Sunday, November 22, 2009
Oh The Joys of Middle School Times Three
RD is a Mexican 15 year old 8th grader, well 8th grader for the third time. He keeps getting retained because he refused to do any classwork or homework. He considers himself a big zero in life. But how else could he feel when he doesn't know anything about his father, his mother is locked up in jail, his grandmother just moved out and left him in a run down house with a seventy five year old step grandfather that has breathing problems due to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. You'd be messed up too!
Then one day, RD comes home to find Grandpa Earl dead on the bathroom floor. Now he is completely alone, only has 18 dollars, no food in the house and even if he did have food, he doesn't know how to cook!
RD doesn't want to become a ward of the state and be sent to a group home so he keeps his home life a secret. Struggling with the downers in life, RD teaches himself to survive even though he bleaches his jeans, forgets to bathe for three days, thinks Earl's ghost is in the house and doesn't know how cook food (he yells at a frozen chicken - "You'd taste good if I knew how to cook you!").
RD has more problems than most teens, but many teens will relate to RD and his struggles for self sufficiency, deals with school, girls and everything else that come with living in a poor neighborhood. Although RD has a bad school past, this book shows a positive turnabout of a Hispanic teen. He chooses to make the right decisions to make himself a better life. This book could lead to discussions of gangbanging, drugs, consequences of your actions and decisions in a positive and negative directions that they take you in life.
