Miracle's Boys

Module 3
February 1-7

Miracle’s Boys
By Jacqueline Woodson

Woodson, Jacqueline. Miracle’s Boys. G.P. Putnam’s Sons: 2000. ISBN: 0142406023

Synopsis:
Lafayette is a thirteen year-old boy who lives in New York City with his two brothers. Tyree, the oldest, has given up going to college to stay home and take care of the younger two brothers since their mother died of diabetes two year previously. Charlie has spent the last two years in a correctional facility for robbing a convenience store. The story is told through the eyes of Lafayette who calls his brother Newcharlie since he has come home because he doesn’t seem at all like the brother that Lafayette remembers. The story is told over the course of a weekend, and the readers begin to realize that the brothers desperately need each other. The brothers also realize that the family ties to each other are what make them united.

My View of the World:
This book is a heartrending story of three brothers who live in New York City. Lafayette’s impressions of Charlie and Tyree let the reader experience how hard their mother’s death from diabetes was for the entire family. Tyree seems to be the rock that holds the family together, but he is still very young himself. Tyree seems have a constant internal struggle to both father and mother to both boys. Charlie’s feelings of guilt that he was not there for his mother when she died along with Lafayette’s feelings of guilt that he was not somehow able to save her are both keenly felt by the reader. In the end, their ties of family to each other are what bind boys together and help them all.

Book Reviews:
A compelling novel about three streetwise New York City brothers trying to help one another confront their personal demons. Thirteen-year-old Lafayette still grieves for his mother, who died of diabetes two years earlier. He blames himself for not being able to save her. Older brother Ty'ree is more mature and responsible but he, too, is tormented by the past. He witnessed his father rescue a drowning woman and later die of hypothermia before Lafayette was born, and he continues to feel guilty for not being able to help him. Lafayette and Ty'ree take comfort in school, work, and other routines of daily life to keep their lives focused and their minds off the past. All of this changes, however, when a middle brother named Charlie returns from a juvenile-detention facility where he served a three-year sentence for an armed robbery. Having this angry, sometimes hostile presence in their lives forces Lafayette and Ty'ree to depend upon one another even more to work through their grief and figure out how to help Charlie survive. As usual, Woodson's characterizations and dialogue are right on. The dynamics among the brothers are beautifully rendered. The narrative is told through dialogue and Lafayette's introspections so there is not a lot of action, but readers should find this story of tough, self-sufficient young men to be powerful and engaging.
-Edward Sullivan, New York Public Library Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. School Library Journal. May 1, 2000.

Once again, Woodson (If You Come Softly; From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun) reveals a keen understanding of the adolescent psyche via the narration of a winning seventh-grader. Lafayette, whose mother has recently died, is worried that some day he will be separated from his two older brothers: high-school-graduate Ty'ree, who gave up a scholarship to MIT to take care of his younger siblings; and Charlie, the rebellious middle boy, who, after spending more than two years in a correctional facility, has returned home cold and tough. (Lafayette calls him "Newcharlie," because his brother, with whom he was once so close, now seems unrecognizable to him.) Viewing household tensions and hardships through Lafayette's eyes, readers will come to realize each character's internal conflicts and recognize their desperate need to cling together as a family. The boys' loyalties to one another are tested during a cathartic climax, though it is resolved a bit too easily, and Lafayette's visions of his mother aren't fully developed or integrated into the plot. Gang violence and urban poverty play an integral part in this novel, but what readers will remember most is the brothers' deep-rooted affection for one another. An intelligently wrought, thought-provoking story. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. Publisher’s Weekly. April 17, 2000.


In My World:
I would use this book to talk about different types of families with students. This would also be an excellent book to address the issue of death with students. The complexity of each boy’s feelings and how they all handle their mother’s death differently would be something to discuss with a class.