Hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich, A
Author: Childress, Alice, 1920-1994
The life of a thirteen-year-old Harlem youth on his way to becoming a confirmed
heroin addict is seen from his viewpoint and from that of several people around
him.
Coward-McCann, 1973, 126p.
Kirkus Reviews An unusually honest and forceful novel, told in trenchant language
by an impressive variety of conflicted people who are involved with a thirteen
year-old heroin addict.
(Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1973)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Biographies for Young Adults - Alice Childress
Other related features:
1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
YALSA 100 Best Books (1950-2000)
2. Explore Fiction - Young Adult -> Explore Fiction -> Contemporary ->
Tales of the Cities
3. Explore Fiction - Young Adult -> Explore Fiction -> Problem Novels ->
Drugs and Alcohol
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0380001322 : Paperback - Juvenile
0606035281 : DEMCO Turtleback - Juvenile
0698202783 : Hardcover - Juvenile
1557361126 : Hardcover - Large Print
060617821X : DEMCO Turtleback - Juvenile
0698118545 : Paperback - Juvenile
0812418093 : Glued Binding
0881032549 : Glued Binding
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 081490
Rainbow Jordan
Author: Childress, Alice, 1920-1994
Her mother, her foster guardian, and 14-year-old Rainbow comment on the state
of things as she prepares to return to a foster home for yet another stay.
Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, copyright 1981, 142 p.
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Rainbow Jordan is just 14, still fiercely
devoted to her attractive 29-year-old mother Kathie, a sometime go-go dancer,
even though Kathie has gone off again and left her with the rent due. Now, the
utilities are turned off and Rainbow, as she has been during Kathie's other temporary
absences, is placed in the home of Mrs. Josephine Lamont (Miss Josie, to Rainbow),
a resolutely genteel black woman in her fifties whose husband has just left her
for another woman. As she waits for the social worker to take her to Miss Josie's,
and then waits at Miss Josie's for her mother's return, Rainbow remembers Kathy's
previous absences, her irresponsible behavior, and her doomed attempts to "be
a good mother." She remembers, too, previous visits to Miss Josie: one was
on the occasion of her first period, when Miss Josie awkwardly launched the obligatory
mother-daughter talk and ended up ("Go, you doin fine, Miss Josie,"
Rainbow encourages) advising Rainbow to "let mother nature know who's boss."
Rainbow is ready to forgo that advice during her present stay, when she resolves
reluctantly to give in to her boyfriend's demands for sex. But she is saved by
the bell--or, perhaps, by a siren, Eljay's new girlfriend--and, with Miss Josie's
support, she becomes surer and firmer in her own direction, independent of both
Eljay and her unreliable mother. The story is told mostly from Rainbow's viewpoint
but with chapters also by Kathy and Josephine, and it's one of Childress' many
virtues that all the characters command our sympathy. We meet Miss Josie as an
overly appearance-conscious middle-class priss and come to know her as a deeply
caring person, still proud at the end but disillusioned with her petty vanities.
Even Kathy, whom Rainbow must and does learn to see in a colder light, is more
a victim than a villain. This is not as strong as or as textured as J Hero Ain't
Nothin But a Sandwich (1973), but it's every bit as human.
(Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1981)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Biographies for Young Adults - Alice Childress
Other related features:
1. Awards (Best Fiction) - Children's -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
Coretta Scott King Honor Books -> Authors category -> 1982
2. Awards (Best Fiction) - Young Adult -> Best Fiction -> Literary ->
Coretta Scott King Honor Books -> Authors category -> 1982
3. Explore Fiction - Young Adult -> Explore Fiction -> Family -> Adoption
and Foster Homes
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0698205316 : Hardcover - Juvenile
0844669660 : Hardcover
0380589745 : Paperback - Juvenile
0606005609 : DEMCO Turtleback - Juvenile
0698325001 : Hardcover - Juvenile
0881032530 : Glued Binding
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• MetaMetrics, Inc.
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 077537
Short walk, A
Author: Childress, Alice, 1920-1994
Born in turn-of-the-century Charleston to a white man and Black girl, Cora James
flees to New York to escape from an impossible marriage, enjoys for a time a free
and easy life of card dealing and flirtation, and struggles to turn her dreams
into realities
Coward, 1979, 333p.
Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ Life is . . . well I heard that life is just
a short walk from cradle to the grave." That's how Bill James explains life
to his adopted child Cora in Charleston, S.C., in 1905; and this is the story
of black Cora's walk through the lowering agony, danger, and hard times in white
America up to the 1950s. To Bill on his deathbed, young Cora promises to "go
to the old slave market, say, 'That's all you gonna get, my father is the last
. . . I belong to myself.'" But, after Bill's death, Cora makes her first
great mistake: she marries oily blowfish Kojie, a man of inflated rhetoric and
greed, in order to avoid a move with her mother to a no-life rural hideaway. So
she escapes Kojie and travels to New York to join Cecil--her youthful love who,
having been tortured by white punks, went to Harlem to get into the crusade of
Marcus Garvey. The two lovers sail on one of Garvey's black-owned ships to Cuba
and back (an exotic dream-journey), they marry, and Cora bears a daughter. But
Cecil's life's blood is given totally to mismanaged black political movements,
and there's little spirit or money (though much love) left for his family. Yet
"I love him still . . . I have named him 'home.'" And Cora begins her
own Harlem career by serving at respectable refreshment-and-cards Prohibition
parties, then touring with a vaudeville troupe and managing a gambling house.
There are one or two lovers along the way, but, at the close, Cora thinks that
"No man loved me as hard as I ever loved back." Throughout, Childress
drums up robust and vital dialogue and people, a counterpointing chorus for "every
colored woman that's ever had to stand squarefooted and make her own way."
But unlike Toni Morrison, Childress does not deal with the inner convolutions
of race consciousness; Cora's rage, despair, and celebrations are up front and
downstage center -- stormy, explicit, and of a direct testimonial power.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1979)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Biographies for Young Adults - Alice Childress
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0698108442 : Hardcover
1558615326 : Paperback
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 019981
Those other people
Author: Childress, Alice, 1920-1994
Bigotry surfaces at Minitown High when a popular male teacher sexually assaults
a delinquent fifteen-year-old girl and the only witnesses are a Black boy and
a gay student teacher.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, copyright 1989, 186p.
School Library Journal Review: Gr 8 Up Racism, homophobia, and sexual molestation
are brought to the forefront in this novel. Childress highlights a three - month
period in the interconnected lives of five people considered to be outside the
mainstream of society: Jonathan Barnett, a 17-year-old homosexual; Tyrone and
Susan Tate, a brother and sister from a wealthy black family; Rex Hardy, a teacher
who has sexually molested a student; and Theodora Lynn, a teenager under psychiatric
care because she had been sexually molested as a child. Each chapter is told from
the point of view of one of these characters or several others. All of the main
characters fear having their secret side revealed, and the seemingly-accidental
molestation of Theodora by Hardy, witnessed by Jonathan and Tyrone, brings all
of these secret sides into view and into play. Society's fears and beliefs are
clearly delineated by the characters' reactions to the situations posed. Young
people's realistic reactions to having to face these types of problems in themselves
or others are skillfully outlined. Childress has presented the problems and reactions
with a competence that deserves reading. Even though the situations and setting
sometimes seem to over reach reality because of all the coincidences that draw
the characters together, Childress does present a disturbing, disquieting novel
that reflects another side to life. Kathryn Havris, Mesa Public Library, Ariz.
Publishers Weekly Review: Rather than begin college, Jonathan, 17, becomes
a high school computer instructor, hoping to avoid facing his homosexuality
or thinking about his problems. But he is resented by teacher Rex Hardy, who
disrupts Jonathan's classes, as does Spencer, a poisonous youth who hates the
school's new (and only) black students, Tyrone and Susan Tate. Then Hardy assaults
Theodora, Tyrone's computer-lab partner. Theo is determined to press charges
for attempted rapewith Jonathan and Tyrone as her only witnesses, and Susan
in possession of crucial evidence. Jonathan is caught up in a maelstrom of malicious
gossip, threatening phone calls and pressure from the school board, but at last
must act for himself. Childress ( A Hero Ain't Nothing but a Sandwich , Rainbow
Jordan ) deftly interweaves the first-person narratives of 10 characters to
create a penetrating examination of bigotry and racism. Each voicefrom the most
sympathetic to the most odiousrings with conviction, and all come together in
the fabric of a compelling tale. Ages 13-up. (Jan.)
Kirkus Reviews In her first novel for young people in several years, a distinguished
novelist/playwright tells a many-faceted story about tensions in a small town.
Theodora Lynn, 15, has been sexually attacked at school by the physical education
teacher. There are two witnesses, each with much to lose by coming forward:
Tyrone Tate--he and his sister are the only blacks in the high school; and Jonathan
Barnett--he is a young computer instructor who is trying to come to terms with
his homosexuality. Their struggle to decide what to do involves other characters
and is depicted from several points of view: Theo's, her attacker's, several
members of the Tare family, the school principal. Jonathan's is the most consistent
voice; he progresses from staying safely in the closet to declaring himself
publicly as the culmination of a private commitment to self-acceptance. Childress
deals with many issues here, including racism, gay rights, and sexual abuse;
she gives an inside view of several characters and how their beliefs inform
their actions. The result is thought-provoking but fragmented, with themes and
language most accessible to more sophisticated readers. A brave book in which
older readers will find much to discuss.
(Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1988)
Features about this author or title:
1. Author Biographies for Young Adults - Alice Childress
ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0399215107 : Hardcover - Juvenile
Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• School Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 077538