Customer Reviews

Jumped

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Trina is a beautiful, bouncy girl who is proud of herself and is sure that everyone envies her looks and personality.

When she is delivering some of her artwork to a teacher for a project, she walks too close to Dominique... "cuts into" her space... and Dominique, who is a tough basketball athlete, takes exception to that. She slams her fist into her other hand, and announces to her friends that Trina is as good as "jumped."

Leticia understands the implications of the threat, but she doesn't want to get involved...and well, she's not sure that she actually saw what she thinks she saw.

JUMPED is a frightening look at teen angst and bullying. This story tells how the lives of three very different teens connect with each other and how the choices they make can have dire consequences. These are very compelling characters, some likable, and some that are not. The suspense builds with nail-biting intensity to an unexpected climax.

Ms. Williams-Garcia has the ability to capture the interactions of tough, inner-city teens better than any other writer today. Their problems really come to life in this fast-paced story that I couldn't put down.

Reviewed by: Grandma Bev

From the book: "Girl fights aren't hardly about showing off skills. Girl fights are ugly. Girl fights are personal."

This authentic story centers around three inner-city teens: Trina, Dominique, Leticia. From each girl's point of view, a school day unfolds into a climactic fight. Each has her own baggage, giving the characters added dimension.

Even though I didn't find the book overly graphic, it was brimming with realism. This would be ideal for classroom discussion where teen violence is a concern.

Dreadful, preachy, bizarrely written YA. Clearly aiming for a young urban audience, this was laughably off- not a single voice rang true, all three main characters were cariacatures, and it felt offensive, somehow to read this. Worst thing I've read in a pretty long time.

For generations there have been drama and bullying and violence in middle schools and high schools. What is the big deal? Hormones clash; problems at home fester and percolate; and prejudices -- whether innate, or picked up from parents and friends -- are acted upon. The weak get preyed on by the powerful, the minority are put in their place by the majority. It's nothing that doesn't happen in the rest of the real world every day, so why should middle school or high school be any different? Sure, sometimes there is some big ugly deal like a school shooting. That is regrettable, but what can you do? Even if school district budgets were all magically increased in order to try and "solve" the problems leading up to such incidents, there would still be an occasional kid who goes wacko. If we forgo spending hundreds of billions of dollars in such a manner when there is only a one-in-ten-thousand chance that my child's school will be involved or a one-in-a-million chance that my kid will get shot (or be a shooter), then isn't that money well saved...even if it means accepting the occasional tragedy in somebody else's school district?

...Or are schools actually the place to invest more money in order to help create the sort of adults who can turn the world around in unimaginably wonderful ways?

A number of years ago, the school board for our K-8 district decided to stop funding a Vice Principal position (a.k.a. The Enforcer) at our middle school and, instead, fund a full-time school counseling position. Here are bits of our Counselor's profile page:

"Children in school today are arriving with a full array of troubled lives. Many children need the support of a mentor adult to be able to focus on school...

"I am available daily to students and parents. My goal is to call each student by name and get to know them academically, socially, and personally while they are [here]. The end of the school year is always bittersweet for me as I have grown quite fond of the graduating class and it is painful to send them on their way...

"I am out on the yard daily at lunch and in and out of classrooms all day. I want to be visible and easily accessible to students. I am available to help sort out the big issues in life as well as the little things that can really get a person down on any given day. The role of school counselor is to guide through the little things and know when students need more help. If and when that time comes, I talk to the child about more help and gain his or her permission to talk with a parent about professional counseling. We are also fortunate to have ten hours a week of time from [a professional MFT] so children with limited resources can receive counseling services on campus."

I think about this, because it is so frustrating to follow Dominique, Leticia, and Trina through the single day in which JUMPED takes place. There is no inherently "bad guy" amongst this trio. But their school -- like so many US schools -- is, for far too many students, a place of frustration and trashed dreams and dead ends. There is not one adult with authority who really gets what is going on.

On one level, JUMPED is a very simple story that will quickly suck readers in: Dominique is totally pissed off because she is no longer permitted game time -- as per the coach's rules -- after receiving a 70 on her report card. Cute and artsy Trina, prancing along in her pink sweat outfit before school, unwittingly disrespects Dominique's space in the hallway and so Dominique announces to her sidekicks that she is going to jump Trina at 2:45. Leticia is the only witness to the early-morning incident and when she phones her best friend Bea to tell her about it, Bea insists that Leticia get involved to prevent it or at least warn Trina. Leticia, whose Zero Period math tutorial is the beginning of a particularly agonizing school day of endless frustrations, contemplates whether or not to actually get involved.

Just as you begin getting seduced by the reasonableness of the rules under which Dominique is straining, you begin to see hints of the unreasonableness of the education system at play here. It is epitomized by a scene in which Leticia, who has previously completed Spanish I and Spanish II, is unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her guidance counselor to get her out of the French I class in which she was placed (because the Spanish classes are overflowing), and into Spanish III.

That there is no adult in whom Leticia can place any trust is, arguably, the root of the impending tragedy. That there is no adult in whom Leticia can place any trust is one more example of the ongoing failure of education in America.

