Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Read time- 3 hrs 

AR STATS 

READING QUIZZES 

(R) Recommended
(C) Content- Guns, Violence, Hate Crimes, Racism

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This is a powerful story in its own right, but for the weight of the racial-violence and social issues between the pages, it's important for the young reader to have a trusted guide. (See Other Notes)
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Did They Really Read the Book?

• Story is told from Jerome's Point of View (PoV)
• Jerome
•  lives in a multi-generational home w/ Grandmother as the respected matriarch
• is a good student, quiet, and caring big brother to his sister (Kim)
• A new student (Carlos) moves from San Antonio and is introduced to Jerome's class
• Jerome reluctantly befriends him
• Jerome felt that when you're someone's friend, you're someone's alliance when conflict breaks out...and he didn't want the obligation
• Jerome and Carlos eat lunch that first day together, behind locked stall doors, in the upstairs school bathroom
• 3 bullies kick open the stall door and beat up Carlos
• Carlos gets up and pulls a gun from his waistband, threatening the bullies
• Jerome is scared at the sight of the gun and regrets his decision to be friends with Carlos
• In private, Carlos reveals it's a fake plastic gun and at the end of the day gives it to Jerome to take home and role play Zombie hunter
• A 911 call dispatches two police officers to the park where Jerome is playing with the plastic gun
• Jerome is startled at the sound of a fast approaching car and starts to run away
• Approaching the scene and still in his car, one officer shoots Jerome (who's running away)
• Neither officer nor partner, now standing over Jerome's body, administer life saving treatment
• Jerome dies before the ambulance arrives
• Jerome (Dead) grieves for himself, struggles with his death, and its impact on his family
• He's a ghost boy"
• Jerome sees the Officer's daughter, Sarah, at the preliminary hearing and she sees him
• Jerome talks to her- has contempt in his narrative for her innocence and privilege
• Sarah feels torn and uncertain, questions the honesty behind her Dad's misjudgment, and wonders how she can help
• Jerome also sees another "ghost boy" with Sarah
• Later learns his name is Emmett Till 
• An African American teenager from Chicago, who in 1955, was ***GRAPHIC*** lynched for his (misrepresented*) interaction with a white women.
• Court ultimately ruled insufficient evidence to pursue a legal case against Sarah's Dad
• Sarah finds her avenue to advocate for change by standing up a social-justice website and teaching others about disparate legal outcomes between races
• Jerome finds peace with his death, with Sarah, and her Dad
• but leaves to linger the understanding that his death, those deaths that have followed his, and those deaths still to be counted, demonstrate our collective weakness

There were two moments at the end of the book that brought Yours Truly to tears...(and that's ok...)

1.  Carlos asking Jerome (Dead) for forgiveness is an emotional exchange. It's the kind of interaction between two boys that's nearly muted in kid's literature.  
2. Sarah's attempt to rekindle a fading relationship with her Dad is described so delicately that you find yourself trying to look away out of respect--as if an unintended observer, during an intimate moment of family healing.

OTHER NOTES

There are four discussions that seem imperative to address with my little readers: Civil Rights, Gun Safety, Social Disparity, Cultural Insights.

Civil Rights

Emmett's death (and his family's intention to have us all bear witness with an open casket) gave life to the Civil Rights Movement in a visceral way that spanned the Mason Dixon line (figurative reference to the cultural divide)

Jerome's death is descriptive and full of sensory triggers-it's remorseful and tragic.

The account of Emmett's death in the book is relentless and factually gruesome; it's so unsettling and the brutality so unfathomable by today's standards, that I wonder if an 8 yr old should be introduced the physical limitations of a human body under torture as were recounted by the author.

Gun Safety

Fake and plastic guns still have real implications.

My yahoos were introduced to a gun safety campaign a while back called Eddie Eagle. "Stop, Don't Touch, Run Away, Tell an Grown Up..." The awareness program is for younger kids, K-3rd Grade, but keep in mind that the books is also written at the 3rd grade level 

My emphasis is that even toy guns don't belong at school. Peer pressure is another item of discussion since Carlos insisted Jerome take the gun to play with. Again, all four step of Eddie Eagle "Stop, Don't Touch, Run Away, Tell an Grown Up..." would have prevented Jerome from at least having possession of the gun.

Social Disparity

However real or fictitious the story line, these kinds of schools and circumstance exist.

Jerome's school was tough; he feared for his life going to/from school, worried about gangs, drive-by's, drug dealers, and was fearful of police officers.  However real or fictitious the story may have been, those kinds of schools and circumstance exist.  My personal discussion with the kiddos is a question of where safety and opportunity are rights or a privileges.

Cultural Insight

Our successes are substantiated and propagated in other's perception of our situation

Scholars have published ethnographic papers on perceived symbols of status and it's so interesting to hear Jerome (and the Author who birthed him) call out several perceived characteristics of status when describing Sarah's privilege and circumstance: a big bedroom, book shelf  as "decoration", a two-car garage, having a front and back yard, sidewalks with no cracks, streets with lights...

It's a meaningful observation to emphasize with my kids... Do people without sidewalks/streetlamps recognize--or acknowledge--their disposition? It transitions well into a conversation about the broken window theory 

EXTRA'S

Song

Bob Dylan's song,  Death of Emmett Till, is skillfully crafted, poignant, and hopeful for change.

"This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man

That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.

But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,

We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live."

 -Bob Dylan

Book*

A recently publish book by Historian, Timothy Tyson, offers new accounts from the accuser, Carolyn Brady that make this horrific story all the more tragic and senseless.





-DRIF