There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America (Helen Bernstein Book Award) - Softcover

Kotlowitz, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385265565 ISBN 13: 9780385265560

Publisher: Doubleday, 1992

Synopsis

This is the moving and powerful account of two  remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's  Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex  disfigured by crime and neglect.

About this title

Review:

There Are No Children Here, the true story of brothers Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, ages 11 and 9 at the start, brings home the horror of trying to make it in a violence-ridden public housing project. The boys live in a gang-plagued war zone on Chicago's West Side, literally learning how to dodge bullets the way kids in the suburbs learn to chase baseballs. "If I grow up, I'd like to be a bus driver," says Lafeyette at one point. That's if, not when--spoken with the complete innocence of a child. The book's title comes from a comment made by the brothers' mother as she and author Alex Kotlowitz contemplate the challenges of living in such a hostile environment: "There are no children here," she says. "They've seen too much to be children." This book humanizes the problem of inner-city pathology, makes readers care about Lafeyette and Pharoah more than they may expect to, and offers a sliver of hope buried deep within a world of chaos.

From the Publisher:

This is the moving and powerful account of two remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex disfigured by crime and neglect.

"Alex Kotlowitz joins the ranks of the important few writers on the subiect of urban poverty." -- Chicago Tribune.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0385265565
• ISBN 13: 9780385265560
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 323