If I Grow Up

by Todd Strasser, 222 pages

DeShawn is a 12 year old African-American male growing up in the Frederick Douglass project of New York City. Everywhere he is surrounded by gunshots, gangs, drugs and violence. Death is an accepted part of daily life in this neighborhood. DeShawn is smart enough to know that staying in school and avoiding gang life is a righteous path - but when his family is starving while his gang-member peers have money for fancy shoes and electronics, will DeShawn's sense of right and wrong prevail or will he fall victim to the standard practices of life in the projects?
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This story first appealed to me because it is told from DeShawn's point of view and is about growing up in an environment that is completely foreign to me. However, what immediately stuck out to me was the glaring linguistic differences between DeShawn's internal and external dialogues. This left me feeling off-kilter throughout the entire book.

I might have have been a bit more absorbed into the story if the internal dialogue was consistent and authentic to someone of DeShawn's admitted socioeconomic level. However, it is possible that the discrepancy was intentional - that it intended to show that DeShawn was smarter than the lifestyle he was destined to succumb to. Somehow the whole thing still fell short for me and felt unbalanced.

I wouldn't call the book "preachy" but I do feel that Strasser's message of racial inequity is a bit overbearing and misguided for a YA audience. If he took out all the space he spends with DeShawn spouting facts and statistics that in reality DeShawn would have little awareness of, then Strasser might have had a little more space for a story with a deeper plot line that doesn't rely so heavily on ghetto stereotypes. Granted, stereotypes are always based somewhere in reality, but this isn't a reality that is remotely close to Strasser's and it shows.

All that being said, I do think that this title could be an incredibly useful tool for fueling discussion within a young audience that simply isn't aware that this culture exists. I just felt the facts and statistics should have been saved for the epilogue.