Mighty Inside

Juvenile fiction 

"Melvin Robinson lay in the bottom of the bunk bed he'd been sharing with his older brother, Chuck, for almost all of his thirteen years.  In one week, he thought, I'm dead meat."

     Melvin, protagonist of Sundee Frazier's Mighty Inside, dreads starting high school.  He has a really bad stutter that marks him as different when he struggles to speak.  Things that are simple for most of us, like introducing ourselves, are major challenges.  This makes him a bully target.  Popular football player Chuck has announced that he won't intervene if Melvin gets picked on.

     But that's not the only challenge that Melvin is up against.

     "So it was appropriate to talk about the atomic bomb that killed a hundred thousand Japanese and it was appropriate to talk about the annihilation of Jews in World War II, but they couldn't talk about the murder of one teenaged boy in the United States of America.

     He was our age! Melvin wanted to shout.  He was a kid, just like us."

     The year is 1955.  Emmitt Till's death is new news.  While some people in Melvin's hometown of Spokane, Washington dismiss racism as something that happens in the South, Melvin is learning that it's also uncomfortably close to home, especially when he discovers part of his family's history.

     As you'll learn in the author's note, Frazier based this powerful coming of age narrative on her own family's story.

On a purrrsonal note, well today is the equinox, the beginning of calendar spring.  And it was a warm, sunny day.  But people who live in Maine and other of the colder states better not put away those snow shovels yet.  We're almost certain to get slammed with at least one more storm before we're done with winter.  (Jules)

So when are the birds migrating back?  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to people who bring up topics not considered appropriate.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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