Top: Author Valerie Bolling and Alayna Rivera, who is going into the eighth grade at Barnard Environmental Science & Technology School. Bottom: Sekai Tengatenga jumps into a Double Dutch competition organized by poet Michelle Phương Hồ.
Twelve-year-old Alayna Rivera clasped copies of Bing, Bop, Bam: Time To Jam! and Jada Jones: Rock Star to her chest, ready to squeeze in some end-of-summer reading before the beginning of a new school year. Inside the books, whole universes waited for her, from Jada’s buzzing student council to a block party bumpin with banjo, bass and djembe.
Before she turned to leave, she spotted author Valerie Bolling just a few feet away, and stopped to meet a real-life celebrity.
Saturday afternoon, Rivera's enthusiasm—and an infectious, light-up-the-sidewalk smile—captured the spirit of the now-annual Edgewood Youth Day Block Party, held on Edgewood Avenue between Winthrop and Sherman Avenues. A beloved neighborhood tradition that was revived last year after a pandemic hiatus, the party brought out healing drummers, hula hoopers, Double Dutch champions, bookspace angels, and hundreds of neighbors to celebrate the end of summer.
It also marked the second annual Maternal Health Hub, a collaboration with Golden Radiance Village that included resources for birthing people, partners and babies, from doula speed dating to information on where to find Black birth workers. Other partners included the New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation (NCAT), Sisters of Hagar , Greater New Haven NAACP and the city’s Youth and Recreation Department among others.
Top: “For me it’s a blessing to be able to give back to the community in a small way,” said Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton. Bottom: The Double Dutch heats up.
“For me it’s a blessing to be able to give back to the community in a small way,” said Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton, who helped organize the party with Dwight Alder Frank Douglass and Board of Alders’ President Tyisha Walker-Myers. “We consider everybody.”
Up and down the block, the neighborhood came to life with bursts of joyful noise, applause and laughter weaving in and out of conversations, pumping music and the steady, rhythmic tap of jump rope on pavement.
At one end of the street, Michael York and his three-year-old son, Jay, crouched down beside Sugar, the gentle bookspace dog who has become a fixture at Possible Futures over the past two years. On the other side of the wall, a doula speed dating event began inside the bookspace. Golden Radiance Village’s Brittany Needham (Doula Britt) sat back on a sofa, and prepared to listen to her fellow birth workers.
York, who recently moved to New Haven from Atlanta to pursue a doctorate at Yale, noted how much the bookspace feels like an anchor in the community: it was one of the things that stood out to him as a relative newcomer to the city. Like many in the neighborhood, the family had stumbled upon the block party after time at the playground nearby.
“It’s great!” he said as Jay petted Sugar. A thick crochet Palestinian flag dangled from her collar, swinging just slightly as she rose from the ground and studied her newest tiny fan.
Top: Michael York and his three-year-old son, Jay, with Sugar. Bottom: Ms. Merle with Lauren Anderson of Possible Futures.
Nearby, Hotchkiss Street neighbor Merle Williams—or as she is known and loved on the block, simply Ms. Merle—picked up back-to-school supplies and middle grade fiction for a friend’s grandson who lives in the neighborhood, but couldn’t make it Saturday.
As a sort of Hotchkiss Street godmother, she said she was on a mission to collect resources for her downstairs neighbors, who hail from Afghanistan. As she chatted, two middle grade fiction books peeked out from where they rested snugly in her bag.
“I just love it,” she said of the block party. A transplant from Falmouth, Jamaica, Williams relocated to New Haven several decades ago, and has lived in the same Hotchkiss Street apartment for the past 20 years. During that time, she said, she’s been a teacher’s aid, cook, beautician and seamstress—and seen the neighborhood change as kids grow up and new ones move in.
She was especially excited to be out and about on Saturday after a serious battle with RSV landed her in the hospital earlier this year. For months, she was unable to walk the block or visit her bookspace family at Possible Futures.
Top: Kulturally LIT Founder IfeMichelle Gardin takes a break from Year of Baldwin work to show off her hoop skills. Bottom: Author Valerie Bolling.
As hula hoopers filled the street with bubbly, cacophonous laughter, she savored the sun, taking time to reconnect with neighbors who she hadn’t seen in months.
Every few moments, it seemed, another person would stop to say hello and give her a quick squeeze. The love flowed freely past the curb and down the sidewalk, some neighbors catching up for the first time in months as others reconnected after just hours or days away from each other.
As Williams reconnected with her neighbors, author Valerie Bolling took a rare quiet moment to sit, signing a bright stack of her books before they flew into neighbors’ hands from a table that Possible Futures and the CT Association of School Librarians had set up nearby.
On the cover of Bing, Bop, Bam, a drummer looked out onto a bright city street, and for a moment it seemed that he could have been on Edgewood, where drummers Michael Mills and Brian Jawara Gray had opened the afternoon.
Ashley Lowery (in tank top) and her 4-year-old son, Jace, check out the hooping.
“I don’t write for me,” she mused as she opened a copy of Together We Swim, published almost exactly a year ago to the date. The book, illustrated by Kaylani Juanita, tells the story of a young Black boy learning to swim with the gentle and trusting guidance of his mother. Her latest title, I See Color: An Affirmation and Celebration of Our Diverse World, peeked out from a table nearby.
For Bolling, who taught English in the Greenwich public schools for 30 years before writing children’s books, the work of being an author is about representation—both for young readers who look like her characters, and those who don’t. Inspired by her nieces, Zorah and Anyah, she began telling stories for kids eight years ago (at the time, the two were two and four; they are now 10 and 12).
