Harry Sue Clotkin is tough. Her mom's in the slammer and she wants to get there too, as fast as possible, so they can be together. But it's not so easy to become a juvenile delinquent when you've got a tender heart.
Harry Sue's got her hands full caring for the crumb-snatchers who take up her afternoons at the day care center, and spending time with her best friend Homer, a quadriplegic who sees life from a skylight in the roof of his tree house. When Harry Sue finds an unlikely confidante in her new art teacher, her ambitions toward a life of crime are sidelined as she comes to a deeper understanding about her past--and future.
Sue Stauffacher has once again crafted a fast-paced middle-grade novel filled with quirky but lovable characters, a narrator impossible to ignore, a completely original plot, and a whole lot of redemption.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpts
Chapter 1...
Harriet Susan Clotkin is not the sort of name you'd imagine for the first lady president of the United States. That's just fine by me, as I never had designs on running for political office but planned instead on following in the family tradition: a career of incarceration. As soon as I was old enough, I was headed for the joint. First I had to have the required fourteen to sixteen years of rotten childhood. So far, I had only served eleven years and change. Time was running out on my becoming a juvenile delinquent. The really impressive cons started their rap sheets by nine or ten. Unfortunately, I had a heart condition that needed fixing before I could begin a serious crime spree. Yes, Fish, my heart was as lumpy and soft as a rotten tomato. I couldn't stand to see things hurt, especially anything weak and defenseless. Watching Jolly Roger and his road dogs pull the legs off a spider made me grind my teeth down worse than if I slept with a mouth full of sandpaper. When those boys clicked the little kids on the bus, I had to sit on my hands just to keep from breaking theirs. In the joint, where I was headed, I'd need a heart filled with cement and covered in riveted steel. I was working on it. But so far, I wasn't making much progress. Now, there's a thing or two you need to know if you want to do time with Harry Sue. First off, you got to keep it real. Most everybody I know, they just see what they want to see. Aside from my road dogs, the people I have to deal with--including my teacher, Ms. Lanier, and that bunch over at Granny's Lap--they just see my mask. It's like my favorite book, The Wizard of Oz, which just so happens to be the last one my mom read to me before she was sent up. Most people, they have only ever seen the movie. But me, I read the book. Twenty-seven times. If you didn't read the book, then you think it's all about singing and rainbows and skipping down the Yellow Brick Road. You don't know anything about the real story. In the real story, those horrible winged monkeys help Dorothy. They do! And the Tin Man murders forty wolves, and when Dorothy gets to Oz, the Munchkins think she's signifying because her dress has white in it and that's the color of witches. There's monsters in that book whose names you can't even pronounce right. And they're not in any dictionary, either, because I checked. There's so much they don't tell you in the movie. And people don't think to ask afterward. They just take what they see as the real story. Me, I'm a little like Dorothy myself, searching for my own Aunt Em. I don't care where I have to live when I find her. It's been six long years since I set eyes on my mom. Some days, it feels like she's as far away as Oz is from Kansas and like I'll never see her again. In the real story, they don't have any of that hokey-pokey crap where Aunt Em calls out, "Dorothy! Dorothy! We're looking for you!" from the magic crystal ball. The real story is more like my life. You have to wonder what Aunt Em is up to while Dorothy's trying to get out of Oz. Is she going through the motions, milking the cows and shucking the corn? Or is she wrung out with grief, sitting paralyzed on the back step, her eyes fixed on the flat line of horizon? Chapter 2 Life at Trench Vista Elementary School was something like doing time. There was "the yard," what the principal, Mr. Hernandez, liked to call the courtyard. It sat next to a playground that pushed up against the wet edges of Marshfield's water treatment plant. On days with a northeasterly wind, we were marched to the playground to play kickball, freeze tag, and other games designed to use up our energy. But on days with a southeasterly wind, when the...
Reviews
Kirkus Review, starred...
"Written with humor and heart, this is intricately plotted and full of unlikely but charming coincidences and characters of endearing eccentricity"
About the Author
Sue Stauffacher is a professional journalist and has been writing a children's book review column for ten years. The author lives in Grand Rapids, MI.
