Ghost Boys

Genre/Award/Honor

Challenged Book

Age Group

7th – 12th

The UNT Library classifies Ghost Boys audience as "children, preteens, children, middle school". I placed it in the 7th – 12th grade category because the subject matter and the tone are dark.

Plot Summary

The book details the fictional account of 12 year-old Jerome Rogers’ shooting by a Chicago police officer. He remains as a ghost and meets the ghost of Emmett Till. As a ghost, Jerome watches his family grieve. He makes a living friend in the afterlife, Sarah Moore. Sarah is the daughter of the police officer who shot him. Jerome helps her as she comes to grips with the racism that her father harbored.

Justification

Ghost Boys is banned in several school districts around the state of Texas (Hixenbaugh, 2022). My son is bi-racial, and we have a hard time convincing him that his Nerf guns could be misunderstood by neighbors and the police, so I approached the book with a feeling of heaviness. Reading Ghost Boys reminded me of the privilege that I have as a white person living in suburban community. However, it did not make me ashamed, as many critics fear it will do to school aged children. Instead, it renewed my conviction that I must be a part of the change in American race relations.

Setting

Jerome Rogers lives in an urban neighborhood in Chicago. It’s a poor neighborhood, but he doesn’t notice because he rarely goes beyond its borders. When he meets Sarah, the daughter of the police officer who shot him, he sees how different her life is in a suburban neighborhood. The contrast between neighborhoods is important as Jerome realizes how many experiences he never had.

The dirt strip in front of our apartment has wild dandelions. No longer weeds, they’ve grown puffy yellow tips . . .

I roam seeing neighborhoods I’ve never seen before. Some people live in huge houses. With blooming roses – yellow, red, white – planted in their yards. . . .

Chicago is more beautiful than I ever thought. I didn’t know there were parks with swings, slides, running and bicycle tracks . . .

Wish I’d known the world was so much bigger and better than my neighborhood (Rhodes, pp 133 -134).

"Dead" and "Alive" are other aspects of the setting in Ghost Boys. Rhodes begins with “Dead” as Jerome watches the immediate aftermath of his shooting as a ghost. Rhodes then flashes back to when Jerome was alive, showing that although his family was poor, there was love. Jumping back and forth between “Dead” and “Alive” creates a sense of otherworldliness and helps us connect to Jerome. Jerome had no control over the poverty in his life, the bullies who hounded him, or the police officer who shot him. As a ghost, he struggles to maintain control over where he is located at any given time.

Tone

Understandably, the characters are sad. The ghost boys are sad because they’ve lost their lives and the experiences they could have had if they had lived. Jerome’s friend and family are grieving. The police officer who shoots Jerome is depressed and his daughter begins to hate him for killing Jerome. However, we see everyone moving beyond their grief and pain, even Jerome, before the book concludes. There is hope for the living to change the world.

Character

Even though the characters in the book are grieving, most find a way to move forward. Even Jerome, the person with the most reason to hate, moves forward and helps Sarah heal her relationship with her father.

Emmett Till helps guide Jerome through the afterlife. He tells Jerome that his quest is to help Sarah. Emmett also bears witness, telling the story of his murder. However, Emmett never seems to move on, a question that is left for the reader to grapple with.

References

Hixenbaugh, M. (2022, February 2) Here are 50 books Texas parents want banned from school libraries: Records requests uncovered dozens of attempts to remove library books from schools, nearly all related to titles dealing with racism, gender or sexuality. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-library-books-banned-schools-rcna12986

Rhodes, J. P. (2018) Ghost Boys. Little, Brown and Company.

UNT University Libraries. (n.d.) Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries. https://discover.library.unt.edu/catalog/b6097307