February's keywords were love, heart, sweet, family, grace, animal, diamond, life, drink, and beautiful.
I chose to read, off of my TBR shelf at goodreads, What Hearts? which was published in 1992.
What Hearts? by Bruce Brooks is a heart breaking book about a boy named Asa. One of the Newbery Honor books in 1993, it chronicles four events in Asa’s young life which I title as: Graduating from First Grade, The Variety Show, Playing Baseball, and Falling in Love. These four events read more like four short stories in chronological order, than a typical novel.
Graduating from First Grade
The last day of first grade Asa comes home with a perfect report card of sharp, pointy A’s. Those A’s only point the way up in Asa’s mind. He is the top of his class and headed somewhere great, until he arrives home to find his parents divorcing and his mom taking him off to live with her old boyfriend, soon to be new husband who isn’t exactly happy to have the extra baggage of a son with the new wife.
The Variety Show
Asa moves in to a new school, again, to find the fourth grade class busy preparing for the school’s Variety Show. The teacher assigns him to work with Joel on a recitation of Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field, perhaps the most degrading poem ever to be read by a fourth grade boy ever. Asa makes plans to change the poem for something more exciting, but life intervenes.
Playing Baseball
Asa’s relationship with his stepfather, Dave, is strained at best. They are different types of guys, and they don’t see eye to eye on much, until Dave decides to teach Asa sports. Asa is a quick study and learns from Dave. They begin to forge a bond, and then Asa suggests they try baseball. Pretty much everything after that is a disaster.
Falling in Love
After all the moves in his life, Asa is hesitant to declare his love for a girl in class, but he finally does. It ends up pretty much like most early teen declarations.
Depending on the age and experience of the reader, I think this book changes. I know I would have hated it as a kid. It is a depressing book about loss. Yet as an adult, I can see more of what is going on. It is still extremely sad, but I also have hope that Asa will still triumph and end up doing well in his life. He is an amazingly resilient boy, who despite the failure of the adults around him is continuing to progress and become a man.
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