Name: Sofia Arcângelo 's review of What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris
Item: What the Fireflies Knew
Rating: 5
Author: Sofia Arcângelo

Kai Harris

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 from the perspective of eleven-year-old KB, as she and her sister try, over the course of a summer, to make sense of their new life with their estranged grandfather after the death of their father and disappearance of their mother After her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit, almost-eleven-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB) and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing. Over the course of a single, sweltering summer, KB attempts to get her bearings in a world that has turned upside down--a father who is labeled a fiend; a mother whose smile no longer reaches her eyes; a sister, once her best friend, who has crossed the threshold of adolescence and suddenly wants nothing to do with her; a grandfather who is grumpy and silent; the white kids across the street who are friendly, but only sometimes. And all of them are keeping secrets. Pinballing between resentment, abandonment, and loneliness, KB is forced to carve out a different identity for herself and find her own voice. As she examines the jagged pieces of her recently shattered world, she learns that while some truths cut deep, a new life--and a new KB--can be built from the shards. Capturing all the vulnerability, perceptiveness, and inquisitiveness of a young Black girl on the cusp of puberty, Harris's prose perfectly inhabits that hazy space between childhood and adolescence, where everything that was once familiar develops a veneer of strangeness when seen through newer, older eyes. Through KB's disillusionment and subsequent discovery of her own power, What the Fireflies Knew poignantly reveals that heartbreaking but necessary component of growing up--the realization that loved ones can be flawed, sometimes significantly so, and that the perfect family we all dream of looks different up close.

A Novel

What the Fireflies Knew

Kaitlyn Schmidt

Sofia Arcângelo 

This, unexpectedly, turned out to be my favourite book of all I've ever read. Such a sweet but also painfull story so well narrated by a young girl that lost her father to drugs. All the pain and the trauma, but also the growing up, relationships, the racism, and the blessings, all seen through her eyes left me with tears in my own eyes.

"A daddy hug is something special that you don’t even know you need."

Ryan Angel

Sweet, scarring, beautiful, and sad. It’s 1995 and KB is 10-11 who is sent with her sister to live with her Grandpa. She learns what the adults have been talking about and tries to fit in. She’s colored but still somewhat innocent to the ways of the world, especially white-filled Michigan. She experiences her own trauma after learning about her mothers, and it’s terrible.

Kaitlyn Schmidt &
What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris

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Kaitlyn Schmidt &What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris

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Kaitlyn Schmidt &
What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris