Can't Get There from Here

April 26, 2004
Strasser's (Give a Boy a Gun
) largely bleak novel centers on a group of homeless teens attempting to survive on the streets of New York City during a frigid winter. Several don't make it, victims of alcohol poisoning, strangulation or suicide. Narrator Maybe (wont to answer questions with that noncommittal word) escaped from an abusive home to join what she calls "an asphalt tribe that roamed the streets searching for food and shelter." Maybe's character gradually comes into focus and, as it does, Strasser reveals her perception of the dead-end life around her. Musing on the pain that one of her foundering friends feels, Maybe concludes, "It was a pain from inside. The pain of this cold, hungry, dirty life where nobody cared whether you lived or died. Where you were not even a name." However, the author does not delineate many of the other street urchins' characters. This season's The Blue Mirror
by Kathe Koja and Ineke Holtjwik's Asphalt Angels
paint a more realistic picture of life on the streets and the ways in which homeless kids can be exploited by others and by each other. For Maybe and for Tears, a 12-year-old who left home when her mother refused to believe that the girl's stepfather was sexually abusing her, there are hopeful futures—thanks to the intervention of a caring librarian. But repetitive scenes and dialogue at times stall the pace of the narrative and weaken its impact. Ages 12-up.

March 1, 2004
Gr 7 Up-A surrogate family of homeless teens lives on the streets of New York City, and the bleakness of their lives is clear early on when Country Club dies of "liver failure due to acute alcohol poisoning." His brief life is summarized in a one-page dossierlike format that immediately precedes the narrative description of his death. These clinical dossiers recur, like a premonition, as one by one this ragtag "family" disintegrates. But first, readers meet Maggot; Rainbow; beautiful, HIV-positive 2Moro; her club-hopping, sexually amorphous friend Jewel; the protagonist/narrator Maybe; and Tears, the newest, and, at 12 years of age, youngest member of the group. Gradually revealed are the physical and psychological scars that marked their paths to the police sweeps, illness, drugs, and destitution that litter their lives. Also made clear is the fact that these teens reject many offers of help, but find that the street looks better than the horrors from which they've fled. A kindly librarian, Anthony, becomes the hero, reuniting Tears with her grandparents and offering the possibility of a safe future to Maybe. While the events described in this cautionary tale are shocking, the language is not, making these all-too-real problems accessible to a wide readership. More sanitized than E. R. Frank's America (Atheneum, 2002), Han Nolan's Born Blue (Harcourt, 2001), or Adam Rapp's 33 Snowfish (Candlewick, 2003), this is nevertheless a powerful and disturbing look at the downward spiral of despair that remains too common for too many teens.-Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2004
Gr. 7-12. She calls herself Maybe. Thrown out by her abusive mom, she struggles to survive on the streets of New York with homeless teens who become a family in the asphalt jungle. They try to care for one another, but it doesn't help much. They beg and forage for food. Maybe knows some of them work as prostitutes and deal drugs. One or two do find loving homes, but most will die--from AIDS, violence, exposure, suicide. Without sentimentality or exploitation, Maybe's disturbing first-person narrative lets readers know exactly what it's like to live without shelter, huddling in nests of rags, newspapers, and plastic bags. In one vivid chapter, Maybe and her friend enjoy hot-water luxury in the library bathroom, until a brutal security guard makes the nude girls clean the place before throwing them out. Some adults are kind, including a librarian, and with his help, Maybe might make it in a youth home. Maybe. A story about people that we pretend don't exist; Strasser makes us know them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)