At every corner, down every block, a city percolates with people at work and play: girls jumping double Dutch, the shoeshine man polishing a pair of wing tips, boys heading toward the basketball court. Each neighborhood is filled with unique characters (the beautician, the barber, the short-order cook) and places (the storefront churches, the outdoor market, the park pool) - all as familiar as family. Carole Boston Weatherford pays tribute to these sights and sounds of urban life in twenty fresh and rhythmic poems. In quiet moments and lively street scenes, her work captures the excitement and diversity found in these places that have "no trees / to climb" but where people young and old still "reach for the stars." Dimitrea Tokunbo's vivid illustrations are sure to delight.

When he runs off to the market instead of sticking around for a reading lesson, he encounters a much-admired older boy secretly reading at a book stall, and then Amadi becomes intrigued by a storybook with pictures of a strange white creature that has a carrot for a nose. Unable to shake his questions about the snowman, Amadi discovers the vast world reading can open up--especially for an Igbo boy of Nigeria.