Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

Haunted by a bus-crash guilt he carries harder than his boxing gloves, seventh-grader Tristan Strong ships out from Chicago to his grandparents’ red-clay farm in rural Alabama, only to punch a bottle tree, tear a portal, and plunge into the MidPass—a storm-lit realm where the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade still crackles in iron monsters and bone ships. Inside this blazing sea of memory, he joins weary folk heroes John Henry and Brer Rabbit, trading quips beneath cypress moons while hunted by copper giants who’d snuff out every story Black America ever forged for its own Racial Justice. To seal the sky and get home, Tristan must bargain with West African trickster-god Anansi, the master Weaver who knows that courage and grief knot the same thread. Kwame Mbalia’s verse-sharp prose slingshots classrooms into oral-tradition power, turns bottle trees into libraries of resistance, and shows faith groups how lament can bloom into praise when community stands its ground. Can Tristan weave his friend’s notebook tales into a bridge strong enough to carry them all back to sunrise? Tap the blue ➕ to Save to List for later inspiration, or hit the bold arrow to Learn More and connect your classroom, youth group, or congregation to this myth-splitting quest.