While No One Was Watching - Hardcover

Conly, Jane Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805039341 ISBN 13: 9780805039344

Verlag: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 1998

Inhaltsangabe

Frankie tags along when his older brother and cousin go out to steal bicycles from people in the "rich" part of town. On the spur of the moment, his cousin steals a pet rabbit from a stranger's backyard and gives it to Frankie. Frankie takes the rabbit home, and keeps it as his secret. Both the rabbit and the secret are dearer to him than anything he has ever possessed. On the other side of town, however, Addie and her neighbor Maynard aren't about to give up searching for Addie's beloved pet. One small incident sets off a larger chain of events in which the youngest citizens of two very different worlds collide.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Leslie Conly is the author of Holt's critically acclaimed Trout Summer (an ALA Notable and Best Book for Young Adults) and the Newbery Honor Book Crazy Lady!, as well as Racso and the Rats of NIMH, which was a sequel to the Newbery Medal winner written by her father, Robert O'Brien. A graduate of Smith College, Jane Conly lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her family.

Rezensionen

Grade 5-8-In a poor section of Baltimore, Earl, Angela, and Fat Frankie have been placed in their errant Aunt Lula's care by their father, who is working on the Eastern Shore to earn money for a house. However, Aunt Lula is more into drinking and dating than responsible mothering and Earl, 11, is left to care for his younger siblings when she takes off. Out of fear, Earl has allowed Lula's son, Wayne, to use him as an accomplice while stealing bicycles but he becomes increasingly uneasy as their forays escalate into robbing the homeless. Conly's grittiest characters are the most believable and interesting. Tough-talking, whopper-telling Angela is afraid of monsters and wets the bed. Too young to understand he's stealing, Frankie is so starved for affection that he takes a pet rabbit during one of Wayne's thefts and unwittingly sets two children from affluent and caring homes on their trail. Conly is at her best when depicting the working poor in their struggle for survival. Angela's first interaction with the tonier part of town is highly amusing, but the author's take on the upper-class children seems flat and stereotypical. The third-person narration has a revolving point of view that may confuse readers. While this novel is similar in setting and subject matter, it lacks the unity and impact of Crazy Lady (HarperCollins, 1993). Still, it is worth a read for its humorous parts and for the realistic portrayal of the way bad luck and poor choices chew on poor people and how basically decent children can be pressured into doing the wrong thing.
Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As in her previous novels, Conly (Crazy Lady; Trout Summer) once again explores vivid characters living on the fringe of society, this time taking the point of view of the misfits themselves. Earl, Frankie and Angela Foster are temporarily left in the care of their Aunt Lula while their widower father is away seeking work and housing. The novel's shift in perspectives among the three children give readers a well-rounded view of their destitute home life. As Lula's drinking escapades take her away for longer stretches, the children must fend for themselves, and the eldest sibling, Earl, falls under the influence of his 18-year-old cousin, Wayne. On one occasion, the pair steal bicycles from an affluent neighborhood and seven-year-old Frankie, tagging along, kidnaps a rabbit he finds in a hutch. The hunt for the rabbit by its owner leads to help for the Foster children, as well as the intervention in a near murder. By writing from the children's points of view, Conly achieves a riveting immediacy and a wistful sense of irony (as when Frankie recalls, "Lula said to watch out for trouble, and he tried to, but he wasn't always sure what trouble looked like"). Their situation is all the more poignant because of the children's ignorance of its severity. Readers will likely overlook the tidy wrap-up for the suspenseful plot and the fully rendered portrait of this memorable trio. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 5^-7. It's a hardscrabble life for seven-year-old Fat Frankie Foster, his older brother, Earl, and his little sister, Angela. They are spending the summer with Aunt Lula while their dad tries to make a living and writes to them faithfully each week. Earl hangs out with his cousin Wayne, Lula's son, an older boy slipping into petty thievery; Angela retreats into imagination and lies. When the older boys take Frankie to the suburbs to steal a bike, he takes a pet rabbit. How these kids cope in their squalid city row house when Aunt Lula disappears, how Addie and her geeky neighbor Maynard leave suburban safety and air-conditioning to track Addie's missing rabbit, how the feisty Angela and her still-sweet brothers teeter on the brink of disaster, and how the rabbit's rediscovery brings hope and eventually resolution, form the core of this story. The grimy blond and redhead Fosters contrast sharply with neat little Addie and Maynard, the adopted Indian son of a single father. The Foster children's own dad, offstage for the whole book, is a vivid, struggling presence for his three children. Perhaps too many pages, and too many points of view, for its audience, but captivating and sobering. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

A stolen rabbit connects three neglected children and a pair of young sleuths in this busy, overpopulated story from Conly (Crazy Lady, 1993, etc.). Bad-news cousin Wayne leads Earl Foster, 11, and his learning-disabled brother, Frankie, into an affluent neighborhood on another bike-stealing expedition; Frankie carries away a pet rabbit, instead sneaking it into the house where he and his siblings live with Aunt Lula until their father, laid-off, can get back on his feet. Addie, the rabbit's devastated owner, gets little help from police, but finds an unexpected ally in her neighbor, Maynard, a lonely adopted classmate born in India. While the two are gathering clues, Aunt Lula vanishes, leaving Earl to care for his two siblings as best he can. Conly develops her story at a deliberate pace, splitting the point-of-view among no fewer than five characters. Angela, a bedwetter with a broken yardstick for a magic wand and an unfettered imagination, makes the rest of the cast seem generic; a pivotal scene is farfetched at best, and a wonderfully tidy resolution that finds Addie with her rabbit, the Fosters with their father, and Wayne in jail is equally contrived. The book is readable, but the capable Conly uses artifice to bring the plotlines together, and the Fosters are not as memorable as the abandoned children in Cynthia Voigt's Homecoming (1981) or Jackie Koller's A Place to Call Home (1995) (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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While No One Was Watching

By Jane Leslie Conly

Henry Holt & Company

Copyright © 1998 Jane Leslie Conly
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780805039344

Chapter One

They found the yard when Wayne was collecting bicycles. Frankie followed his brother Earl just like he was supposed to, and Earl followed Wayne, who was his cousin, and a bit older. Sometimes Wayne let Earl ride a bike, if they found more than one. Then Frankie would run alongside, saying, "Let me have a turn!" Wayne never gave him a turn, because Frankie didn't have good balance for his age, so he hadn't learned to ride a two-wheeler. He could ride a Big-Wheels, but Wayne never got Big-Wheels, even though Frankie asked him to. All Wayne answered was, "If you don't do what I say, Fat Frankie, you'll have to stay home by yourself."

Frankie didn't like staying in the house by himself, and the big boys weren't supposed to leave him there either, but they sometimes did. They said Frankie couldn't run fast enough to keep up, and that he whined like a baby, like Angela. He tried not to whine, but sometimes he couldn't help it. They walked so far, and they forgot about eating lunch and going to the bathroom and resting. Once Frankie made the mistake of saying he wished kindergarten went through the summer. Wayne and Earl laughed and said he was a dork. But Frankie couldn't help remembering the big round clock on the classroom wall. It never broke, day after day, and when the hands were in a certain place they had snack, and later, lunch, and naptime. Mrs. Chase played music during naptime. Frankie had heard there would be no music in first grade.

"Frankie, hurry!" Earl said over his shoulder. "And shut up!" Frankie sighed. He liked to sing, but he couldn't rush and sing at the same time. And the big boys were always rushing. They had a thousand places to go.

The summer had started better. They had stayed near Aunt Lula's, hanging with other kids in front of Mr. Kim's store. Frankie had sat on the steps of Lula's brick rowhouse. Lula said to watch out for trouble, and he tried to, but he wasn't always sure what trouble looked like. Once he'd seen a man and woman arguing in front of their car; the man had pulled a gun out of his coat pocket. Another day the police had come around the corner with their sirens blaring. He'd seen a dog pee on Lula's flowers right in front of the house while the woman who held the leash stood there watching. Earl had been in the store getting a pack of gum, but Frankie told him about it later. Earl rolled his eyes. "That's nothing, Fat Frankie," he explained. "A gun is trouble. A dog peeing is nothing." Frankie decided to tell Lula anyway. But she was tired when she got home from her job at the laundry. She drank beer while she made supper, and afterwards she fell asleep at the table. Then Frankie and Earl and their six-year-old sister Angela talked. Angela was a liar.

"Lula said I can have the rest of the mashed potatoes ‘cause I went on a trip today," she announced.

Frankie thought for once she might be telling the truth. "Where did you go?"

"To Hollywood." Angela reached for the bowl. "I bought a bowl of sugar. Then I took the train back to daycamp. Miss Cathy was so glad to see me she gave me a gold medal."

"You can't have all those potatoes," Earl said. "You'll get fat, too."

"I will not! Miss Cathy says I look just like a girl on TV."

"Hulk Hogan's sister, maybe." Earl took the bowl back. He gave a spoonful of potatoes to Angela and one to himself.

"I'm hungry," Frankie whined.

"There's some on your plate already."

Frankie ate as fast as he could, so there'd be potatoes left in the bowl when his were gone. The potato in his mouth was so packed he couldn't swallow. He took a drink of milk to loosen it up, but there wasn't room for the milk and most of it ran down his chin. "Daddy ubed da make graby," he said.

Angela stared at him. "Frankie can speak French," she told Earl.

"Frankie can't speak French. He's got so much food in his mouth he can't talk at all."

Frankie swallowed three times. "Daddy used to make gravy," he said.

"Daddy's in Honolulu." That was Angela.

"He is not. He's on the Eastern Shore, picking vegetables. Beth-ann saw him there, didn't she, Earl?"

Earl shrugged. Frankie saw he'd learned a trick from Wayne. He could close his face the way you pulled the shade down on a window. Then there was just his stringy red hair and a white blank like a wall underneath it. "I don't know," he said.

"She did see him!" And we've got his letters – one every Saturday. You had them under your pillow."

Earl shrugged again. Lula stirred in her sleep. Frankie wondered if she would wake up and ask about Wayne. If she asked, he was supposed to lie, because she didn't want them playing with Wayne, even though he was her own son. He lived with his father now, and Lula claimed she didn't want to know where he went or what he did. Wayne didn't want her to know, either. He had threatened Frankie, saying, "If you tell, I'll cut your throat." Frankie could imagine how much it would hurt to have your throat cut. Wayne might do it, too, if he told. Wayne had killed a cat with his bare hands. Even Earl was afraid of Wayne, and Earl was eleven.

"Come on, Frankie," Earl called. "You have to keep up."

"I'm trying." Frankie walked a little faster. They had passed Grover Park and crossed the boulevard. So far Wayne hadn't found any bikes. But he didn't seem to be looking hard, not yet. That morning he'd said he had a new place to look.

Continues...

Excerpted from While No One Was Watchingby Jane Leslie Conly Copyright © 1998 by Jane Leslie Conly. Excerpted by permission.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0805039341
• ISBN 13: 9780805039344
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar