* Something Beautiful  Sharon Dennis Wyeth


Something Beautiful is a great read!  It is a contemporary realistic fiction book because it is fiction, but is relatable and something that could happen.   Something Beautiful is about a young black girl who lives in an apartment in a bad neighborhood.  She learns the word beautiful in school and begins to search for her something beautiful in life.  She asks her aunt what is beautiful and she says her baby carl.  She asks the local farmer market owner and he says it his apples.  She asks friends in the neighborhood and they all tell her various toys, and finally she heads back home in efforts to find her something beautiful.  She approaches her apartment building and notices that someone has written the word DIE in red on the door to her apartment.  She goes upstairs and grabs a bucket and soap and decides to clean up her home.  She scrubs it off, picks up all the glass shards from garbage and broken bottles and decides that her home can be, and is beautiful.  She hopes to start a garden to care for, and when her mama comes home she asks her what her something beautiful is, and her mama tells her its her, and gives her a hug.  This is a very heart warming story and is relatable and realistic.  It is great for any age group, it is an easy read, but there may be some content that could upset younger children.  There are some images that may be hard for a younger child to understand.  There is a dipiction of a homeless woman living in a box.  There is also the issue of why someone would write DIE on someone's door.