I normally don't recommend books I read in school. I read this a year ago in a Language Arts class, and I approached it as a must-read book. I just reread it, and I was captured by details that I hadn't noticed the previous time. The memoir, which describes growing up in a poor, dysfunctional family, is concise and action-packed--it made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. The characters are frustratingly flawed but deep and smart and human. - Anonymous tenth-grade teen volunteer
Publisher's description:
This story is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a penetrating look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who hated anything to do with domesticity. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.