I listened to this on CD as part of the required reading for this year’s Fall into Books. Is anyone else going? The main character is Frannie, an eleven year-old African-American girl growing up in NYC in the 1970’s. It brought back memories such as watching Saturday morning cartoons and the old Michael Jackson. Her older brother is deaf. There is a new boy in her school who is one of the few white students that attend. On his first day, he asks everyone to call him Jesus and so he gets nicknamed ‘the Jesus boy.’ He is strange and unknown to the other children who speculate about his family and origins. He gets picked on for being different, but Frannie gets to know him and senses an understanding between them. Her mother announces she is going to have a baby and Frannie is scared it will not survive as many of her mother’s babies also were miscarried or died as newborns. A short, entertaining snapshot of a winter season in NYC.
