Figurative Language In Cj's Last Stop On Market Street

Last Stop on Market Street is an award winning picture book about a little black boy called CJ and his grandmother who take the bus to work at a soup kitchen after church on Sundays. The author uses words and phrases very effectively within this book to really paint a picture of the city and it's people. At the beginning of this book the author uses figurative language to describe the air as smelling 'like freedom, but it also smelled like rain' this phrase goes a long way in identifying the setting as being beautiful and open, in addition, it also indicates the rain had just begun (Tunnell, 2015, p.18). Another example of the author using a phrase to tell the reader a lot of information is when CJ's Nana tells CJ that the tree's are drinking through a straw. CJ is aid to look for some time for a straw to no avail, the author uses this short passage to tell us that CJ is young and …show more content…
Paragraphs in the story use the repeated pattern of having the second and third sentence rhyme with the remaining sentences being varied in length giving the book a musical quality that serves to enhance the flow of the story (Tunnell, 2015, p.23).

Understatement is uses loosely at the end of the story when CJ explains that he is glad they came to the soup kitchen, this statement allows the reader to reflect on the rest of the book and the illustrations to understand why exactly he was glad to be there (Tunnell, 2015, p.24). Unexpected insights are the backbone of this story with the young CJ learning how his Nana 'can always see beauty where he never thought to look', this is the underlying motif of this story (Tunnell, 2015, p.25).

Weak writing is evident in the condescension of the story (Tunnell, 2015, p.26). Some of the story is over-explained which is an indication that the author believes that young readers cannot elaborate on concepts for themselves with less information (Tunnell, 2015,