Common Sense Note
Parents should know that there is lots of difficult content -- drugs, child abuse and neglect, incarcerated parents, racism, see Content notes for details -- but none of it is graphic and it is mostly told with a certain emotional detachment.
That same difficult content provides lots to talk about, as well as a wealth of other issues and themes: Harry Sue's determination to get thrown in jail so she can find her mother, and why she is unable to accomplish this, Anna's bizarre physical therapy methods, convict lingo, the Wizard of Oz connection, and lots more.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
The best fiction elevates the human condition into something transcendent. Harry Sue is mired in the muck of life: there's nothing cute or pretty or sentimental about her (despite what that horrendous cover might imply). She deliberately talks like the convict she wants to become, addresses the reader as "Fish" (joint jive for a new prisoner), and deals with problems no child should face with levelheaded, street-smart, common sense, leavened with a broad streak of humor.
But author Sue Stauffacher, who has worked with incarcerated mothers, lifts this gritty story out of the mire with wit, style, and emotion. She's a conette who knows the backstory, and doesn't go for the obvious tears, instead treating terrible events with a light touch and then sucker-punching the reader in unexpected places. The complex tapestry she weaves includes a wealth of intriguing secondary characters, all with their own backstories, a gang of eccentric toddlers doing time in Granny's daycare, and a way of paralleling her story with Oz and with prison life that adds extra emotional depth. This is a highly original tour de force, one that lingers long in the memory, bears multiple readings, and provides grist for many discussions.
From the Book:
That is the kind of detail Homer loves because it shows how everything, every action, affects what comes after. Homer likes to say if my dad had chosen baseball over basketball, he'd have to call some other dog his best friend, for I would be long gone from this world.
Because he was a basketball player, my father squished me into a ball and launched me out the window when his instincts took over. His anger was like rocket fuel, enough to catapult me into the branches of an elm tree. See, an elm tree is shaped like a vase, so instead of dropping seven stories to the brick patio, I began a long, slow-motion game of pinball, rolling toward the center of the tree. This is another detail Homer loves, because if it had been an oak tree, well, we've already touched on that possibility.
Plot Summary:
Ignore the horribly mismatched cover that makes this look like Little Orphan Annie: Harry Sue is living through the trials of Job. Both of her parents were put in jail after her drunken father threw her out of a seventh floor window and her mother was caught manufacturing crank. She has been sent to live with her vicious and abusive grandmother, who runs a daycare center where Harry Sue tries to protect the toddler inmates. Her best friend was paralyzed in a swimming accident. And Harry Sue wants to commit a crime big enough to get her sent to jail with her mom, while in the meantime learning to talk and act like a "conette."
But so far her plans to toughen up and develop "a heart filled with cement and covered in riveted steel" aren't going too well. And just like the heroine of her favorite book (not movie!), The Wizard of Oz, she has a long way to go before she can discover what she always knew. Includes glossary of convict lingo.
Related Books:
Other Books by Sue Stauffacher
Donuthead
If You Like This, Try:
The Last Payback by James VanOosting
Holes by Louis Sachar
More Parents in Jail
A Kind of Thief by Vivien Alcock
Sounder by William H. Armstrong
Breaking Out by Barthe DeClements
Monkey See, Monkey Do by Barthe DeClements
What Daddy Did by Neal Shusterman
Related Websites
Sue Stauffacher's Website
Family and Corrections Network
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Sexual ContentSeveral mentions of boobs, Harry Sue makes fake breasts, seeing underwear. |
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ViolenceA child is thrown out a window, it's implied that Granny is abusive to her daycare charges, a murder is mentioned, a baby seems to have drowned in a tub, a boy is crippled in an accident, another accident puts Harry Sue in the hospital. |
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LanguageMild expletives such as "crap" and "butt." |
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Social BehaviorBabies and toddlers are left unattended in daycare, teens drop out of school, Granny is a raving racist, Harry Sue tries to be bad but can't quite manage it. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoA drunk father, a mother who makes, uses, and sells crystal meth, cocaine is mentioned, teens smoke, toddlers are given cold medicine to keep them quiet, Harry Sue tells a version of Red Riding Hood in which Red drinks, Granny smokes cigars. |
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