Just Juice

by Karen Hesse, Robert Andrew Parker (Illustrator)

Overview

Juice Faulstich lives with her pa and ma and four sisters in the North Carolina hills. Working with her hands comes easy to Juice, but not school. This year, she's back again in Miss Hamble's third grade. Letters and numbers still don't make sense to her, even though she's the biggest kid in class.Juice skips school when she can, and spends the day with her pa. When he gets an official-looking letter, he asks Juice's little sister to read it—he says he needs new glasses and can't make out the words. It seems the bank will repossess their house if they don't pay their taxes—but how will they ever pay back so much money? And who is brave enough to tell Ma? Karen Hesse works her magic again in this satisfying family story about life-sized problems and everyday heroes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780590033831
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/1999
Series:	Scholastic Signature
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	1,090,715
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.63(h) x (d)
Lexile:	690L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 10 Years

About the Author

Karen Hesse is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of many books for children. Her titles include Witness, The Cats in Krasinski Square, and the Newbery Medal winner Out of the Dust, among many others. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two teenaged daughters.

Editorial Reviews

SLJ, AB, H, K, PW*, C

From the Publisher

...[T]he family radiates an appealing warmth more often found in old-fashioned children's books. —Bok

Kathleen Odean

Gr 3-5-Times are hard for the Faulstich family. Pa is out of work, Ma's pregnancy isn't progressing quite right, and the truant officer is after nine-year-old Juice. Although she is bright, letters and numbers behave differently for her than for other people, leaving her repeating the third grade and unable to read. The threat of losing their house to back taxes is the catalyst that leads Pa to open his own machine shop and Ma to make the children's schooling a priority. This is a timely event for Juice, who is just beginning to crack the reading code. Despite the absence of welfare, food stamps, and unemployment benefits, this is a contemporary story. The setting is Appalachia and the narrative is flavored with hill speech. Though the locale may seem foreign to urban or suburban children, the unity of the Faulstich family and the dignity with which they approach their poverty are absorbing and convincing. Juice's narration, for the most part, is both believable and lyrical, despite her life being "...as rough as a cob." In both pace and setting, the novel is reminiscent of Sable (Holt, 1994). All in all, a trim package with pared-down prose, a memorable main character, and enough complexities to provide ample food for thought.-Faith Brautigam, Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin, IL

School Library Journal

Down-to-earth, resourceful heroine Justus "Juice" Faulstich doesn't like going to school. She'd rather spend the day with her out-of-work father, or helping her mother, who's expecting her sixth child. Even though she's only nine, Juice believes she is more useful at home; secretly, she's afraid that someone will find out that she can hardly read. When Pa receives a letter explaining that they may lose their house because of past-due taxes, and Juice's older sister has to read it, Juice realizes that she's not the only one in the family with a secret. The struggling Faulstich family's strength and the atmospheric details of rural life lend the story a timeless, sturdy quality. This poignant story of love and endurance has a lot to say; fittingly, it never shouts. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 7-12)

Kirkus Reviews