“I just thought, ‘What would it be like to write for kids?’” she recalled as her nieces picked up striped hula hoops and began to sway-hoop to Kes’ “Hello.” Five books and a Scholastic early readers’ series later, she’s still deeply dedicated to the work. Her character Zoya, who appears in the Scholastic books with her puppy Coco, is an homage to the young family members who inspired her to start writing almost a decade ago.
Top: 12-year-old Amity Maviera, a student at John Martinez School, makes slime at an art station from the city's Youth and Recreation Department. She called the activity calming.
Part of that, she added, is showing up at events like the block party and Dixwell Neighborhood Festival, where she read earlier this summer. She had high praise for Possible Futures’ owner Lauren Anderson, who has turned 318 Edgewood Ave. into not just a bookspace, but a kind of de facto community center, summer hangout spot and safe haven for neighborhood kids.
“I love connecting with young readers and their families,” she said. “Kids need to see themselves in books.”
Minutes earlier, those words had felt alive as Rivera approached, beaming as she handed Bolling her book. A rising eighth grader at Barnard Environmental Science & Technology School, Rivera said she loves books for their ability to transport her to different towns, cities and universes without ever leaving New Haven. In a world that sometimes feels crazy, she added, reading calms her.
“You get to experience authors’ lives through their books,” she said. So when she had the chance to meet Bolling, she was thrilled. For her, authors are akin to superheroes, with a magic power to world-build one sentence at a time. “It was exciting!”
Top: Kaleb and Katherine Viera and Kerry Ward. Bottom: Artist Maria Santiago works her face paint magic.
Down the street, friends Katherine Viera and Kerry Ward waited in line for kids’ face painting with Viera’s six-year-old son, Kaleb. As Kaleb watched a spiderweb bloom across a fellow child’s face, Viera took in the street’s vibrancy, from a cupcake decorating station to tables where kids could make their own slime.
“I love to see the community coming out,” Viera said. As a lifelong New Havener and a parent, it also makes her proud of her city, in which she’s now raising the next generation of Elm City residents.
“I love this!” added Ward, whose sons Jonas and Tristan run the College Bound BIPOC Students Alliance (CBBSA). For her, she said, it was a chance to see and connect with people she hadn’t seen in months, sometimes more. “It’s so nice to see everyone come full-circle.”
“Always A Beautiful Day”
Possible Futures Founder Lauren Anderson transforms into a veritable bookspace angel.
As it unfolded across Edgewood Avenue and down Hotchkiss Street, the party also marked a vibrant second birthday celebration for Possible Futures, the community bookspace that opened at 318 Edgewood Ave. two years ago this month (a second celebration will take place on August 30, in honor of what would be Fred Hampton’s 76th birthday).
In that time, it has become a space not just for literature and dialogue—although it has offered both in spades—but for communal gathering and cultural collaboration that reaches far beyond its walls. In addition to weekly events like author talks, comedy shows, and a knitting circle, it has become a safe haven for discourse, education and advocacy, including a weekly Palestine study group that helped bring poet Mosab Abu Toha to New Haven earlier this summer.
In the past two years, it has lifted up nearly a dozen “everyday angels” in the community, welcomed a new mural to the neighborhood, hosted dozens of poets and writers, and most recently installed the first five of ten little free libraries at locations across the city, from the New Haven Pride Center to an Ivy Street porch to the LaundroMax on Whalley Avenue.
Godwin Ampah of the city's Youth and Recreation Department.
It has also become a second home to many neighbors, including and especially young people in the neighborhood (in this way, it has continued its former use as a branch of the New Haven Free Public Library). On any given day, it’s not uncommon to see three or four generations of readers walk or toddle through the door, ready to explore new titles or on the hunt for Sugar.
There’s a kids corner set up with crayons and pint-sized tables among the snugly packed, bright and multilingual bookshelves. An early note from a tiny patron, now not so tiny, hangs framed on the wall. Even on Saturday, the Maternal Health Hub bloomed inside, literally preparing to midwife the next generation of bibliophiles and freedom fighters into New Haven.
Wearing a set of paper wings adorned with book covers, bookspace founder Lauren Anderson danced at the corner of Edgewood and Hotchkiss, checking in on the community partners who lined the street from end to end. She buzzed between people, watching as a table stacked high with books emptied out, and neighbors carried stories home with them.
Top: Possible Futures' Raquel Figueroa with CT Association of School Librarians' Shannon McNeice and Melissa Thom.
“It’s always a beautiful day,” said Anderson, who attended the block party as an Edgewood neighbor before the pandemic. “It’s an opportunity to celebrate another milestone.”
For 10-year-old Anyla Whyte, a “junior staff” member at Possible Futures and self-described bookspace VIP, it’s more than that. As a lifelong bibliophile who used to live down the street, Anyla started coming to the bookspace when it first opened two years ago. At first, she came sporadically, then every Sunday with her sister.
But something in the bookspace called to her, and “I kept coming and coming,” she said. Now, she’s there almost every day, including during a recent storytime at the Ivy Street library.
Saturday, she showed off a newly autographed copy of Winsome Bingham’s The Walk, which tells the story of civic responsibility and voting rights through a young girl’s walk to the polls with her grandmother. Saturday, she had been excited to attend Bingham’s storytime on the sun-soaked pavement.
“It’s like my job to be there,” she said. “It means a lot to me.”