The Murals In Shadowshaper By Daniel Jose Older

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older is about Sierra Santiago a teen living in Brooklyn. Sierra is an artist and has recently started a big mural on the side of a building as summer starts. While working on it she looks across to the mural on the wall adjacent and notices its fading and the expression seems to be changing to an angry man them she sees a tear fall from the eye of the man in the mural and she knows something is wrong, and that something really weird is going on. The Mural is greatly pushed by Manny and her grandfather to get it done fast to help save everyone because someone is coming for them. Sierra doesn’t know much about what is after them but follows her grandfather’s directions that starts a whole adventure for her summer

Bennie calls it “the takeover (70)” in the book. Gentrification is what its called when wealthy people and businesses move to low income areas and rebuild and move in and push out the low income businesses and families because this change makes it more expensive for families to live there. “The place that Sierra and Bennie used to get there hair done had turned into a fancy bakery of some kind, and yes, the coffee was good, but you couldn’t get a cup for less then three dollars. Plus everytime Sierra went in, the hip, young white kid behind the counter gave her either the don’t cause no trouble look or the I want to adopt you look(70).” While Izzy enjoys sitting in the new, expensive coffee shops and writing poetry, the threat in the changing culture is shown when Sierra is chased through the streets by spirits and no one in the white neighborhood will help her because they assume about her and think the worst of her for being

Sierra paints a humongous mural of a dragon on the side of a concrete building “five-story concrete monstrosity” that was built by developers but never finished and it is useless but kind of makes a connection to the villan of the book, Jonathan Wick who is against the shadowshapers becausue he doesn’t understand it and wants to destroy something he doesn’t understand like how the building is destroying the community. “We hate the Tower,” Manny the Domino King tells her, explaining why her ­mural is important. “We spit on the Tower. Your paint is our nasty loogie, hocked upon the stupidity that is the Tower.” It turns out that the mural is important for another reason not only to give the building color but to have Sierra channel spirits into hers and Robbie’s art. Sierra learns that she comes from a family of shadowshapers. Shadowshapers are like magicians that bring friendly spirties into art and those spirits defent the community they live in form the bad. After learning about this, her talents and family past she must fix the bad and embrace the good and bad of it