Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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I know plenty of present and former middle school kids who are so totally over that racial division stuff that they study about in American history and in my wife's English classes, and that people of my generation witnessed and are always telling them about.

Of course, these are all white kids living in an affluent community in the coastal hills of Northern California. Some of them have actually gotten to play in soccer leagues or on school basketball teams against more racially diverse teams in Santa Rosa and elsewhere. But I figure our tenth grader got better acquainted with more Japanese kids over her two week middle school exchange visit to their country than she has gotten to know of black kids in her entire life.

Since reading and reviewing it over the holidays, I've been dying to put together a production of Julius Lester's new, soon-to-be-award winning novel in narrative, DAY OF TEARS, but I know that casting it would probably require more young black talent than we have in Shari's middle school and the nearby high school put together.

Now, "Black and White" have seriously gotten over that race thing for real. They've lived it. Marcus Brown is a black kid from the Projects who lives with his mom and preschool-aged sister. Eddie Russo, the white son of a sanitation worker, lives across town with his parents and teenaged, younger sister Rose. Marcus and Eddie are always together as they have been forever. Ages ago they were nicknamed "Black and White", and it has stuck. They're both starting guards on a Long Island City high school basketball team that is cruising toward the playoffs. College scouts come sit in the bleachers, watch them, and salivate. But that was before IT happened.

"BLACK

"I admit it. I've been scared shitless lots of times. But I was never as shook as when the gun in Eddie's hand went off. It thundered inside that car like the whole world was coming to an end. I never expected Eddie to pull the trigger, by accident or any other way. I guess that was a big part of it too. In all the time Eddie had that gun, we never shot it off once. It was just for show, so we could get our hands on some quick money. That's all. We never flashed it around in front of our friends or anything. It was just for us to know about.
"I was more scared for that man we shot than anything else. I didn't even know he got clipped in the head until Eddie told me later. The gun went off and I closed my eyes. I shut them so tight, I thought my eyelids would squeeze them right out of their sockets. I only opened them again to find the handle on the door, so I could get out of that car and take off running.
"That damn sound was ringing in my ears. There was no way to outrun that. I couldn't hear the air pumping in and out of my lungs, or the sound of my feet hitting against the concrete. And I didn't know that Eddie wasn't right behind me until I was halfway home, and peeked back over my shoulder. Then I looked back for him again, even though I knew he wasn't there."

So what will happen when the shooting victim ID’s Marcus from yearbook photos? What happens when Marcus comes to face a system of justice that feels like it's based on skin color and the ability to hire an attorney? What happens when Marcus's mom and Eddies parents each stop feeling supportive of their own son's friend-of-another-color? Where does the Black and White friendship go from here?

Author Paul Volponi spent years with adolescents on Rikers Island, teaching them reading and writing. He’s written one heck of a tale about two friends who thought they were cruising in the fast lane, heading for NCAA glory, and thought that differences in skin color was somebody else's problem.

Through this nail-biting story that keeps us waiting to see who is going to to pay the price for the two kids making a bad mistake, BLACK AND WHITE goes beyond the skin deep to reveal some harsh impulses and invisible walls that still exist in America today.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com