Jumped (Hardcover)

by Rita Williams-garcia (Author)
Key Phrases: lucky gold chain, little brown mouse, nail tip, Miss Womack, Miss Moore, Miss Olenbach (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Grade 8–10—All Leticia wants to do is to mind her own business. She's too busy stewing about being assigned to early-morning math tutoring to worry about anyone else's problems. Sure, she's intrigued when she overhears bad-girl basketball player Dominique threaten to beat up bubbly, self-obsessed Trina for bumping her in the hallway—who wouldn't be excited to get the inside scoop on juicy gossip like a girl-on-girl fight after school? But she doesn't feel the need to get involved, even after she realizes that Trina didn't hear Dominique's threats and thus has no idea that she's going to get jumped. Will she follow best friend Bea's advice and warn Trina of the danger she faces, before a potential tragedy can unfold? In alternating chapters narrated by Leticia, Trina, and Dominique, Williams-Garcia has given her characters strong, individual voices that ring true to teenage speech, and she lets them make their choices without judgment or moralizing. Even the hostile, defensive Dominique is drawn in an evenhanded way that leaves this thought-provoking tale without a clear-cut villain. Teens will relate to Leticia's dilemma even as they may criticize her motives, and the ethical decision she faces will get readers thinking about the larger issues surrounding community, personal responsibility, and the concept of "snitching."—Meredith Robbins, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School, New York City
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Leticia, a gossipy high-school student, knows that “Girl fights are ugly. Girl fights are personal.” She says this after overhearing that Dominique, the tough-as-nails basketball player, is planning to beat up pink-clad fashion-plate Trina at 2:45. The infraction was minor—the oblivious Trina cut off Dominique in the hallway—but for Dominique it was the last of a series of insults, the worst of which was being benched by Coach for failing to improve her grades. Bouncing between the three first-person accounts within the span of a single school day, Williams-Garcia makes the drama feel not only immediate but suffocatingly tense, as each tick of the clock speeds the three girls toward collision. Dominique’s anger and frustration is tangible; Leticia’s hemming over whether or not to get involved feels frighteningly authentic; and only Trina’s relentless snobbery seems a bit simplified. Most impressive is how the use of voice allows readers to fully experience the complicated politics of high school; you can sense the thousand mini-dramas percolating within each crowded classroom. Along the way, the characters’ disregard of such high-school stalwarts as A Separate Peace and Of Mice and Men subtly prepares the reader for the messy and gut-wrenching conclusion. Grades 9-12. --Daniel Kraus

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Amistad (February 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060760915
• ISBN-13: 978-0060760915
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #136,821 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, February 24, 2009

By	TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

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

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly Speechless, May 20, 2009

By	Y. Hood - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Rita Williams-Garcia has done an absolutely magnificent job of capturing the voices of three teenagers in one day in a crowded high school. She captures the angst, the frustration, the loneliness. She captures the world that teenagers create around themselves, the bubble that surrounds them, their needs and wants, and is short-sighted.

After finishing the book, I had to go back and re-read the last three chapters. I was sitting with my mouth hanging open. I will remember this book for years and will definitely share it with adults and youth. It is one of those books that begs to be talked about and will garner very interesting discussions in various directions.

I love Richie's review of the book, but I must say that I do fault Leticia in many ways. Of the three girls, she was the most selfish/misguided/lazy---I could go on. And, no. It had nothing to do with her circumstances. She was just horrible. Dominique--she has circumstances. Leticia? No. There is no excuse for Leticia not speaking to someone in authority. And, that is part of the reason that I sat open-mouthed upon finishing the book. Her response in the last chapter is appropriate, in character. Any other response would not have suited Leticia. But, my biggest fear is that there are really girls like her out there....girls who simply don't care and don't understand why they should.

An amazing, thought-provoking book. Read it people!

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: JUMPED, April 16, 2009

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.