Paper Things by Jennifer Jacobson

Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson. Candlewick, 2015, 376 pages

Reading Level: Middle grades ages 10-12
Recommended for: ages 10-14 (especially girls)

Bottom Line: The protagonist of Paper Things struggles to be loyal to her brother and her guardian as she endures a season of homelessness.

For four years, ever since Arianna’s mother died, Ari and her brother Gage have lived with Janna, their mother’s best friend from way back. Now that Gage is nineteen, tensions between himself and Janna have stretched to the breaking point—actually, the break-away point, for as the story begins Gage is walking out and taking Ari with him. Their mother wanted them to stay together, and that’s what he’s determined to do, even though he has no steady job or permanent residence. A four-month stretch of homelessness in the middle of a Maine winter is no joke, and Ari is too ashamed to tell her friends or teachers why she can’t apply to a charter school (no permanent address), or why her clothes and hair are dirty. She and Gage must continually shift their lodgings: from a friend’s apartment to sneaking into the local shelter after hours, from a girlfriend’s walkup to a storage unit, it gets worse before it gets better. Sometimes all Ari has to hold on to are her “paper things”—pictures of people and furniture she has cut out of catalogs and uses to imagine a place of her own.

Homelessness is hard to get a handle on for kids if their own situation is as stable as it should be. Paper Things offers a glimpse, though the language is cleaned up and no one the siblings meet on the street is really bad or seriously disturbed. The story resolves a bit too neatly, considering what has gone before, and especially considering the stubbornness of Janna and Gage. Still, we’re glad it does resolve, because she’s a bright, generous girl who doesn’t hold grudges—an appropriate guide for kids wondering what it’s like to have no home.

Cautions: Language (one “hell,” a few misuses of God’s name)

Overall rating: 4 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic value: 4

Categories: Realistic Fiction, Middle Grades, Life Issues