Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri

The NCTE conference was like being in book nerdvana and I expect many of the books that I read in 2017 are going to have some connection for me to NCTE 2016. G. Neri, for example, was one of the keynote speakers. He writes YA and Middle Literature. He used to be a teacher in one of the high risk schools in L.A. and so many of his books feature protagonists like the kids that he taught.

Yummy is an fictional retelling of an actual event that happened in Chicago in 1994. I vaguely remember hearing about it in the news, in fact. Essentially, an 11 year old boy, Yummy, shot and killed a 14 year old girl in his neighborhood. She was not the intended victim. Yummy, despite his young age, was in a gang and he intended to shoot a member of a rival gang.

The incident became nation-wide news overnight and stayed a topic of news for days as Yummy eluded capture by the police. Everyone had something to say, mostly about gangs stealing our youth and how young people were becoming little monsters. Mostly, I remember the panic and that I was the same age as the girl who was killed.

Neri, recast the story as a graphic novel aimed at young people. Roger, the fictional narrator, speaks about the event from the perspective of another kid in the same neighborhood. Roger talks about Yummy's family and his history as Roger knows it. He makes no excuses for Yummy but is, at the same time, sympathetic to his environment and wonders if he could have ended up the same way.

Neri did a good job with a tough subject, and, while grim, this is an excellent read. The length and writing is appropriate for Middle School Readers but the subject matter keeps it relevant up through High School.