The Black Kids

The Black Kids

YA fiction
"First, a memory: The hillside set ablaze, the fire playing a game of
hopscotch across the canyon. The air smelled like a campfire, and the
sky was a palette of smudged eye shadow. A fireman, lethargic and
ruddy, walked from door to door with a practiced calm, warning people
there was a chance they'd have to evacuate."
As you must know I search diligently to find the best books to
introduce you to. Pairing the skills of a reference librarian's
daughter and the reach of the Internet, I tend to do pretty well. But
some of the most awesome volumes I get my hands on appear out of thin
air as gifts or loans. Christina Hammonds Reed's The Black Kids was a
Mother's Day gift from my older daughter, Amber, and her husband, Brian.
The year is 1992. Four police officers are on trial for the
beating of Rodney King. Much of Los Angeles is closely watching the
trial, fearful of what the verdict can lead to...
...But not Ashley, Reed's protagonist. She's finishing high
school, clearly in the grip of senioritis. She and her chums are
cutting a lot of classes to play at beach or pool.
About these besties. Ashley is Black; they are not. They've
been friends for the most part since early childhood. Most of the
time race doesn't seem to matter. But sometimes Ashley is torn
between determination to not be the odd one out when her friends
decide on a risky course of action and awareness that if they're
caught her Blackness won't offer the same protections as their
whiteness in close encounters of the police kind.
Ashley holds an awkward place in her nuclear family. Her
parents are very much into maintaining the prefect family image that
her older sister, Jo, an impulsive, angry, politically extreme near
stranger, is constantly endangering. Ashley feels that her mom and
dad value her solely for her playing by the rules and never giving
them a moment of trouble. Not that she's been around them all that
much. Her immigrant nanny, Lucia, has basically brought her up.
Then the verdict comes in. Much of the city goes up in flames.
Looters are ransacking businesses, including her uncle's vacuum
cleaner repair shop, his inheritance from his mother. The police are
nowhere to be seen. Jo is out in the middle of all the rioting,
taking off without even telling her new husband her intentions.
On the homefront Ashley's world is falling apart around her.
She has to run interference between Jo and their parents. Her Mom
decides to turn Jo's room into a guest room even though they already
have one. With an offhand comment she starts a rumor that gets a
popular Black scholarship suspended. Old friends turn out to be not
so reliable while newer ones are bastions of support.
If you want to read a truly engaging coming of age when life
seems to be going up in flames narrative you can't do better than The
Black Kids.
On a purrrsonal note, I have a parable from my hospital stay: the
miracle of the books. Before I went in one of my big time fears was
being in a hospital with no books. I found myself in that situation.
The hospital didn't even have carts of mysteries, westerns, and
romances like hospitals did in the old days. But friends and family
members went through their books and picked out ones they thought I'd
enjoy. My library librarians put together a lending package. By the
time I was lucid enough to read there were bags and stacks of
beautiful books. The moral of the story: the people who really know
you have your back. (Jules)
She does love her books. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to all who shared books with me.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway



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