Tough Boy Sonatas Author:Curtis Crisler, Floyd Cooper From Booklist — In his debut offering for youth, Crisler presents a collection of potent, hard-hitting poems about growing up in Gary, Indiana. Written mostly in voices of young African American males, the poems evoke the grit and ash of crumbling, burned-out streets as well as the realities of hardscrabble life: "confrontation is all up yo' ass ... more »and in / yo' face at the same time." Many poems speak of terrifying violence; other selections talk about the struggles to claim a mature, male identity: "With faint / taint of milk breath and / small milk mustache / we want to be the alpha / male, with the balls / to take on those / out-there things." Written with skillful manipulation of sound, rhythm, and form, the poems are filled with sophisticated imagery and graphic words (including the "n" word), and Cooper's illustrations extend, rather than distract from, the poems' impact. Created in sooty black and gray, the powerful drawings are mostly portraits of anguished young men. The speakers represent voices that are rare in books for youth, and their furious yearning for justice, love, safety, sex, and a good education is unforgettable, as is their hope in what Crisler calls hell: "I never felt poor like my poor / neighbors 'cause I had my crazy family." --Gillian Engberg Copyright ? American Library Association.