Information you should know:

Star Child is a book aimed at upper elementary. It is a Biography and a collection of poetry.

Star Child covers the life of Octavia Estelle Butler, a famous black author who wrote about science fiction. She is often thought of as the pioneer of the astrofuturism movement thanks to her writings. This book is split between brief blurbs about her life and poetry describing her life. It mainly focuses on her upbringing.

Why did I read this?

I choose to read Star Child due to the name. I was unaware of who Octavia Butler was before reading the book and I falsely assumed it would cover the black women who helped with the mathematics behind the space race. I have fond memories of when the movie Hidden Figures came out and wanted to learn more about their background. I was then surprised when reading the book that it was about an author and her journey to begin writing.

Review;

The ideas I will be reviewing for Star Child are Layout, Effective Communication of Historical Information, and Pacing.

Shapes and Columns

Star Child takes liberty in the layout of both its structure and page layout. The book itself is rather thicker than I expected but the space is used to create layouts that create the “biographical constellation” it advertises on its cover. Poems are arranged to make shapes like stars and circles. Several poems are mirrored in columns to show the mirroring of Earth and Space. Historical Pictures are shown as though you were examining a scrapbook. With pictures cut into the page or excerpts of Octavia’s notes and writings penned on lined paper and printed into the book. This creates a different experience than the typical biography. It feels like I am reading a child’s science fair project, or scrapbook assignment.

The book itself is split into recurring sections. It contains three main blocks with the first two blocks having subheadings repeated (i.e. Space I and Space II). They cover her early life then high school life writing. There is also a common repetition of a poem describing something and then a blurb giving context to the poem historically. I found this to be rather extra. Like a film students first project that has some high brow concepts but fails to deliver in execution. I can see the vision of repeating patterns as though the book is some fulfillment of a great prophecy written in the stars. But the jerky nature of the layout detracts from actual writing. As though the layout is supposed to be the art that makes the prose good, instead of simply enhancing the prose.

What was the book about again?

Star Child while an interesting concept fails to deliver a good biographical description of Octavia. The book mainly focuses on her early life and desire to make something of herself. It details her efforts and rejections to get published at the start of her career. I thought this was an interesting choice, it appears as though the author wants to motivate young children to write. I think this is a noble cause and showing children success stories, especially in marginalized communities, can be motivating through representation. However the book doesn’t show a success story. We spend almost no time with what Octavia actually did or wrote about. The book mentions her famous series once in the third section then immediately cuts to her being famous and sucessful.

Star Child then chooses to focus instead on the author meeting Octavia and how much Octavia was an inspiration to her and her own writing. This again adds to the feeling of reading a school project instead of a biography of someone’s life. After reading this book I don’t know almost anything aside from Octavia other than her struggles in school and that she is apparently someone to look up to. I can believe she is important but the book doesn’t do a good job of communicating why she is important. I think it was a bad choice to only focus on her early life and then on the future of all black writers instead of actually talking about the work she did. It seems clear that the author expects the reader to already know who she is. But why would this book who is targeted at upper elementary school children cover an author who is known for adult science fiction?

Slow Slow Sloooow:

Star Child does a bad job at making the reader want to read more. There was no moment reading this where I couldn’t help but move to the next page. If it wasn’t for an assignment I would have put down the book almost immediately. The poetry does nothing to grip my attention and the historical accounts are so sparse of details that I couldn’t even engage in the objectively fascinating time period of the cold war. Many of the poems felt disconnected from Octavia’s life despite the apparently superficial connection of being about her.

The choice to focus on the author of this biography for the last 15 or so pages felt forced and strange. The beginning of the book felt like the eventually build up to something that could have been exciting, namely Octavia’s life work but instead the rug was pulled out from under the reader and we are subjected to reading the fangirling of the author.

Final Review

Ultimately I can see the vision behind this book but believe it fell flat. There are aspects of merit here especially as a text to recommend to young children who wish to write but outside of that narrow recommendation I would have trouble giving this a personal recommendation. I do wonder if I am just so far outside the intended audience that I found it difficult to enjoy. After all the book is very well received critically. I would recommend to what I believe to be the right reader just to get feedback for future reviews.

My personal review is a 4/10. Interesting concepts are marred by execution and I feel it would be hard to give it a much higher rating.

Reference: Zoboi, I. A. (2022). Star child: A biographical constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler. Dutton Children’s Books.