Author: Kelly J Baptist
Genre: Realistic fiction
Similar books: Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate
Hold Fast by Blue Balliett
Rating:
an important read
Summary (provided by publisher): Isaiah is now the big man of the house. But it's a lot harder than his dad made it look. His little sister, Charlie, asks too many questions, and Mama's gone totally silent.
Good thing Isaiah can count on his best friend, Sneaky, who always has a scheme for getting around the rules. Plus, his classmate Angel has a few good ideas of her own--once she stops hassling Isaiah.
And when things get really tough, there's Daddy's journal, filled with stories about the amazing Isaiah Dunn, a superhero who gets his powers from beans and rice. Isaiah wishes his dad's tales were real. He could use those powers right about now!
My opinion: I feel like the most important part of this book is the opening scenario. The Dunn family begins the book without a home but feeling like their situation is only temporary. They'd been living right on the borderline of poverty, barely holding on. It doesn't take much to tip them over the line, to start them down the downward slope to a point that they can't pull themselves out of. Grief and addiction compound an already difficult situation. We see Isaiah trying to cover his situation in school, with adults, and even masking it's extent with his closest friends. This won't be immediately relatable for upper middle class kids but those who've lived around the poverty line will recognize themselves in this narrative, a fact alone which will make it valuable. But we also get a lot of Isaiah's inner life here. We see his anger and resentment, pointed primarily at his mother but a little at his dad and and Sneaky, resentment for the things he's lost that others still have. We see the fissures that develop between lifelong friends and which cannot be fully repaired.
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