Sure, this sort of dehumanizing situation is less likely to take place in my district's middle school. Our counselor does a truly stellar job, knows and interacts sincerely with every single student in the school, is familiar with the families of all of those students, and is always visible, accessible, and approachable.

But meeting all of a school district's needs under public education's current funding mechanism is like trying to stay warm in bed under a blanket built for Barbie.

I have plenty of first-hand knowledge of how Leticia's wry observations about the lack of janitorial service at her high school is not only a symptom of large urban schools. Thirty-one years after California's Prop. 13 began systematically gutting educational funding to the 12% of US students who live here, our middle school campus and classrooms are maintained at an appalling level of cleanliness that was unimaginable in my own school years. That Barbie blanket don't cover very much in custodial services.

Nor does it cover purchases of new books for the middle school library which is staffed only a few hours per week.

JUMPED is an intense and intimate look into a day in the life of three high school students who are set on a collision course and at the decisions adolescents make or avoid that can so irrevocably change everything.

But -- as some readers will come to realize -- the choices adolescents make or forgo are so often built upon the value (or lack thereof) that society places upon teaching our children well.

I love when novels have multiple narrators. I should add the caveat that I want to like (or at least be interested in) the characters. None of the three narrators in Jumped are worth the few hours that it took me to read it.

Jumped relates a day in the life of Dominique (a psychopathis basketball player), Trina (a conceited, hyperactive artist), and Leticia (a gossip who sits back and watches as Dominique prepares to jump Trina for an imagined insult). The story builds confusingly to the inevitable conclusion, leaving the reader shrugging her shoulders and tossing the book to the side.

Two things shocked me: this book was a National Book Award finalist and Rita Williams-Garcia took four years to write it. Jumped won't be joining my school library, not because it is racy or inappropriate, but because it is not worth my students' time.

In this multiple perspective novel, it deals with the issue of minding your own business. When is it okay to step in and when do you just let things go? When it means life or death, is it okay to interfere?

In Jumped, Leticia has to decide if she is going to interfere or not. Innocent Trina has just pissed Dominique off and Dominique is going to jump Trina after school. Trina has no idea. Does Leticia tell Trina? Try to stop it? Does she do the right thing or the cool thing?

Jumped introduced me to a world that I know exists but am often able to ignore: teen violence. As much as I like to believe that everyone is nice and kind, the news reminds me that some people are selfish and cruel. Now so does Jumped. The action of Jumped occurs in one day through the stories of three different girls whose lives will become intertwined. Letica is probably your typical teenage girl who worries more about her nails than her education. She overhears Domininque's plans to beat up Trina. Dominique a single-minded passion for sports. As for Trina, she likes art. She also acts as if everyone adores her. None of these teens are particularly likeable; nor could I ever see myself hanging out with them were I their age or any age. Yet during the course of the book I grew to halfway like them, simply because Rita Williams Garcia makes them so real. I felt as if they were walking my school hallways. Yet none of these girls change. They all remain focused on themselves. Jumped also lacks a pretty tied-up-in-a-nice-neat-bow ending. As such, while it engrossed me, I also felt unsettled. Sometimes, all a book should do is make us feel uncomfortable.

Dominique is a rough and tough basketball player. Trina is a pretty-in-pink girl who thinks she's all that. But Trina messes up when she brushes past Dominique, breezing through her personal space when Dominique isn't in a good mood. Dominique is in trouble with her coach over her bad grades and she's trying to intimidate a teacher to pull her grade up a notch. Her solution: take her anger out on Trina after school.

Meanwhile, Leticia is a busybody who overhears Dominique's plan to jump Trina. Her friend Bea urges her to tell someone what she knows, that a fight is going to go down. Leticia can either warn clueless Trina--who didn't stick around Dominique to hear the threat--or do nothing at all.

The voice in this novel is amazing. The novel shifts between the three distinctive points of view of these girls. Also, the story takes place in one day, and I eagerly awaited the outcome: what was going to happen after school with these three characters?

Bought this for my 13-year-old. She called it "a good book on a bad subject. Violence is stupid. But it happens.''

Trina doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. She knows she's "all that" and she's not afraid to flaunt it around school. But maybe she should be. Or so Dominique thinks. In fact, Dominique has had just about enough of Trina and her girly arrogance. So when Trina brushes past Dominique one day, grazing her shoulder without bothering to apologize, Dominique decides to take her down, once and for all, after school that day. Leticia knows all about Dominique's plan. She also knows just how dangerous Dominique is--she's seen her anger in action before. But Leticia doesn't want to get involved, even if tipping Trina off could mean saving her life.

Jumped follows the mind-set of these three teenage girls in an inner-city school setting, with the pending event of the after-school "jumping" as the central theme. Written in three points of view, it begs us to look at the rise of girl-violence and bullying in schools, and keeps us wondering just what decision Leticia will come to. Williams-Garcia never ceases to provide her reader with a gritty, insightful look at the lives of inner-city teens, and their mindsets. Jumped is an awesome read, for anyone who wants a fast-paced, heart-racing page turner.
-- Reviewed by Jill MacKenzie