Where Do You Stay?

February 21, 2011
Eleven-year-old Jerome narrates his feelings of displacement and loss following his single mother's long illness and death, as well as his subsequent move into his cousins' house. In conversations that read like prose poems, he reveals his conflicted feelings toward his aunt, who plans to adopt him; the cousins who both resent and desire his presence; and his new residence, which does not feel like home because it has no piano. Painful memories of his mother's decline and the economic stressors that accompany her death confuse Jerome, while a connection with Mr. Willie, a neighborhood fixture who sleeps in a carriage house beside an empty mansion and survives by performing odd jobs, provides a grounding touchstone. By encouraging Jerome to garden and fix up abandoned buildings, Mr. Willie, also a musician, helps keep alive Jerome's hope that music will return to his life. In short chapters of lyrical prose, Cheng (Only One Year) provides a moving tribute to a multigenerational community's ability to sustain and recreate itself in times of change through resilience, hard work, and a commitment to beauty and kindness. Ages 8–12.

May 1, 2011

Gr 5-7-Jerome is living with his aunt and her family after the death of his mother. The sixth grader is processing his loss while also adjusting to a new family life with older cousin Damon, who resents his presence, and younger cousin Monte. Jerome meets Mr. Willie, an older man squatting in the carriage house of an abandoned mansion in the neighborhood, and the two strike up a friendship over a shared love for piano playing. Jerome has someone to talk to about his mother and slowly comes to terms with life in his adoptive family. This short novel captures the fledgling relationship and the difficulties in communication that can occur. The parallel between Mr. Willie's homelessness and Jerome's emotional homelessness are touching as the two go about creating a garden together. Recollections of his mother's teachings are shown in italics and are spot-on in portraying the world through the 11-year-old's eyes.-Shawna Sherman, Hayward Public Library, CA

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011

From the author of Where the Steps Were (2008) comes this story of loss and healing through friendship, family and music. After his mother's brief illness and death from cancer, Jerome Mason, 11, is taken in by her sister's family. Their inner-city neighborhood is located across Cincinnati from Jerome's old home, and Aunt Geneva has sold the piano--central to Jerome's life with Mama and that he misses desperately--to help pay for his upbringing. Rootless and lost, Jerome first resists Aunt Geneva's caring gestures and efforts to integrate him into her family. He finds his cousins Damon, 15, mean and Monte, 10, a needy nuisance. Only Mr. Willie, the elderly man who "stays" in the carriage house of a nearby derelict mansion and does odd jobs, reaches Jerome's heart. Like Mama and Jerome, he plays the piano; as a child he took lessons at the mansion. Perhaps the piano is still there, but before they can find out, Mr. Willie disappears and the house is sold. In spare, pared-down language that makes masterful use of elision, Jerome's voice convinces and moves readers without falling into sentimentality. While the rather abrupt ending leaves unanswered questions, especially about Damon and Mr. Willie, Jerome himself makes a fully realized, deeply sympathetic protagonist. (Fiction. 8-12)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2011
Grades 4-7 After his mothers death, 11-year-old Jerome moves across town to live with his aunt, Miss Geneva, and her sons: younger, clingy Monte and older, angry Damon. Escaping the newness and tension with his relatives, Jerome takes refuge with elderly Mr. Willie, who lives in an abandoned carriage house behind an empty mansion down the block. Jerome misses the piano he had to leave behind at his old house, and as he helps Mr. Willie with odd jobs around the crumbling estate, he finds in his new friend a fellow music lover and a kind listener who gives him space to grieve. As in Where the Steps Were (2008), Cheng writes about the people and places of her Ohio childhood in a quiet, poetic story that resonates with authentic voices, here belonging mostly to African American characters. In eloquent, accessible language filled with the interior thoughts Jerome wishes he could say out loud, Cheng captures a childs uneven passage from the impossible shock of losing his mother to his gradual reentry into life without her.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)