Judy Crowder (Children's Literature)
Poetic language, southern cadences and the excitement of an era and areas ripe with possibility all come together in this book about ten-year-old Leah Hopper who receives a remarkable gift: a traveling case covered with red roses. Its contents are equally special: red nail polish, pink satin slippers and bed jacket, ear rings, lavender bath bubbles--all from a mysterious Aunt Olivia who encloses a letter in the red rose box for Leah's mother. The letter says, simply, "I am very sorry." Suddenly, Leah's world changes. She and her sister, Ruth, mother and grandmother travel to see Olivia and her well-off husband in Los Angeles, a world vastly different from Sulphur, Louisiana and its Jim Crow existence. In Los Angeles, even drinking fountains are magically integrated. It is during a second trip to New York's Harlem with Aunt Olivia and Uncle Bill that the girls learn that a hurricane has wiped out Sulphur, their parents, and friends. Their Aunt and Uncle's world must become theirs. Leah and Ruth are torn between this new life and their old one. Leah misses her "daddy, tall and brown," with his tall tales, her down-to-earth-mother and her dead friends. This finely written story is set in the era in which Brown vs. the Board of Education has just sounded the death knell for segregation. This is a book to be read for its language, its historical setting and its timeless theme of growing up in a changing world. 2002, G. P. Putnam's Sons, $16.99. Ages 10 to 15.

CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 2003)
Leah Hopper lives in Sulphur, Louisiana, a small town where everyone seems to know everyone else's business, and a helping hand is always near. On her 10th birthday, in June, 1953, Leah and her family receive an invitation to spend the summer with her mother's sister, Olivia, in Los Angeles. She's dazzled by her aunt and uncle's fine home and lifestyle-nothing in her experience has prepared her for the world of a middle class, politically active, black urban family. And she's dismayed to discover a place where Jim Crow doesn't exist. In fact, it is in getting away from the south that Leah realizes how much her perception of the world has been defined by racial division, and even fear. "I started to think about the word freedom." Returning home to Sulphur, Leah can't stop talking about how wonderful Los Angeles is, much to the annoyance of her friends, and she dreams of going back to stay. Her dream comes true, but it is delivered with unbearable harshness when a tragedy orphans Leah and her sister. They return to Los Angeles, but for Leah everything has changed. Trying to adjust to Los Angeles as "home" only underscores everything she has lost, and coming to terms with that loss is too hard to imagine, despite the help of her aunt and uncle, and new neighbors and friends, including her first young love interest. Brenda Woods offers young readers a quiet yet emotionally charged story of love, grief, and new awakenings in her fine debut novel. CCBC categories: Fiction For Children; Fiction For Young Adults; Understanding Oneself And Others; Historical People, Places, And Events. 2002, Putnam, 136 pages, $16.99. Ages 10-13.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2002 (Vol. 70, No. 8))
Leah Hopper lives in tiny Sulphur, Louisiana, at a time when Jim Crow laws reign supreme. But she dreams of becoming a teacher, and although she is nurtured by a tender, loving family, she knows that this dream might be unattainable if she remains in the South. She gets a first glimpse of the world beyond via a family visit to her well-to-do Aunt Olivia in glamorous Los Angeles, where her eyes are opened to the possibilities of freedom. While accompanying their aunt on a trip to New York, Leah and her younger sister Rose hear the terrible news that a deadly hurricane has struck Sulphur, killing both their parents, as well as many friends and neighbors. The sisters must begin new lives in California while dealing with their devastating loss. Woods allows Leah to tell her own story, using the language with which she is most comfortable. Her dialect and syntax change, and she carefully corrects herself as she gains more education and experience. She sees clearly and notices everything. She paints a picture of every character down to the exact skin shade and hairstyle. Her power of description is so strong that the reader feels the searing heat and poverty of rural Louisiana and her amazement at the startling richness and openness of California. She shares her grief and guilt over her belief that her parents' death has allowed her to escape from poverty and racism. This is a work that beautifully and accurately evokes a particularly painful and hopeful time through an insider's eyes, and yet it is also a timeless, universal tale of a young girl's road to maturity. An impressive debut. 2002, Putnam, $16.99. Category: Fiction. Ages 10 to 14. © 2002 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Freya J. Zipperer (The ALAN Review, Fall 2002 (Vol. 30, No. 1))
Leah and her sister Ruth, both teenagers and Black, are growing up in segregated Sulphur, Louisiana, in the 1950s, long before the term African-American became vogue. They know a world of separate schools, "white" and "colored" water fountains, and of course, distinct social classes. Their life changes, though, when they receive the unexpected surprise of train tickets to go visit their mysterious and generous Aunt Olivia in California. Suddenly, a world of freedom opens up for them. As Leah takes off on her journey West, she begins to realize the differences in the world outside her little town of Sulphur, LA. Traveling, she sees the contrasts of how races and individuals are treated elsewhere, and begins to wonder why "inequalities between white people and Negroes," do exist, and why people cannot live together peacefully. Leah and her sister's lives change tragically when their parents are killed in a hurricane back home in Louisiana, and they are forced to live permanently with Aunt Olivia in California. They must cope with new friends, new rules, new freedom, and a profound loss. Middle school readers will enjoy this book. It is a good read, and is filled with enough social historical information to be of great value to any classroom discussion. Teachers can engage their students in talks about race, prejudice, and a time in America when Blacks and Whites were far from equal. Category: Historical Fiction/Civil Rights. YA--Young Adult. 2002, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 136 pp., $16.99. Ages young adult.Savannah, Georgia

