I Never Knew Your Name - Hardcover

Garland, Sherry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395696860 ISBN 13: 9780395696866

Publisher: Ticknor & Fields, 1994

Synopsis

Saddened and puzzled by the suicide of a teenage neighbor, a small boy remembers the teenager playing basketball alone, feeding pigeons, and caring for a stray dog--and is sorry he did not try to make friends with him.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4 Up-In a bleak, first-person narration, a young boy tells about a friendless teenager whom he has watched from a distance. He admires the young man for his skill at basketball and his kindness to animals. The boy sees him as an outsider, ostracized by his peers. He comes close to reaching out to speak to him, but never does. One night, he is wakened by the sound of an ambulance and the sight of neighbors, "looking at you, lying there on the ground, so still," and shaking their heads in sorrow and disbelief. Greenberg's oil paintings are purposely somber in tone, moving from dark to light as the narrator gains insight and, in the only note of hope in a relentlessly heavy book, is finally pictured as part of a group playing basketball. Many of the illustrations have an unfinished look, as devoid of detail as is the narrator's knowledge of the boy he watches. It is never clearly stated, except in the CIP data, that the death is a suicide, but it is likely that young people will infer that he jumped from the roof of his city apartment building. The narrator himself lives in a sad world of resignation to his father's neglect, of loneliness as an outsider in a new neighborhood, and of regret over the lost opportunity to befriend the young man who so clearly mirrors his own isolation. Indeed, readers never know his name. This important book, which properly raises more questions than it answers, will be best used by adults with young people to evoke discussion and hopefully bring an awareness and understanding of those who are excluded by their peers.
Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Greenwich, CT
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

First-time children's illustrator Greenberg's soft-edged pastels are as redolent of the lethal power of loneliness as is Garland's ( The Lotus Seed ; Song of the Buffalo Boy ) spare, dramatic text. A nameless narrator, new to the neighborhood, is first shown alone in his room, spinning a basketball. "The first time I saw you," he says, addressing the teenager from across the street, "you were shooting hoops in the moonlight"--the illustration demonstrates that the teen was also alone. Via a disturbing series of vignettes, the younger boy then embarks on a retrospective of the teen's life, which has ended in suicide. The narrator recalls "the other guys from the corner," seen playing basketball in sunshine, who never included the teen; the stray dog the teen fed before it was hauled off to the pound; the teen's crush on the narrator's big sister, who had callowly spurned him; and so on. The narrator's own lost opportunities to reach out provide a regretful counterpoint, echoed in others' shocked reactions to the death. Subdued light in the final spread supports the beautifully tuned, restrained encomium. Although this volume may be unsettling as an introduction to the topic of teen suicide, it will be of great value to those marked by a like tragedy. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ticknor & Fields
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0395696860
• ISBN 13: 9780395696866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Greenberg Sheldon