My Mother the Cheerleader.

Sharenow, Robert. My Mother the Cheerleader.
Harper Teen, 2007. $17.89 288p 978-0-06-114897-2 Realistic Fiction

The title of this gripping first novel has nothing to do with football or cheerleaders and everything to do with a young girl, an “almost never good mother” and “an unprecedented act of bravery.” Thirteen-year-old Louise Collins lives in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans in 1960, the year that six-year old Ruby Bridges becomes the first African-American student at the William Franz Elementary School. Louise’s mother, Pauline, has pulled her out of the school to protest the attempted integration and puts her to work in the run-down boardinghouse that she manages. The eyes of the nation are focused not only on Ruby, but on Pauline and a group of women known as The Cheerleaders, who taunt and threaten Ruby every morning on her way into school. Louise notes that her mother’s cheers were so foul that they could not be printed in the newspaper. Into this maelstrom comes Morgan Miller, a New York writer and editor and friend of John Steinbeck who has come back to his boyhood home to mend fences with an estranged brother and to witness the events at Franz Elementary. In the few days that Miller rents a room from Pauline, both Louise, and Pauline find themselves attracted to Miller, until Pauline discovers Miller’s background. This places him in danger with the good old boys who oppose integration. Miller’s probing questions unearth a secret that Pauline has been keeping and after his car has been found abandoned and burned, compels her to reexamine her association with The Cheerleaders and to sever all relationship with them, an act that, Louise notes, was “a true act of courage.” Louise is an honest narrator whose observant voice accurately captures the turmoil in both her life and in the Ninth Ward. This topic is one-of-a-kind and would appeal to many, but editorial decisions may limit its readership. The larger size font may not make this title a first choice for older students. They may consider it to be too juvenile, while brief sexually suggestive dialog may make this a questionable purchase for most middle school students. Realistic fiction
Recommended for high school students due to brief sexual innuendo. RZ