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July/August 2002 (Vol. 55, No. 11))
Leah Jean Hopper receives the titular box for her tenth birthday; a gift from her mother’s estranged sister, Olivia, the present reconnects the sisters, resulting in a trip for Leah, her sister, Ruthie, and her mother to visit Olivia in Los Angeles. There Leah discovers a whole new world--accustomed to her 1950s small-town life under Jim Crow in Sulphur, Louisiana, she’s stunned by the liberty of life in California (“All I could wonder was why any colored man or woman would ever go back to the South, below the Mason-Dixon line, after knowing what freedom felt like”). A second adventure, a trip to New York with Olivia and her husband opens Leah’s and Ruthie’s eyes further--and means they’re safe when a hurricane hits Sulphur, killing their parents and many of their friends, and cutting them off from their old life forever. The novel is shaped by little other than chronology, and Leah’s grief for her parents never really translates to the reader. As a slice of history and a young girl’s reaction to same, however, this is delicately and richly drawn. There’s realism in Leah’s largely contented but shadowed and restricted life in the South and in the details of the wider world she’d never imagined (“Uncle Bill told me he knowed a colored lady lawyer once”) as well as in the tensions between them; there’s also nuance and affection in characterization of major and even minor characters, such as Olivia’s smart and kind husband Bill (a Morehouse graduate and the owner of a successful real estate business) and young Gilbert Martinez next door (on whom Leah has a crush). This provides more insight into the forces behind (and the state of the country before) the civil rights movement than many novels dealing more directly with the subject, and it’s also a quietly touching story of a girl’s survival in the face of family tragedy. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2002, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2002, Putnam, 136p, $16.99. Grades 5-8.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Fall 2002)
It’s 1953, and a dazzling tenth-birthday gift inspires narrator Leah and her LouisianaUbased African-American family to visit wealthy Aunt Olivia in racially integrated Los Angeles. Leah embraces freedom and urbanity, but when tragedy forces her and her sister to become Olivia’s permanent charges, she reconsiders her humble origins. This naturalistic novel has the pace of a memoir and the pull of a good story. Category: Intermediate Fiction. 2002, Putnam, 136pp, $16.99. Ages 9 to 12. Rating: 3: Recommended, satisfactory in style, content, and/or illustration.

Beth Bruton (The Lorgnette - Heart of Texas Reviews (Vol. 15, No. 4))
This story begins in Sulfur, Louisiana, in June 1953. On her tenth birthday, Leah Hopper receives a surprise gift from her Aunt Olivia--a traveling case decorated with red roses. It is filled with shiny jewelry, expensive soaps, silk pajamas, and train tickets to visit Aunt Olivia in Los Angeles. She sent tickets for Leah, her sister Ruth, her mother, and her grandmother to come visit her and her husband. The red rose box introduces Leah to a life she never knew was possible. Soon Leah and her family find themselves in California, far away from the cotton fields and Jim Crow laws of rural Louisiana. To Leah, Los Angeles feels like freedom. On Ruth's tenth birthday, Aunt Olivia sends her a traveling case decorated with red roses. The box comes from Paris with the same gifts inside, except the tickets are to visit her aunt and uncle in New York. The mother and grandmother are unable to go on this trip. The girls are treated royally again. Disaster strikes in Sulfur while they are gone. A tornado strikes the town and most of the people and homes are destroyed, including the girls' family. Leah and Ruth are suddenly forced to live with Aunt Olivia and Uncle Bill in Los Angeles. They lovingly take the two orphaned girls into their home. This is a touching story of the girls growing up between two worlds. Like the red rose box, the novel is filled with beauty, promises, and treasure. Fiction. Grades 4-6. 2002, Putnam, 136p, $16.99. Ages 9 to 12.

Kathleen Beck (VOYA, June 2002 (Vol. 25, No. 2))
On Leah's eleventh birthday, an elaborate gift arrives from her glamorous Aunt Olivia, estranged from Leah's mother for many years. It is a train case with a design of red roses, filled with jewelry, lipstick, and other luxurious items signaling Leah's passage from childhood to young womanhood. Best of all, there are four train tickets for the family to come visit Olivia and her husband in Los Angeles. There Leah and her sister, Ruth, discover a world in which life is very different for African Americans than in their little Louisiana country town of the 1950s. When their parents die in a hurricane, the sisters must decide whether they can make that life their own. Although this curious book takes place during a tumultuous time in American history, there is only the barest mention of the events surrounding the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement. The discrimination and fear that Leah and her family experience in the rural South is portrayed but not emphasized. Even the grief and anger that the girls must feel at the loss of their parents is muted. Reading it is like sitting on the porch, listening to an elderly relative reminisce about events too long ago to have any sting. Nevertheless the book is well written, and Leah's voice is authentic. The age of the protagonist, the subtlety of the era's portrayal, and the almost elegiac tone will limit its appeal among young adult readers. VOYA CODES: 3Q 2P M J (Readable without serious defects; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2002, Putnam's, 144p, $16.99. Ages 11 to 15.