Moonwalking

Pie's mother is Puerto Rican, his absent father a Black man from Congo. JJ's White father and grandparents immigrated to the U.S. when his father was 12. Both Polish and Puerto Rican food, culture, and language are important to the story. Pie is frequently on the receiving end of racist behavior, as JJ sees when a teacher gives him an A+, gives Pie (whose paper is much better) a C, and tells JJ "you got your A+, what's the problem?" JJ's father is racist and doesn't want him hanging out with Pie, but JJ's grandmother goes out of her way to be kind to him. Pie's blond, blue-eyed little sister is determined to be a breakdancer. A teen character is ostracized by family members because she's in a lesbian relationship. As co-author Lyn Miller-Elliot observes in the afterword, today JJ would probably be considered on the autism spectrum, but in 1982 he's a bullied "weird kid," whose experiences with loud noises, flashing lights, and other overwhelming sensory input are vividly described.

Physical and emotional violence are a constant low-level presence that occasionally explodes as kids get beaten up by bullying kids, their parents and substitute parents knock them around (sometimes for things they didn't do, not that they get any apology...), adults are beaten down by circumstance to a state of hopelessness, and in turn lash out at the vulnerable ones in their lives. An adult family friend punches a kid's stepfather for hitting the kid, and tells him he's dead if he ever lays hands on the kid again. JJ describes in detail a Basquiat painting in which a terrified goat is surrounded by knives, and Pie describes another in which a friend of Basquiat is being beaten to death by cops shown as pink pigs. In the past, a teen character important to Pie is fatally shot on the street.

Pie's mother has two children with different fathers, one of whom is her current boyfriend. Pie says of his father, seen only in a battered Polaroid, "nothing in his face in that moment suggests/ he's the type of dude to make a baby/ and then bounce but he did." JJ's older sister, a senior in high school, is in a lesbian relationship with her longtime BFF, which JJ discovers when he stumbles on them kissing. Pie has a crush on a girl his age -- and keeps it to himself so his pals don't make comments about her.

Occasional "crap," "booty," Insults flung in several languages, and Pie's buttons are pushed when a bully calls his mom "loca" ("crazy").

One of Pie's relatives died of a drug overdose after coming home from the Vietnam war. Junkies and drunks are part of the neighborhood scene. Pie says, "little kids shouldn't have to see that mess/ sometimes I get so mad I feel/ like I'm about to explode." The punk zine Sniffing Glue gets a mention as the source for JJ's favorite Joe Strummer quote.

Parents need to know that betrayal, abandonment, and violence (physical and emotional) -- to say nothing of misunderstanding -- are a constant theme in Moonwalking and the frequent fate of the two middle-school protagonists of this pounding, angry, uneasy verse tale set in 1982 Brooklyn. Pierre, who goes by Pie and whose narrative is written by Zetta Elliott (Dragons in a Bag), is a biracial, brilliant Puerto Rican kid whose Black father from Congo disappeared before he was born and whose mother is waging a losing battle with mental illness. JJ, a White, self-described "weird kid" whose parents immigrated from Poland and lost everything in the air traffic controllers' strike, is written by Lyn Miller-Lachmann (She Persisted: Temple Grandin), who notes that today JJ would probably be considered on the autism spectrum. They're both beaten by bullying kids, adults, and a life that makes no sense. But they bond, warily, over art, as Pie's an aspiring graffiti artist and JJ a would-be punk rocker. There's death, racism, and prejudice everywhere you turn, with plenty of bad example from adults whose own lives are out of control so they lash out at others. There are also some wise, kind, souls, particularly Pie's aunt, JJ's grandmother, and the teacher who takes both boys under her wing and opens the world of art to them -- but it's not clear whether that will be enough.