Spitting Image

April 21, 2003
Set in a small town in Beulah County, Ky., in 1967, Crum's involving first novel unfolds through the perspective of a fiesty, thoroughly appealing 12-year-old narrator. Jessie lives with her single mother and spends much of her time with contemplative Robert and his endearingly eccentric four-year-old brother, Baby Blue. Soon after the story opens, the three meet Miss Woodruff, a kind VISTA worker who has come to the economically depressed area as a soldier in President Johnson's War on Poverty. Jessie, engaged in a constant struggle to stay out of trouble ("Jessie, Dickie may really rile you up good, but you've got to stop using your fists to make a point," a sympathetic neighbor tells her), tackles other dilemmas as well. The heroine is determined to discover who her father is, raise money to help Robert get the new eyeglasses he desperately needs and to "figure out... how to get a nicer grandmother how to control my temper as I'd promised Mama over and over that I would." The ways in which she achieves her goals make for engrossing reading, and the catalysts frequently come in the form of the novel's darker personalities, including Robert's alcoholic father, mean-spirited Dickie and his sinister dad. Some difficult themes make this more appropriate for mature readers. Through Jessie's authentic, resounding voice, the author ably balances the humorous and the heart-wrenching as she presents an affecting portrait of memorable characters in trying times. Ages 9-13.

Starred review from April 1, 2003
Gr 5-8-With a devotion to justice and a quick temper, Jessie Bovey, 12, has been known to indulge in fisticuffs with those who insult her or her friends. Born "out of wedlock," she feels secure in the love of her mother, yet wonders why she won't tell her anything about her father. While her grandmother, the "old biddy," seems to pick on her, Lester, the oldest member of their small community, holds her in warm regard just as she is. Excitement arrives when Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty brings a VISTA volunteer to her small Kentucky town and Baby Blue, Jessie's friend Robert's developmentally delayed younger brother, might get to go to something called Head Start. Innocently, Jessie assists reporters and photographers and is mortified when they grab national attention by focusing only on the worst aspects of her community and dearest friends. When a huge poisonous snake is set loose on her and Baby Blue, her grandmother coolly executes a superb rescue. As the story comes to a close, Jessie has learned who her father was and of violence in her mother's life, and she seems to be getting some control of her temper. Spitting Image contains as much cultural truth as Ruth White's Belle Prater's Boy (Farrar, 1996), but in contrast is narrated by a charmingly unpolished character looking from the point of view of the working poor. Truly memorable characters abound, and moonshining, snake handling, a rape 13 years earlier, and racial discord are knitted together in an absorbing plot with an uplifting ending. A remarkable first novel.-Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY

Copyright 2003 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2003
Gr. 5-8. Twelve-year-old Jessie feels very much at home with her loving, single-parent mom in their small, close-knit Kentucky community in 1967, and she is proud to act as guide to Miss Woodruff, the kind VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) worker who comes to help as part of the president's War on Poverty. But when Miss Woodruff brings the national press to town, they get things wrong, and the local people are humiliated by the images of the "rural poor." Told from Jessie's viewpoint, this first novel starts off very slowly as Jessie interacts with all the people she knows. But author Crum is Kentucky born, and without sentimentality she does a great job of humanizing the backwoods stereotypes, even as she's honest about the hardscrabble poverty; the problems with unemployment, alcoholism, racism, and family abuse; and the value of the national social programs, such as Head Start. Best of all, though, is Jessie's family story. Woven in with all the local color details is the compelling drama of her search for her father, told with truth, tears, laughter, and real surprise.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)