King and the Dragonflies

"Like I said, I wasn’t a part of choosing all the titles, but this was another book where I said, ‘You really should consider having this on the list because it is such a powerful story.’ Ron Butler’s narration is so moving. Kacen Callender’s writing is so transporting into whatever story they’re telling. In this story we’re in Louisiana with a young Black boy, who is grieving his older brother who had just died, suddenly. It’s a tough topic, certainly, but we’re in a year where so many people are experiencing such trauma. Ron Butler’s narration just brings these different characters off of the page and into your ears. His voice for this kid, King, really captures being a younger kid thinking about grief and about school and about changing friendships. He will switch between characters and you’ll be like, ‘Is this the same narrator?’ He really gets those voices. You hear the quietness and the young voice of King and then his parents, who are dealing with their own grief of losing a son. We do have a video that Ron Butler recorded for us about his narration. “I think listening to the stories of others helps kids—and adults—develop empathy” King also feels a real disconnect and uncertainty about himself because he’s realizing that he’s gay. He doesn’t really know how to talk about that with his family or with anyone else and he’s worried what his older brother would have said if he’d found that out before he died. Also, as part of the story, his ex-best friend Sandy has gone missing and the town is looking for him and worried about him. King finds Sandy in his backyard hiding in a tent. So it’s also about their friendship. Sandy had come out to him and that was how they had broken up as friends. So it’s a complicated story. There’s a lot going on in the book. But it just has so much emotion to it. I think it’s another example of one where, listening to it, you’re just getting that whole connection with these characters in a way I don’t know if you would get as much if you were just reading it. You get all that empathy and it’s bittersweet but it’s also hopeful. It’s a beautiful audiobook. King has such a sweet imagination and he imagines that his brother has been reincarnated as a dragonfly. So he will go down to the Bayou and talk to the dragonflies and imagine that his brother is there. That’s a lovely piece of the book too. It’s teaching kids that there are lots of different ways to grieve when you’re faced with tragedy. It’s just such a sweet story."