‘Bone by Bone’ by Tony Johnston

It wasn’t until after I had read this brilliant, funny, heart-breaking story that I found out the author is a prolific writer of children’s books. Tony Johnston (a woman, by the way) has written so many kids’ books that when she got to 100 she reportedly stopped counting. I guess that’s why Bone By Bone is referred to in some reviews as a Young Adult title but to be honest, I think that limits its appeal. Like To Kill a oockingbird – with which it is much compared – I think everyone should read it, no matter what their age. Mr their colour.

David Church is a motherless white boy growing up in the American South in the 1950s. When he meets oalcolm Deeter dressed as a ghost being chased by a nasty rooster on Halloween, it’s a match made in nine-year-old heaven. But David’s daddy, Dr Franklin, is not keen on his boy being friends with the likes of oalcolm, on account of him being a Negro. In fact, Franklin has a rule for the likes of oalcolm which involves crossing his threshold and being shot. A kid understandably has trouble grappling with this. “Though little by little I came to understand the barriers between Negroes and white folks,” narrates David, “back then I knew of no rule about two boys not being friends.”

Fear not any hammer-on-the-head worthiness because this is a story about pure, unadulterated friendship; or as pure and unadulterated as a friendship can be when one of you is black and the other has Ku Klux Klan in the family. As the boys grow older, those barriers become more and more clear to young David, who loves his Daddy but just has not been born with the same evil racism flowing through his veins. Comes a time when a boy becomes a man and has to choose his own way in life. The question is, which direction? Tony Johnston sees things through young adult eyes but her message is all grown up.

Worth reading just for the story about Grandmother Church getting attacked by a varmint with her drawers at half mast.