Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

<i>Chameleon</i> (review)

2009; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 62; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/bcc.0.0587

1558-6766

Elizabeth Bush,

Themes in Literature Analysis

Reviewed by: Chameleon Elizabeth Bush Smith, Charles R., Jr. Chameleon. Candlewick, 2008 377p ISBN 978-0-7636-3085-0 $16.99 R Gr. 6-9 Shawn Williams and "his boys" Trent, Lorenzo, and Andre are good kids—a little mouthy, a little goofy, or in other words a little adolescent—but good kids with a [End Page 216] whole lot of summer free time on their hands, not much money among them, and not much to do with it anyway beside feed their persistently growling stomachs. They're no angels (there's the little matter, for instance, of stealing pomegranates from a neighbor's tree), but they're mostly focused on benignly normal pleasures such as food, hot girls, basketball, food, rumors about upcoming freshman year, and, well, food. Their area of Los Angeles, though, isn't conducive to avoiding trouble, and even the guys' morning "color checks" to make sure they don't attract gangbanger attention isn't enough to keep them from getting entangled in a turf war between the Crips and the Pirus, thanks to Lorenzo's criminally inclined older brother Dayshaun. Shawn's parents—divorced, but united in their concern for his well-being—consider sending Shawn to a high school in a less gang-infested area, but they give him one month to choose his own path. Should he stick with his friends and the girl he adores, or should he embrace the freedom that a stable environment can offer? Pushing a four-hundred page count, this novel could withstand editorial surgery and come out the healthier for it, but the minutiae of hangin' out invite readers to experience the lassitude that makes a wealth of free time such a dubious gift. Younger YAs familiar with the hip-hop cadence of Smith's poetry (see Rimshots, BCCB 5/99) will be pleased to find it gracefully infused into his prose, and they'll want to see his enjoyable characters into the future they deserve. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Used by permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers.