If I Ever Get Out of Here - Hardcover

Gansworth, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0545417309 ISBN 13: 9780545417303

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013

Synopsis

"A heart-healing, mocs-on-the-ground story of music, family and friendship." -- Cynthia Leitich Smith, author of Tantalize and Rain is Not My Indian Name.

Lewis "Shoe" Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he's not used to is white people being nice to him -- people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family's poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan's side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis's home -- will he still be his friend? Acclaimed adult author Eric Gansworth makes his YA debut with this wry and powerful novel about friendship, memory, and the joy of rock 'n' roll.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Gansworth is Lowery Writer-in-Residence and Professor of English at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, and was recently NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at Colgate University. An enrolled Onondaga, he was born and raised at the Tuscarora Indian Nation, just outside Niagara Falls, New York. His debut novel for young readers, If I Ever Get Out of Here, was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick and an American Indian Library Association Young Adult Honor selection, and he is the author of numerous acclaimed books for adults. Eric is also a visual artist, generally incorporating paintings as integral elements into his written work. His work has been widely shown and anthologized and has appeared in Iroquois Art: Power and History, The Kenyon Review, and Shenandoah, among other places, and he was recently selected for inclusion in Lit City, a Just Buffalo Literary Center public arts project celebrating Buffalo's literary legacy. Please visit his website at ericgansworth.com.

Reviews

Gr 6-9–In 1970s upstate New York, Lewis Blake inhabits two separate universes: the reservation where he lives in poverty with his mother and uncle, and school, where the fact that he is American Indian (and his sardonic sense of humor) has made him an outcast and a victim of bullying. The seventh grader has begun to accept his status until a new kid shows up in his class. George Haddonfield grew up on air force bases around the world and doesn't seem to know or care about the divisions between the reservation kids and everyone else. Although Lewis and George bond over their shared love of the Beatles, George's friendly overtures to visit are constantly rebuffed by Lewis, who isn't sure if their tentative friendship will be able to withstand the jarring differences between George's home and his own. Can a love of rock and roll overcome all? Lewis's relationships with his mother, his uncle, and even his peers ring true and draw readers deep into his world. Life on the reservation is so vividly depicted that scenes set elsewhere, such as the air force base where George lives, feel a little flatly drawn in comparison. Nonetheless, the overall tenor and wry humor of this novel more than make up for its weaknesses.–Evelyn Khoo Schwartz, Georgetown Day School, Washington, DCα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

*Starred Review* Lewis Blake is bright and scrawny and the only kid from the Tuscarora Reservation tracked with the brainiacs at their county junior high in upstate New York. For the duration of sixth grade, he was invisible, but when burly, polite George Haddonfield arrives on the Air Force base and shows up in their seventh-grade class, Lewis might have found a friend. The boys bond over girls and music (the Beatles, Paul McCartney and Wings, and Queen—it is the 1970s, after all), slowly letting their guards down, but when a vicious, well-connected bully sets his sights on Lewis, their friendship is sorely tested. Gansworth, himself an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation, explores the boys’ organic relationship with generosity and tenderness and unflinching clarity, sidestepping stereotypes to offer two genuine characters navigating the unlikely intersection of two fully realized worlds. All of the supporting characters, especially the adults—from Lewis’ beleaguered mother and iconoclastic uncle to George’s upright father and delicate German mother, and a host of teachers and administrators who look right past the daily violence perpetrated on Lewis—are carefully, beautifully drawn. And although Gansworth manages the weighty themes of racism and poverty with nuance and finesse, at its heart, this is a rare and freehearted portrait of true friendship. Grades 7-10. --Thom Barthelmess

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From IF I EVER GET OUT OF HERE:Evan landed on my back and began whaling on my face and head. My quickest instinct was to protect my glasses. I was wearing a welfare pair and we would in no way have the cash to get them fixed if they were broken. Once I had my glasses in hand, I spun backward and slammed us against the lockers. This was hard enough to drop Evan, but not hard enough to get him to reconsider his decision to target me.“Truck!” he yelled, hitting me more rapidly. “This little freak is actually fighting back! What's he thinking?”“Better teach him a good one, Evan,” the helpful Truck said. “Come on, they announced that we got to go back to homeroom.” Evan delivered one last kick to my butt as I put my glasses on. “Yeah, summer's almost here, but we got a whole long year ahead of us for that lesson,” Evan said. “Can you believe it? Fighting back?”

Edition details

• Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0545417309
• ISBN 13: 9780545417303
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 368