If I Grow Up
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In the Frederick Douglass Project where DeShawn lives, daily life is ruled by drugs and gang violence. Dropping out of school and joining a gang is the norm and every kid knows someone who's died. Gunshots ring out on a regular basis.
DeShawn is smart enough to know he should stay in school and keep away from the gangs. But while his friends have drug money to buy anything they want, DeShawn's family can barely afford food for the month. How can he stick to his principles when his family is hungry?
In this gritty novel about growing up in the inner-city projects, award-winning author Todd Strasser opens a window into the life of a teenager struggling with right and wrong under the ever-present shadow of gangs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this superficially compelling but heavy-handed book about gang culture, narrator DeShawn faces tough circumstances and limited choices. Readers first meet DeShawn as a smart 12-year-old with potential; four years later, he is a gang member in charge of operations at his housing project. While the story has a Law and Order type drama, it also runs on clich : the determined grandmother, the star-crossed love, the jealous second-in-command, the concerned cop and the teacher who reaches out knowing his offer will be rejected. The plot serves the author's agenda, which Strasser (Give a Boy a Gun) puts in plain sight: he opens each section with a statistic plus a rap lyric, and his foreword and last chapter argue that "significant numbers of American citizens mostly minorities, and many living in impoverished inner-city areas are doomed to fail." Given that Strasser's foreword explicitly defines himself and his audience as more privileged than his characters ("we forget that millions of inner-city denizens are just like us"), it's hard to escape the feeling that his story is more well-meaning than authentic. Ages 12 up.
