Woodson, Jacqueline. Miracle's boys.

Penguin, Puffin. 131p. c2000. 0-698-11916-9. $5.99. J*

To quote from the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, May 2000:

This is a brief novel about three brothers, orphans, who are trying to get along without their parents. The narrator is the youngest brother, Lafayette, 12, who is furious with his next oldest brother, Charlie, who has returned from two years at a reform school bitter and angry. The two are looked after heroically by their older brother Ty'ree, who gave up a dream to go to college when their mother Milagro died. The boys are still recovering from the horror of their parents' deaths. Ty'ree eventually reveals to Lafayette how he feels responsible for the death of their father, who died of hypothermia after jumping in a freezing lake to save a lady and her dog from drowning. (Ty'ree, a small boy at the time, had urged his father to save them.) Ty'ree is trying to comfort Laf for his guilt in not being able to keep their mother from dying when her diabetes put her in a coma. Laf was just a 9-year-old boy when this happened; he found her unconscious and he did the best he could in the emergency, but their mother died anyway.

These life dramas are told well by Woodson, a fine writer, who makes the brothers quite real for her readers. In some ways, the main character is the middle brother, Charlie, who is close to being lost in a life of crime--it is his "return" emotionally to his brothers that signals the beginning of his healing and that becomes the spine of this story. The portrait of their mother that emerges from the boys' memories is one of a truly strong, loving woman, determined that her boys will be intelligent and whole. They are trying to fulfill her dreams. The cover art on the paperback is excellent. (Winner of the Coretta Scott King Award.) Claire Rosser, KLIATT