Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman has to temporarily stay with her father in Harlem, while her mother back in Alabama is caring for her Granddaddy. She doesn't adjust well, wanting to go back home, keeping in her head and carrying on the imaginings her and her Granddaddy would have of Captain Fleet and E-Grace Starfleet, which the kids in the neighborhood aren't having. It's 1984, and they're much more into break dancing and hip hop, things Ebony-Grace can't wrap her head around.

Despite also being a giant nerd with an imagination, I had a tough time with Ebony-Grace's story. Supposedly twelve, she reads much younger as she imagines her father as "King Sirius Julius" in No Joke City, keeping her prisoner and not allowing her to rescue her grandfather (from what, we really never find out). I wondered if she were on the spectrum, but that's never really explored. And while I could see it for the church scene, the emphasis on her wearing "boy clothes" because she preferred t-shirts to dresses seemed a little odd for 1984. Ebony's "growth" at the end is really sudden and mainly seems to be about shutting off her imagination to live in the real world in a heavy-handed way after the adults (and a bunch of the kids that Ebony doesn't want to play with) spend much of the book telling her to stop messing around. It was a weird sort of duality both celebrating nerdy sci-fi culture and tamping down on it at the same time. ( )

I loved the setting and some of the characters, but not enough happened. The reader is so deep in Ebony Grace's head, which could be a very awesome place, but I kept expecting some more information about what was happening with her grandfather, or some kind of change in her family or social situation, and it never came. The large group of characters in Harlem seemed more like stage props than people most of the time. Culturally, it was a fun trip to an incredible time and place, but I wanted more from the story. ( )

Challenging book -- it's always hard to be the weird kid living in your imagination. I remember being that kid, except in my case it was faerie land. It's entirely possible that my feelings about this book reflect my strong desire not to be reminded of what that was like, but I digress.

It is hard to be the weird kid living in your imagination in the 80s, especially if you are a displaced black girl moved up to Harlem from Huntsville, AL, full of NASA and Star Trek, now faced with hip-hop and dance crews. Her love of space and science and engineering is cool, her loving family is cool, but the book as a whole drags, is really hard to get into, and Ebony Grace is very hard to like. On top of that, the dynamics of parents telling a child to just be normal, while understandable, was upsetting, and the whole book just felt like a kid learning the lesson that shutting down part of themselves in order to get by is more important that really celebrating their identity. That's true, for many people, but it's not a message that I can get behind -- I still dress up in costumes and go play on weekends as a grown-ass adult, and I think it's completely ok to love the stuff you love, even when it makes you hard to relate to.

I also really dislike that no one ever really explains what is going on with her grandfather -- yes, it's realistic that a kid might not ever know, but it's also annoying. So yeah, lots of feels from this book, but not the feels I was hoping for.
( )

diverse children's middlegrade fiction (13 y.o. black science fiction fan trying to make friends in 1980s Harlem)
reviewed from ARC.
I pushed through to page 108, but couldn't really connect with Ebony (E-Grace), who seemed to be pretty old to still be living in her imagination. I still didn't really know what was going on with the story--is she on the spectrum? P
resumably at some point she lets down her barriers and makes friends, and also finds out what's happening with her grandpa. I wanted to like this, but am not sure it will appeal to a very broad audience. ( )

Ebony-Grace is sent to stay with her dad in Harlem because there is something going on with her beloved Grandfather. It is never really clear what the incident is a scandal or an illness? He is successful, working at NASA. Ebony-Grace has a special relationship with him and they share a great love of space and imagination.
She doesn't click with the girls she meets in Harlem in the mid-1980s.
There are some graphics and comic panels sprinkled throughout the book.
There was a lot going on in the book, and I could see what it was trying to accomplish. It just feel a bit short in places for me. ( )