30 June 2024 BROS by Carole Boston Weatherford and Reggie Brown, ill., Candlewick, March 2024, 32p., ISBN: 978-1-5362-2041-4

My real estate agent's BROKER just called me at 9pm on a Friday to tell me that the seller doesn't want to sell a house to me because I am BLACK. This is after the inspection, contract agreement, down payment. Baby, I'm either buying your house or buying YOUR BLOCK. CHOOSE ONE.

– Dr. Raven the Science Maven (5/17/24 on the site formerly known as Twitter)

“People struggle, people fight

For the simple pleasures in their life

The trouble comes from everywhere

It's a little more than you can bear

I know that it will hurt

I know that it will break your heart

The way things are

The way they've been

And the way they've always been”

– Natalie Merchant (1988)

“Bros fly and cry.

We smile. We style.

We pretend. We defend.

Bros dare. We care.

We speak. We geek.

We lead. We read.”

BROS, with Carole Boston Weatherford’s spare, rhyming text and Reggie Brown’s bright, digital illustrations, features a quintet of happy Black boys. The five friends are seen playing and praying, reading and gardening, building a time machine, playing with a pup, and having other typical young boy fun. 

BROS is a bouncy, enjoyable read, and will be a super circle time addition.

But BROS is an important book beyond that. It effectively exposes white kids to the parallel normalcy of being a Black kid goofing around with friends. Amongst young white audiences, these just-like-us parallels will help to weaken the chains of prejudice and hatred that are still far too often handed down from parent to child in the 21st century. Whether it be cops shooting Black boys first, and asking questions later, or some old white woman having a cow about her Virginia Beach condo being sold to a Black physician racial prejudice remains a significant, stubborn problem in America.

Reading about those who are different from us opens eyes and minds, and provides an alternative to parental idiocy and prejudice, whether it’s the subtle, or the in-your-face variety. We all benefit from the understanding gained through the creation and sharing of books depicting different sexes, different religions, different cultures, and different orientations. This is how, in a world of hate, authors, publishers, librarians, teachers, and enlightened parents, are able to act in the hope of making the world a happier, safer, more loving place for all of God’s children. That’s why I sit around at 3 am, writing about stuff that, as a kid in the Sixties, I had hoped and dreamed would be ancient history by the time I was in my sixties. 

Unfortunately, in far too many instances, it’s still the same-old same-old. 

Richie Partington, MLIS

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