Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

When you live in the projects and are faced daily with gang violence, drive-by shootings, teen pregnancy, and poverty, the chance of growing up and living a decent life as an adult dwindle with each passing year. Todd Strasser takes readers into the life of one teen living in just such a world.

DeShawn lives with his grandmother and his sister. His grandmother cleans for a living, but even though she's not old by the suburbs' standards, she is old and tired here in the inner city. DeShawn goes to school and wants to stay on the straight and narrow, but everyone he knows is involved in gangs or drugs, so the pressure is on.

IF I GROW UP starts when DeShawn is twelve years old. As each year passes he finds it more and more difficult to keep focused on the things he needs to do to find success in the world most of us know. The pull of the gang lifestyle, with its promise of money and power, are tempting. Being part of the Disciples would guarantee there would be food on the table, diapers for his sister's twin babies, and money for the rent every month.

When it becomes evident who was responsible for the death of a young child, DeShawn struggles with a feeling of needing to even the score. That's part of the curse of gang life. Once there is one killing, everyone wants to seek revenge, which creates an out of control spiraling effect with one drive-by shooting after another.

Is DeShawn the one to beat the odds and stay in control of his life by staying in school, getting a decent job, and making his family proud, or will he end up like the rest of the young boys and men of the projects?

Todd Strasser examines the tragedy of life in the inner city. The statistics reveal odds stacked against the youth of our cities. Strasser is able to paint a realistic picture of this tragic world, but at the same time he keeps this novel free of the extreme use of foul language, explicit sex, and graphic drug use most novels of this type usually employ.

This makes IF I GROW UP a story that can be shared and discussed in any classroom setting. I plan to use it as a read-aloud with my students to help them appreciate how lucky they are to be growing up in a rural, small town atmosphere. ( )

Booklist (January 1, 2009 (Vol. 105, No. 9))
Grades 7-10. He treated you like a gangbanger. I thought that’s what you wanted, says DeShawn early on in the book. This conflation of fear and respect is central to DeShawn’s life in a housing project ruled by the Douglass Disciples, a gang in constant battle with the nearby Gentry Gangstas. DeShawn is 12 when the book begins; he is 28 when it ends, and the time shift between each section dramatically illustrates how quickly things can go wrong—a caring mother becomes a prostitute, a promising student becomes a drug pusher, and so on. Despite the lure of money and power, the sensitive DeShawn has no intention of joining the Disciples, instead focusing on his schoolwork while watching his best friend, Terrell, work his way up the hierarchy. But in Strasser’s tough, authentic, and only occasionally preachy work, tragedy is always just a gunshot away, and temptation all too often upsets the best-laid plans. Strasser loads the book with startling true statistics, and the final pages are both hopeful and heartbreaking. ( )

DeShawn is twelve when the book begins, living in the projects, living in the crossfire of rival gangs. His mom was killed by a stray bullet and bullet holes cover his apartment which he shares with his grandmother and sister. He's good at school and his teacher encourages him to attend a better school so he can get a good education and escape his neighborhood. As he grows older though, the money that the gang members make becomes more and more attractive, even though joining means he may end up in prison, or even worse, dead. Will DeShawn be able to resist temptation? ( )

Richie's Picks: IF I GROW UP by Todd Strasser, Simon and Schuster, February 2009, 224 p., ISBN: 1-4169-2523-6

"By the age of twelve, seeing dead folks was nothing new. The gangbanger who lay glassy-eyed in a pool of blood in the lobby. The lady who was stabbed and crawled down four flights of stairs, leaving a long, brownish red trail before she bled out. The crusty old wino who froze to death on a bench."

I've now lived a longer life than had the late Jerry Garcia. And at 53 and a half, I have still never once seen someone (other than a law enforcement official) in public with a loaded handgun. Nor, in my entire life -- in real life -- have I ever seen crack cocaine. Nor have I ever seen -- in real life -- the dead victim of a violent crime.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.

I grew up in a suburbia where I was permitted, from the age of five, to walk unaccompanied from a nice single-family home to a series of safe, clean, well-financed schools, and to be out on the streets at all hours of the day and night. Back in the late Sixties, as a middle school student, I did sometimes suffer the indignities of being called names and of having (in the days before students used backpacks) my books and loose leaf binder shoved out from beneath my arm while walking from class to class. Such experiences were traumatic for me as a sensitive, oldest sibling. But I was never in any mortal danger as a child or adolescent.

