![]() ![]() Having plunged into an assignment for African-American History Month to research his hero, Matthew Henson, Alvin now decides to run away and retrace Henson's path to the North Pole. ![]() "If the mamma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" is one of Grandma's favorite sayings, and early on she chuckles at having bought a sweatshirt with those words for a Kwanzaa present: "Grandma didn't care one way or the other about Kwanzaa, but she was ready to take advantage of anything that would allow her a belly laugh." When he walks away from a drug dealer's offer to make him a runner, his mother chastises him for speaking to a dealer in the first place. As presented here, Alvin's life resembles something broadly depicted on a television after-school special: his strict mother forbids him to go into white neighborhoods without her, and his grandmother always backs her up. Alvin, the protagonist, is a 12-year-old African-American boy growing up in a matriarchal household in Washington, D.C. ) may not be able to hook her usual fans with this overlong adventure tale, which begins rather thinly. ![]()
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