. The moral decision they must make is akin to Will's in Jason Reynolds's Long Way Down (rev. 7/17). Though the conclusion is didactic, repeating a lesson more neatly embedded in the narrative twenty pages earlier, the novel will be powerful and memorable for a wide audience. dean Schneider

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)