MG Book Review: Just Like Jackie by Lindsey Stoddard

Just Like Jackie by Lindsey Stoddard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A repost of my review on Kidliterati 


Robinson Hart isn’t a baby robin. She’s the only person to stand up to Alex Carter, the biggest bully in fifth-grade, and he’d better watch his mouth. Grandpa taught her how to seal transmission fluid, but nothing’s going to seal Alex’s mouth or the bloody nose she just gave him. “Robbie” Robinson’s a spitfire and a darn good baseball player. Her best friend Derrick, the opposite of everything she is, runs to her aid on the schoolyard, proclaiming it’s not her fault. “That’s why people need moms, or they end up like her,” Alex Baby Carter cries in defense.

Robinson’s never known her mother or father. All she’s had is Grandpa even if people stare, wondering how they could be related. He’s a black man, and she’s white, he raised her and named her after Jackie Robinson. Now it’s she, who’s taking care of him. Grandpa’s showing signs of Alzheimer’s, and Robbie hates when he’s called into school, on days she’s forgotten to count to ten or read baseball stats in her head to calm down. Whenever I’m bad he forgets more.

Robbie’s wants suspension, then she can help Grandpa in the garage all day, every day for the rest of her life. She’s really good at it, good thing because Grandpa’s forgetting his words and his memory gets tired, and she can’t have anyone wondering if he’s unfit to raise a child. She’s his right-hand and Harold, who’s practicing to be a dad while awaiting an adoption with his partner Paul, is Grandpa’s left-hand in the garage. She knows everything about repairing cars and tapping sugar maple trees.

When her fifth-grade class is given a family tree assignment. Robbie doesn’t know her mother’s name or anything about her family, and her grandfather’s quickly forgetting everything. Robbie needs to find out. Gloria, the guidance counselor, invites a group to discuss their emotions and work on the family tree project, but there’s no way Robbie’s having any of it. Especially since Gloria invited the bully, Alex Carter into the group.

A heartfelt and realistic depiction of living with someone with Alzheimer’s disease, it’s particularly painful reading how a child deals with her grandfather’s struggle. A beautifully written book, with great sensitivity, along with fantastic baseball and mechanic metaphors, we also learn a little about tapping sugar maples in Vermont. And what it looks like when we misjudge others and the lives they live, or the suffering we know nothing about, and then discovering your archenemy might have a heart after all.

Suggested for grade level: 3-7. A moving and powerful reading experience.





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My Response to “Diversity is not our Strength” tweet by Steve King (R-Iowa)

“It’s a small world after all … “ the song went as my boat ride passed children of all ethnicities, holding hands across the world at Walt Disney. It was Diversity. Inclusivity. Love. 

It's a Small World Walt Disney 

My mother, an immigrant from Greece, had become single by the time we moved to Florida. I was 8-years-old, my brother three years younger, and she had little help from anyone aside from friends. She taught belly dancing, and her friends from Syria, Turkey, or Lebanon turned our place into the United Nations. Memories of whirling dervishes, their laughter, and joy shared among these women, echoes in my heart and memory. They found each other in an otherwise isolated existence living in Central Florida and formed bonds to last years.

This was the early 80’s, my mother was tall and beautiful in a striking way. Exotic. She stuck out of every crowd. Her broken English I never noticed until someone pointed it out, or if I were away a while I’d hear it.

At 13-years-old, we moved to Key West after my mother married her friend, Kamal, from India, and we lived there for a time. Turned out Kamal was gay. (Long story there) I have fond memories of his sister’s Tandoori Chicken, unable to sleep, but the stomachache was well worth the indulgence.

While we lived in Key West, my mother met a Cuban man, and with the help of his son, translated the passions running between them. We moved to Miami and she learned to cook arroz con pollo and café con leche. I had a new family, five brothers and a stepsister, all born in Puerto Rico. I loved learning about their cool jobs, and wild adventures. I was 15 when my stepsister told us she was gay. My oldest stepbrother was also gay, the one who explained dreams and astronomy, and understood the abstract ideas I enjoyed talking about. The youngest of my stepbrothers lived with us. Close in age, we bonded over teasing and taunting, while forced to share a home for a year, before I left for college.

This is my America. Diversity is my America. In the melting pot of New York City, I’ve found a home., and now married with children to a Jewish man.  

 Dear Steve King (R-Iowa)

 I have no trouble calling out racists or bigots. 

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

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Diversity strengthens ME! I have faith in the good people of the earth moving toward unity. #OneLove   

Anger is All Around Us.

How will we cope? 

In The Unmoving Sky, brothers Artie and Jackson have to deal with their father’s abuse of alcohol to forget their mother’s death and hide his guilt. While their father, a lieutenant, is busy forgetting he neglects his children. Something that had been going on for years. It takes a heck of a lot of earth shattering misfortune to bring him back to a place where he remembers what’s important, and his boys now 17 and 15, are the most important people in his life. His tether to the one woman he loved more than anything in the world. But he neglects them, why? 

Anger is all around us. Our society is hacking away at foundations of peace and cooperation and tolerance. Police are killing black men EVERY DAY. #BlackLivesMatter  They’re being systematically hunted down!!

It’s insane, and more insane that those in a position of power and MORAL DUTY do NOTHING!  

I moved to NYC from Florida because NYC was the melting pot of culture (here in the US) I grew up with a Greek mother and her belly dancing parties. It was often like the United Nations at our house. I love it. I love diversity in ALL its colors and ways. Diversity is healthy. It is Life. (Just like in the plant world diversity keeps the crop healthy) The USA was founded on immigrants. What the hell is going on in this country?

Why such intolerance?  

F  E   A   R   +  I G N O A N C E    = a mess 

and/or hatred, anger, feelings of unworthiness, self-pity.   Not healthy.

I’d wondered about a book I read years ago about the school system: Dumbing Us Down : The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (2002) by John Taylor Gatto, who’d spent years in the NYC public school system. A great book! I read this when my boys were younger. Our family had quite the ride dealing with the DOE in NYC, especially with my eldest son having dyslexia and struggling every day in the system. (A post for another day.)

I can’t help feeling that education is key. I wonder how much of our government wants peace at all, or want people to move out of poverty and ignorance? They strip the schools of funds, making poverty stricken teachers pick up the tab for needed school supplies. Making it harder and harder for kids to learn when the ARTS are taking out. I couldn’t believe that gym was being removed from my kids’ elementary school, only to wind up with an excess of hyper kids—who the school officials wanted to drug!!! OMG. I know when I go for a run or exercise I am fully ready to absorb information and settle down. Why do they shoot themselves in the foot like this?

Ignorance is leading us to darkness, and knowledge is one key for undoing the damage of hatred. We need to expand the minds of others. Ignorance creates fear.

Between the major media outlets supplying excessive fodder to aggrandize the unwitting public, shock and awe of war every hour of the day, whether from overseas or our backyards. It HAS TO STOP. If you or someone you love, needs help managing their anger or finding the tools to cope, there are hotlines. Here's a previous post about < anger hotlines > with links. 

And there are books! Read outside your circle of influence. Read others’ perspectives. Reading is just about the easiest way to learn and it’s affordable. You can always check out books from your awesome local library. I’ve begun downloading ebooks from Overdrive and 3M and I'm ecstatic! 

Here's a little help for those of us with white privilege can do. A very informative < post >.