A young person recounts their experience going to Tar Beach (the top of the apartment complex in the city that they live in) and gazing at the stars and imagining all the things that young people imagine. ( )

Primary
Cassie flies above New York and reflects on her family and the city.
This is a great story for children to hear a perspective of the black experience.

8 year old Cassie wants to be free to go wherever she would like. She uses her dreams to fly over the city to claim buildings and landmarks as her own. Flying is used as a beautiful metaphor for freedom. Book is set in 1939 Harlem. There is a great connection to the quilt created by Ringgold that inspired the book in the back of the book.

Summary: Cassie dreams and flies through New York from her roof with her imagination with the crossover of reality where things are not going well.

Set in New York in 1939. Tar Beach is the roof of Cassie's Harlem
apartment building. Cassie's dearest dream is to be free to go wherever
she wants, and one day it comes true when the stars help her to fly across the city.
Tar Beach is unique in its use of literary innovations, particularly its combination
of various artforms such as quilt making, autobiography, and painting.[
As spoken by Faith Ringgold in an interview with cultural critic and
daughter Michele Wallace, Tar Beach was not written for children but
rather to recall the essence of childhood and invoke the memories associate with it.

Faith Ringgold, October 8, 1930 an American
painter, writer, mixed media sculptor, and performance artist,
best known for her narrative quilts.