What Jamie Saw

Carolyn Coman is my favorite author. I cannot find weaknesses in her work. Do read this book and all her other works. She is attuned to her readers.

Did Van really throw the baby across the room with Patty catching her, or is that simply a metaphor for how Patty realized she had to save Nin and Jamie and herself from the abuse? Whether miracle or metaphor, What Jamie Saw is a stark, disturbing account of one family's struggle with poverty and abuse. Why was Jamie so interested in magic? What did he hope to make appear and disappear? His desperation in remembering how to make the bunny out of the napkin is really the frustration and disempowerment he feels as an 8 year old trying to be the man of his family when he is surely too young and immature to be up to the task. The powerful climax of the novel, when Jamie hides Nin and chooses to speak to Van, shows this child's ability to confront his own demons. Then when Patty returns and tells Van to leave, we understand that the real process of healing their wounds has begun. Children who are victims of abuse do not always know they are being abused. Reading this novel, while disturbing, is critical information for children in dysfunctional families. Certainly a novel to read and discuss with children.

Carolyn Coman has written an excellent book on a subject many people are rightly aghast at. Still children by the age of nine have seen and heard much, and most will be able to make sense of this book and its language. Like One Hundred Dresses this Newberry Honor Book will demand a degree of maturity from its young reader, and I have met many children who have the intellectual capacity to understand this book.

Jamie was a little boy that saw his step-dad throw his little sister because she was crying. After this happened Jamies life was never the same because he dreamed about the accident in his sleep or even when he would be sitting around. Jamie and his mother and little sister moved that night when the accident happened. THey moved to a place in New Hampsire to live with one of his mothers friends. His family gets a little trailer on an old logging road, his family is very poor and she depends on her friend Earl to help them make it.