Far too many young people in our country are inner-city dwellers who have it quite differently: living beneath the poverty level in dangerous homes in dangerous communities, attending dangerous schools, and are far too used to being in daily contact with gangs, guns, drugs, fears, and premature deaths. A disproportionate percentage of these young people are members of minority groups.

"It seemed like everything in Washington Carver was held together with tape. The cracks in the grimy windows, the pages in the tattered old textbooks, the pull-down maps in the front of the room -- all held in place with yellowed, peeling tape."

I am a life-long fan of learning history. It helps me understand why and how America is how it is. This doesn't mean that studying history doesn't often lead me to feelings of anger and despair. What might it take today to repair things for those who have gotten stuck -- for generations -- with the short end of the American Dream?

Guaranteed that in the coming years, some fortunate, twenty-first century middle school kids (undoubtedly in a well-financed, suburban school district somewhere) are going to end up with a teacher who turns them onto IF I GROW UP and leads them through an extended study of American history focused on why such dangerous and dysfunctional neighborhoods/ communities/ housing projects have come to exist in the so-called greatest and wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and why such neighborhoods have not only perpetuated but have continued to grow as those on the outside say, "No new taxes, you're on your own."

"Wham! Jules swung his arm out hard, catching Terrell square in the face. My friend fell back, and the pistol clattered to the ground about five feet away. Jules rose to his hands and knees. He looked at the gun; then he looked at me.
"I knew what he was thinking.
"He lunged for the gun. For a kid who'd just been shot in the foot, he moved pretty fast.
"But I was faster, scooping up the gun and aiming it down at him. This was the first time I'd ever held a real gun, and even though it was small, it weighed more than I'd expected. My heart was hammering and my hand trembled, but I willed it to stop.
"Still on his hands and knees, Jules looked up at me uncertainly. Then, out of nowhere, a different sensation took hold. With that gun in my hand, I began to feel powerful in a way I'd never felt before."

Todd Strasser's IF I GROW UP offers a horrific view of an inner city society that is dominated by gang activity. The absence of inner city dialect and objectionable language makes this a high-interest book that can, indeed, be shared in the middle school classroom.

The story is told by DeShawn, a talented student, insightful young man, and decent human being, from the time he is twelve through his being seventeen. DeShawn's mother had been the innocent victim of gang violence; he now lives in a crowded one bedroom apartment with his grandmother, his sister Nia, and Nia's ever-growing brood of fatherless offspring. No matter what he does or does not do, DeShawn is dragged deeper and deeper into the same morass as those around him.

As with his story about homeless kids, CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE, Todd Strasser gives us an in-your-face look at how the other half lives. IF I GROW UP is a hell of a story for all of us who have no clue as to what kind of daily lives these young people in the projects experience, and how their dreams are beaten down.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_...
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks ( )

I loved almost all of this book. Strasser paints a very realistic picture of a good boy, a smart kid with potential, sliding down into perdition largely because of forces beyond his control. DeShawn tries different ways to get out of what seems like destiny for every black man in the projects, but his route is always blocked. A teacher advises him to apply to go to a magnet high school, but because of the bad education he got earlier, DeShawn's aptitude test scores aren't high enough. He tries to stay away from the local gangs as much as possible, but living among them, he can't help but get caught in their mess. His father is never mentioned, his mother is dead, his grandmother is on welfare and his sister has two kids by the time she's sixteen. The family doesn't even have enough to eat, never mind move somewhere else. And so, bit by bit, DeShawn disappears into the shadow of gangs and drugs and violence.

I was impressed that Strasser was able to keep profanity and graphic violence out of the story, given its setting. This book would be suitable for 12- to 13-year-olds and up.

I would have given it four stars, maybe five, but I hated the ending of the story. Not the fact that DeShawn ended up in prison -- that was quite a realistic outcome -- but the utter preachiness of the last chapter, where DeShawn quotes statistics and speculates about the future of the ghetto youth. This is Todd Strasser speaking, not DeShawn, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. It's a pity, because the rest of the book was so good. ( )