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What the Fireflies Knew
Cover of What the Fireflies Knew
What the Fireflies Knew
A Novel
An NAACP Image Award Nominee
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
A Marie Claire Book Club pick
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by *Marie Claire* *Teen Vogue* *Buzzfeed* *Essence* *Ms. Magazine* *NBCNews.com* *Bookriot* *Bookbub* and more! 
“Harris rewrites the coming-of-age story with Black girlhood at the center.”
New York Times Book Review
In the vein of Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, a coming-of-age novel told by almost-eleven-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB), as she and her sister try to make sense of their new life with their estranged grandfather in the wake of their father's death and their mother's disappearance

 
An ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies Knew follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down.
Her father has been labeled a fiend. Her mother's smile no longer reaches her eyes. Her sister, once her best friend, now feels like a stranger. Her grandfather is grumpy and silent. The white kids who live across the street are friendly, but only sometimes. And they're all keeping secrets. As KB vacillates between resentment, abandonment, and loneliness, she is forced to carve out a different identity for herself and find her own voice.
A dazzling and moving novel about family, identity, and race, What the Fireflies Knew poignantly reveals that heartbreaking but necessary component of growing up—the realization that loved ones can be flawed and that the perfect family we all dream of looks different up close.
An NAACP Image Award Nominee
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
A Marie Claire Book Club pick
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by *Marie Claire* *Teen Vogue* *Buzzfeed* *Essence* *Ms. Magazine* *NBCNews.com* *Bookriot* *Bookbub* and more! 
“Harris rewrites the coming-of-age story with Black girlhood at the center.”
New York Times Book Review
In the vein of Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, a coming-of-age novel told by almost-eleven-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB), as she and her sister try to make sense of their new life with their estranged grandfather in the wake of their father's death and their mother's disappearance

 
An ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies Knew follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down.
Her father has been labeled a fiend. Her mother's smile no longer reaches her eyes. Her sister, once her best friend, now feels like a stranger. Her grandfather is grumpy and silent. The white kids who live across the street are friendly, but only sometimes. And they're all keeping secrets. As KB vacillates between resentment, abandonment, and loneliness, she is forced to carve out a different identity for herself and find her own voice.
A dazzling and moving novel about family, identity, and race, What the Fireflies Knew poignantly reveals that heartbreaking but necessary component of growing up—the realization that loved ones can be flawed and that the perfect family we all dream of looks different up close.
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Excerpts-
  • From the cover

    1

     

    "We there yet?" My big sister, Nia, unbuckles her seat belt and lays cross the back seat beside me. Her skin shimmers in the sun from a half-cracked window, which lets a tiny breeze slide in that carries her cottony hair back and forth, up and down. People say Nia's the one who looks like Momma. They have the same oval eyes and mahogany skin. My eyes are rounder and my skin pale yellow, like the color of french fries that ain't quite cooked.

     

    Momma ignores Nia's question. Probably cause it's bout the tenth time she's asked. My nose finds the smell of rotten banana and that's got me thinking back to that night, almost six months ago now. The smell fills the car, just like the stench in our old basement that stuck around even after Daddy was buried. I dig my hands into the seat cushions and touch something sticky, but it's more peppermint sticky than banana sticky. Days ago, laying with a book in the back seat, one of my favorite places now, I got interrupted by Momma and Nia, right outside the car door and yelling, like always. They ain't see me, so I crept out before they could, hiding the banana I was just bout to bite. I hid it in a perfect place to come back for later, once all the fighting finally stopped. But it never did, and now I can't remember where I put it. I rub my eyes as I look around. I wanna fall asleep, but now I'm awake and smelling that stink.

     

    Nia don't look my way, just stares out the window, so I stare out the window. Ain't nothin' but flat green spaces. Cars speed by on both sides. I like that Momma drives slower than the other cars, cause then I don't get carsick. I count signs bigger than me as they blur cross my reflection in the car window. There's one for Toys"R"Us with a big picture of the new Easy-Bake Oven and Snack Center right in the middle. A now open sign for a new restaurant called Ponderosa. And one with a picture of a bunch of kids playing with dirt, and words at the bottom that say: new name, same fun. visit impression 5 science center, ahead in 28 miles. I wanna ask Momma to stop-for the restaurant or the science center, mostly, but even a toy would do-but I know we ain't gon' stop. So I count and count and get to twenty-two, then I'm bored.

     

    I find my book between the seat cushions and open to the first page. This gon' be my third time reading this book bout Anne, the Green Gables girl. I wonder what a gable is, and why it's s'posed to be green. I can't always understand the kind of words she's using cause nobody I know talks all proper like that, but in some ways, Anne is just like me, so it's my best book. Besides, even if I don't always get her way of talking, I like the sound of her words, all big and eloquent. Ever since I picked it from my school's Lost and Found, I been reading bout Anne and even learning how to talk like her. I ain't ever had too many books of my own, so when nobody at my school came for it, I did.

     

    The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. I roll the new words over my tongue slow like dripping honey. Myriad, myriad, myriad. Orchard, what is an orchard? Bridal flush of pinky-white bloom. Sometimes I try to use words like in my book, but when I do Nia teases me, saying I don't even know what I'm talking bout. But even if me and Anne don't look the same, we can still talk the same and be alike in other ways.

     

    I read six more pages bout Anne showing up in Avonlea and tryna fit in where she don't belong; then there's a loud clanking sound and the car slows down. Momma mutters a...

Reviews-
  • Library Journal

    September 1, 2021

    With her father dead of an overdose and her family in financial extremis owing to his addiction, Black preteen Kenyatta Bernice (KB) is sent with teenage sister Nia from Detroit to her estranged grandfather's home in Lansing, MI. A burdened mother, an irascible grandfather, and a suddenly distant sister (she's growing up), not to mention the only intermittently friendly white kids across the way--KB is having a tumultuous summer indeed. But it's a chance to find herself. From debuter Harris.

    Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Kirkus

    December 1, 2021
    A story of Black girlhood from a promising new voice in fiction. It's 1995. Kenyatta Bernice--known as KB--is 10 years old and looking forward to turning 11. Then her father dies, her family loses their house, and KB's mother leaves her and her older sister, Nia, with a grandfather they barely know. The summer that follows is a tumultuous one for KB. She's still grieving the loss of her father when her mother disappears, and Nia is suddenly more interested in boys than in spending time with her little sister. The White kids across the street are eager to play with KB when their mom isn't around, but she soon learns that she can't count on their friendship. A boy KB thinks she can trust hurts her. The only reassuring constant in her life is her well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables. More than anything, she wants the older people around her to be honest with her, but for the most part, she's left alone to piece together what's happening. Her grandfather reveals that he and her mother had a falling out, but KB knows that he's leaving out important details. She learns that her mother is undergoing some kind of "treatment" from an overheard conversation. The girl figures out all by herself that her father died from a drug overdose. Child narrators can be a challenge, but Harris has crafted a voice for her young protagonist that is both believable and engaging. Early in the narrative, when she first arrives at her grandfather's home, KB reports, "The house is silent and smells like a mix between the old people that kiss my cheeks at church, and the tiny storage unit where all our stuff lives now." There's a lot of information packed into this eloquent sentence as well as a lot of pathos. Quietly powerful.

    COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Library Journal

    February 1, 2022

    DEBUT Set in 1995, Harris's debut novel is told from the perspective of Kenyatta (also called KB), a 10-year-old Black girl. After her father dies of a drug overdose and her mother seeks treatment for depression, KB and her 15-year-old sister Nia are left in the care of their grandfather for the summer. In her loneliness and confusion, KB tries to connect with Nia, who is emotionally distant and prefers to go out with friends her age and chase boys. KB spends most of her time reading and occasionally playing with the white boy and girl across the street, whose racist mother has forbidden any friendship. Like her favorite book heroines, KB devises plans to heal her broken family. The healing does occur, though not in the exact way she had planned. VERDICT Harris has chosen to tell the story entirely through a child's eyes, without the imposition of an omniscient narrator or an adult KB looking back. This means that the reader is sometimes several steps ahead of her and frustrated or fearful of where her naivete will lead her. But KB's wide-eyed honesty also helps her more-jaded elders progress toward reconciliation. Appropriate for both YA and adult collections.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman

    Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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What the Fireflies Knew
A Novel
Kai Harris
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