What do you see when you look in the mirror? Yourself, sure. But who is that? There’s a lot of answers, which is just what a young, handsome looking dude finds out in this book. As he goes through his day, he meets people in his life and realizes as he meets them that he is something different to each. The meetings take place through lyrical phrases and metaphors written over evocative photographs, each one involving someone holding out a fist that’s met with a BAM! to punctuate the encounter. It’s fun to think of all the relationships you have to other people, and how they see you. The boy reflects “I’m walking tall and/ I’m walking proud./ Looked in the mirror-/ I look like a crowd.”
The author is Walter Dean Myers, who recently won the first ever Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton lifetime achievement awards this January. The illustrator is his son, Christopher. They make a terrific team.
