Crenshaw

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The subject of this book surprised me. The main character is from a very poor family who actually lived in their car for 14 weeks. At the time of the novel the family is being evicted from the apartment they moved to after living in their car. The boy is often hungry. He talks several times of keeping his family's situation a secret from his friends. As a coping mechanism he has an imaginary cat. Overall I think this is a fantastic story that allows children to expand their views on life situations. However, the execution is a little difficult because the author chose to jump back and forth in time with numerous flashbacks. Several times I even became confused as to whether something was happening now or Jackson was remembering a previous time. If I was confused I can only imagine how confused a younger reader might be. We listened to the book on audio CD and I made notes from a hard copy. I did not notice anything different in the typeface to help distinguish the time periods. One other plus to this book is that it has short chapters. Sometimes that can be a motivational tool to keep reading, "just one more chapter" like eating just one more potato chip and then suddenly the whole bag is gone.

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Round 2 Questions