Tyrell, Coe Booth's first novel, centers on a teen living in a South Bronx homeless shelter who faces difficult choices. His father is in jail, and his mother is pressuring him to become involved with drug dealing to bring in money. The novel received multiple starred reviews, won a 2007 L.A. Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Booth revisits Tyrell's gritty world in Bronxwood, due in September from Scholastic/PUSH.
The sequel, Booth explains, takes place seven months after Tyrell concludes. "His father is out of prison and is reemerging into Tyrell's life," she says. "There's a tug-of-war between the two—they have a very complicated relationship. Tyrell respects his father but doesn't want to be controlled by him any longer. In addition to going through all that, his little brother is in foster care, and it's summer and Tyrell is looking for love."
Booth had no difficulty retrieving Tyrell's voice for Bronxwood. "I don't really leave a world when I finish writing a book, and I kept wondering what Tyrell was doing," she says. "I love writing Tyrell's voice, and I slid right back into it quite effortlessly. It's fun to pretend to be a boy and have all that Bronx slang going on."
Though she too grew up in the Bronx, Coe didn't draw upon her own childhood to create Tyrell's world, but her postcollege work with families and teens in crisis did come into play. "I was raised in a stable, normal family, but I feel very comfortable writing about Tyrell's experiences," she notes. "Having worked with families going through what his family is going through, I knew what I was talking about. I knew the world, but I had to find the writing itself, and the characters."
Booth targets a younger audience with the book she's currently writing, a middle-grade novel that is also set in the Bronx and stars a 12-year-old boy. A student she encountered on a school visit inspired the story. "My muse was this smart-alecky kid with a sneaky little face," she explains. "I thought he was adorable, and something about him triggered a story—I knew immediately I wanted to write about someone like him."
At BEA for the first time, Booth is pleased that she is at last a bona fide attendee. "In the past, I've met people for dinner who'd been at BEA that day—I was the after-party person, kind of pretending I'd been there," she quips. "This year, I'm really looking forward to meeting booksellers—and I don't have to pretend anymore!"
Booth is signing ARCs of Bronxwood this afternoon, 3:30–4 p.m., at Table 20.