Jakeman [Paperback]

The school bus ride that the characters in award-winning author Deborah Ellis’s exciting novel, Jakeman, go on is one most teenagers won’t get to take. But it’s one they will all want to read about to revel in the raucous adventures of a group of inner city kids travelling to New York State’s Wickham Prison on Mother’s Day weekend to visit their imprisoned moms, aunts, even grandmothers. It’s a wild ride with eleven-year-old wannabe comic book writer, Jacob Tyronne DeShawn, and his sixteen-year-old sister, Shoshona, Jake’s “Queen of Pain.” Also on board are Harlan, who is Jake’s nemesis, Gitana, whom Jake would like for his girlfriend, and Dayton, whom Jake is mentoring sometimes as his imaginary counterpart, the heroic Jakeman. Finally, there is Dayton’s traumatised, non-speaking seven-year-old sister, Carolyn, a magnet if ever there was one for stray cats, dogs, rabbits, even a cow at one point. The kids are motivated to make the trip for various reasons. Harlan believes h! is mom died because of prison officials’ neglect and he wants justice. Jake and Shoshona know their mom got caught in a drug scene because of an unscrupulous boyfriend. They’re hoping they can help to get her pardoned. The other kids have reasons of their own.
This unruly group of youngsters is chaperoned by a well-meaning social worker, Mrs. Granite, and two junior aides, along with a snarling bus driver the kids christen Mr. Nothing because he displays little in the way of a personality.
While the ride to the prison is chaotic enough, with hooting kids and a shouting bus driver, all mollified by turns by the mild-mannered social worker, the visit at the prison and the ride home are even stranger. The conditions, rules, and regulations of the facility are realistically described as they pertain to both the incarcerated adults and their visiting offspring. The tyranny of the guards, their conduct towards the kids and their parents is chilling. Then comes the bus trip home, which takes an utterly bizarre turn. The kids catch Mr. Nothing guzzling whiskey and chase him as he runs from the bus. He falls and knocks himself unconscious. Leaving their adult supervisors behind, with Harlan as lead mutineer, the kids hi-jack the bus before Shoshona ousts Harlan from the driver’s seat because she’s older and has “a learner’s permit and six weeks of driver’s ed.”
Bizarre becomes bizarro on this magical mystery tour. The bus trundles down a country lane, stops at an Amish farm house, lurches onto the busy highway amidst honking and cursing fellow travellers, stops for gas at a restaurant full of rednecks, and halts at a church where the kids scare several parishioners out of their wits by grabbing the food that has been prepared for a special Mother’s Day brunch. On the run in their orange bus, they’re chased by the police but cleverly escape, which gives them the time to plot how to gain the Governor’s attention when he visits his mother at her nursing home. Their notion is to tell him all about their mothers’ plights. Jake, whose letters to the Governor form part of the story’s structure, thinks this is a great idea. He sees this as a new opportunity to plead for a pardon for his mom. The other kids buy into the plan too. And for Ellis’s readers it offers a rollicking conclusion to the novel, with a kidnapping, a shooting, and a con! frontation between the kids and government officials. It also leads to the ultimate example of political hypocrisy, as Jake’s final letter to the Governor illustrates.
With an adventure on every page, and laughter and tears all around, Jakeman is a sensitive but no-holds-barred story of how lives are affected when moms are incarcerated and kids must fend for themselves and fend off the stigma of being bed-wetters, troublemakers, underachievers, and the sons and daughters of criminals.
M. Wayne Cunningham (Books in Canada)

"Highly Recommended."

-- CM Magazine

"Ellis explores important, often uncomfortable questions. Is a child's future predetermined by his circumstance? What can, and should, society do? The author's approach to this difficult topic is sensitive and age-appropriate. These are children society calls "damaged," but each youngster is resilient, full of potential, and still hopeful. Readers won't soon forget them."

-- School Library Journal

"This remarkable book centers on a bus load of inner city black and latino kids traveling by bus to spend Mother's Day visiting their moms, an aunt, and a grandmother who are in prison. Gives a taste of the real thing. Chilling."

-- The Midwest Book Review

"Ellis tackles some big issues - the interactions between the jailed mothers and the children are poignantly, heartbreakingly described - and the characters' feelings of fear, anger, and despair won't be lost on readers. . . Ellis's generally light touch makes the characters relatable; unexpected plot twists keep the action moving; and the current of sadness running through the book is realistic.

-- Horn Book

"In her customary way, Ellis addresses unpleasant realities most people ignore. . . But Ellis adds a spirit of creativity and steely hardiness that Jake and his friends have developed to survive and stay emotionally whole. The story takes a refreshingly comic, nicely improbable turn as the kids make off with the bus, pillage a church lunch, dodge police and finally, through their own ingenuity, find a way to bring their plight to the attention of the state governor. Ellis doesn't bow to an easy ending, but celebrates kids' resourcefulness and resilience in a story that's both sad and comic."

-- The Toronto Star