Every Book Should Begin with Boogers: Book Review of Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds

 

Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds

While sixth grade was not yesterday for me, the drama and intensity which stood behind every day events still feels close. The slight from a friend that turned the whole grade against me, or standing on stage in front of the whole school and misspelling a simple word during the spelling bee, or shining during the school play. All of these felt like they held such weight as would change my life—and perhaps they did. This was the time when I adopted the mantra, “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst,” but I really thought it meant: assuming the worst will ward off bad luck. As my son has taken to quoting Bluey, “That’s not how the world works, kid.”

Jason Reynold’s Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks brought me back to the feeling that every moment of life was monumental and representative of what my life was and would be. Reynold’s stories are both full of more difficult experiences than losing the spelling bee and are more hopeful than assuming the worst of all situations. In fact, none of the many characters in Look Both Ways seems to be without a strong belief that the future will bring good things.

The book is a series of linked short stories, all of which begin as the school bell rings to signal the end of the day. Each has different main characters with different challenges. In the opening story, a boy and a girl discuss the nature of humanity, debating whether or not we are boogers. In another story, a female skateboarder struggles to understand the violence of jealous boys. In another, a girl tries to deal with the absence of her mother, her hero, because between her job and going to school, there is little time left for the daughter. The stories feel honest and address problems beyond What will I wear for school picture day? and Will my crush notice me? Though, to be fair, some of those questions are there.

In her review of Look Both Ways for The Washington Post, Mary Quattlebaum writes that Reynold’s stories show the “playful, often profound” relationship between the individual children and the world around them. While there are many profound interactions between the adolescent characters and those around them, I hesitate to think of them as playful. For example, in “The Low Cuts Strike Again,” a group of children whose parents are cancer survivors scheme to make money off of adults around them—and while there is some humor in the interaction—for example, as they buy candy from the local candy lady—it seems more conflicted than playful. Speaking of her wares, the candy lady tells the group of children, “Retro candy. Hard to get, and used to cost only a penny a piece when I was a little girl, but I gotta charge y’all four cents more. Attitude tax” (31). In this example, the adult has a back and forth with the kids about how they speak to her and their lack of respect. While “attitude tax” is a humorous idea, the interaction seems more chastising than playful.

In another review from the New York Times, Nalini Jones states that Reynolds shifts between different characters’ points of view with “dexterity.” This talent is especially clear in the story “Skitter Hitter,” as within the story, Reynolds moves between a female skateboarder and a bullied private school boy’s points of view. In the third person attached narration, we first see Pia skateboarding through the hall and out the door at the end of the school day, avoiding interaction with her peers. As the story describes what Pia did not do, it describes another female student as, “The only other skater she respected” (46). In describing how Pia thinks of the other girl, it shows Pia’s own confidence. As the story moves into Stevie’s point of view, the boy who undergoes nearly constant bullying, the section opens up with, “Stevie was never ready to go. Because to go meant to get got by Marcus and the boys” (49). Here, while Stevie, like Pia, wants to be alone, it is for an entirely different reason: fear of bullies and not the desire for isolation.

Overall, Look Both Ways is an honest book for young readers that does not speak down to them or make life look either rosy or bleak. While the characters have significant challenges, like having sick parents, they act with hope and make their own hope. They do not have expectations of cotton candy rainbows, but they certainly do not assume that life will be a series of let downs. As they know, and could have taught me when I was that age, “That’s not how the world works, kid.”
Would I teach this book? Emphatically, yes. Look Both Ways is an option in the African American Literature unit, but none of my students chose the book, so I used it as a mentor text. It was a great text to use in order to discuss Windows and Mirrors, as well as using the internet to research unfamiliar vocabulary and references. If you are interested in some of how I used it, please DM me.

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