No one’s commented in surprise to the presence of RHYTHM RIDE on our shortlist, but it is rare that we include a title that we haven’t posted on yet. This year’s early schedule and the intensity of recent discussion threw some things a little out of whack, so let’s get back on track.

It’s hard to read Andrea Davis Pinkney’s RHYTHM RIDE without moving your body.  Her narrative device–the voice called simply “the Groove”–sets the reader into a vehicle with the sound cranked up, tuning attention to the story in image, in sound, in feeling.  What would otherwise have been a fairly straightforward narrative demands the reader’s engagement, even as the voice tunes in and out and in again. Readers are treated to a pretty quick trip through Motown history, really just tickling the surface, yet getting an immediate sense of what made Motown a revolutionary sound, that song that makes you sit up and listen, speaking a musical and emotional truth you’d been waiting to hear.

In its brevity, I sense this narrative glosses over some points that some readers might appreciate better developed, and yet I keep coming back to the tone set by the Groove, the promise this is a “ride,” a tour, a beginning.   Taking readers briskly to a close and providing plenty of notes and songs for them to explore makes me feel Pinkney delivers exactly what she promises to, singularly.