All Rise For The Honorable

All Rise For The Honorable

Juvenile fiction
When a parent serves a prison sentence s(he) isn't the only one
doing time. As Leslie Connor reminds us in the author's note for All
Rise For The Honorable Perry T. Cook, about one in twenty-eight school
kids has an incarcerated mother or father. That's a lot of kids
missing out on the dailiness of parental presence.
"For this story I asked, what if a boy was born in a prison
nursery? What if he spent his babyhood there, and then stayed on?
What would be his sense of home? Who would be his family?"
Perry (11) has his own room at the minimum security prison in
which his mother is doing time for manslaughter. Other than attending
a regular school, he spends his time in the slammer. A lot of people
might consider him to be deprived.
However, when Perry is forcibly removed from the only home he's
ever known, he feels his loss keenly. He's forced to live with the DA
who changed his living arrangements, supposedly for his own good.
(The only redeeming grace is that his best friend, Zoey, is the DA's
stepdaughter.). He lives for the moments he can be reunited with his
behind bars family.
Sadly the unique living arrangement Perry has enjoyed may end up
costing his mother in the form of more time behind bars. The DA has
it in his head that something has gone badly wrong and somebody must
pay for this.
Can a middle school kid find a way to right this wrong through a
school research project?
Read the book and find out.
On a personal note, Pastor Lorna gave me a treasure for my museum of
natural objects from around the world--a stone from Berring Strait in
Alaska.
A great big shout out goes out to kids with parents in prison and
folks working to strengthen their relationships with their
incarcerated moms and dads.
jules hathaway


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