THE LEDGER
Focus: News, Updates, and Book Releases
Announcement: Middle Ground Released July 7
Middle Ground
by Phillip Shabazz
Middle Ground is a 152-page poetry collection that traces the arc of adolescence through five seasonal chapters, speaking directly to the lived experiences of young people while maintaining poetic craft. Designed for middle and high school students as well as adult readers, the collection refuses to soften the realities of contemporary youth, economic hardship, systemic racism, gun violence, incarceration, mental health struggles, while insisting on beauty, resistance, and the possibility of transcendence.
Announcement: Bubblegum Moon Released May 2026
Bubblegum Moon
by Phillip Shabazz
When the moon turns to bubblegum and falls from the sky, it sticks in the speaker's hair, sweet, impossible, and refusing to let go. BUBBLEGUM MOON is a poetry collection for elementary readers (grades 4-6). Illustrated by Jessica Rigsbee.
The collection explores growing up through surreal imagery, African and African American folklore, and the bewildering moments when childhood starts to peel away. In the title poems, a sticky pink moon creates hilarious chaos and quiet wonder. "Anansi" and "The Tale of Brer Rabbit" ground the collection in trickster wisdom, while "Baby Shoes" confronts the fear of outgrowing who you are. Rigsbee's illustrations capture both the whimsy and the weight, bubblegum moons, folklore creatures, and the ordinary moments that turn strange when you're no longer quite a child.
Pearls in the Sea
by Phillip Shabazz
J-Man never planned to be a poet. He planned to survive River Rock, play ball with The Club, keep his head down, make it to eighteen. But when Uncle Bo dies, everything collapses. What's left is a red notebook, a pen, and a question: can words fight back?
Under Mr. Mack's guidance, J-Man studies the tradition-Gwendolyn Brooks, Etheridge Knight, poets who turned pain into resistance. He learns from Polar Bear, a homeless artist whose graffiti speaks truth. He watches Dexter, once the best poet in town, drink himself into irrelevance. And he faces an impossible choice: when your crew demands blood and your notebook demands truth, which one do you serve?
This is a novel about what it costs to find your voice when the world wants you voiceless. About fathers and sons learning to speak after years of silence. About first love, last chances, and burning down what no longer serves you. About building something new from the ashes.
In River Rock, everyone knows the rules. J-Man's about to break every single one, not with fists, but with the most dangerous weapon of all: a poem that refuses to lie.