"Fred and Mary sat real still, and for a while I thought what I just told them about Nia being pregnant had turned both of them to stone.
It had been a long time since either of them ever agreed on anything.
So I waited. I waited to hear how they'd been talking to me for years about this . How we all talked about respect and responsibility. How Fred and me had taken the ferry out to Staten Island and talked about sex, to and from the island. And didn't we go together and get me condoms? What the hell about those pamphlets Mary put beside my bed about STDs and teenage pregnancy?
How did this happen? Where was my head? Where was my sense? What the hell were we going to do?
And then, not moving and still quiet, my pops just starts to cry."
Three-time Coretta Scott King Award winning author, Angela Johnson is a master at packing a powerful wallop into just a few short pages. The First Part Last is the powerful story of a Bobby, a 16-year-old parent, told in alternating chapters--"then" and "now". "Now", of course, deals with bone-tired Bobby's foray into the first few weeks of parenthood. Not only is he a teen parent, but he is a single parent, too. It is unclear what became of the baby's mother, but she is definitely not in the picture. And Bobby's mother makes it quite clear that "in the dictionary next to "sitter", there is not a picture of Grandma." "Then" deals with the months leading up to fatherhood: their parents' disappointment, their plans to give the baby up for adoption, and their mad, deep, young love. Eventually past and present collide and we come to understand exactly what this baby means. I have already used more words than Johnson, and with only a fraction of her efficiency or emotion. Just read it.
SLJ recommends grades 8 & up.
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