Product Description

Little Chicago opens in the office of Children’s Services, where 11-year-old Blacky Brown is being interviewed by a social worker trying to determine what has happened to him. His emotions are blocked at first, but then he reveals that he has been sexually abused by his mother’s boyfriend, and is released into his mother’s custody. Thus begins an alternately harrowing and hopeful story of a brave boy’s attempts to come to grips with a grim reality. Blacky is helped at first by a classmate, Mary Jane, who has also been ostracized, and then by the gun that he buys easily from his sister’s boyfriend. Little Chicago is an unblinking look at the world of a child who has been neglected and abused. It portrays head-on the indifference and hostility of classmates, teachers, and even Blacky’s mother, once these people learn his “secret.” Like Sura in The Buffalo Tree and Whensday in The Copper Elephant, Blacky is one of Adam Rapp’s mesmerizing voices, more so because it is a voice so rarely heard.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #851791 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 255 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Rapp (The Copper Elephant; The Buffalo Tree) turns in his bleakest work yet with this abandon-all-hope story of an 11-year-old victim of sexual abuse and neglect. Blacky Brown, the narrator, is first met as he flees, naked, from the home of his mother's boyfriend in the middle of the night. Blacky does everything right: he asks his older sister for help (his single mother is at work), and when she and a friend take him to the hospital, he tells the social worker from Children's Services about the boyfriend's abuses. At school he reaches out to his best (and only) friend. But Rapp knocks out every apparent support. Blacky's mother wants to keep seeing her boyfriend and seems repulsed by Blacky; the social worker doesn't follow up; the erstwhile friend tells all the kids at school, who taunt him. When Blacky befriends the other school pariah, who encourages Blacky to resist the bullying, she becomes the victim of a prank so brutal that she is last seen unconscious, lying on a stretcher. After several more traumas, the conclusion leaves Blacky to a grim fate. The unrelenting darkness, which may seem brave or honest to teen readers, loses some of its authenticity in Blacky's delivery; although it generally reflects Blacky's naivete and slow-wittedness as well as his shock, it also contains metaphors and vocabulary that, more sophisticated than the messenger, reveal the hand of the author at work. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 10-12. Rapp's latest novel opens as 11-year-old Blacky Brown runs from his mother's boyfriend, who has sexually abused him. Blacky is examined at the hospital, then released to his impoverished, single mother, who leaves Blacky to face the ramification of the incident on his own. His drug-addled older sister and remote younger brother are no help, and when Blacky tells his only friend, he's rejected, the whole school finds out, and vicious bullies harass him. He finds solidarity with the other school freak, a girl whose friendship sustains him. But as the disturbing open ending shows, that's not enough to shield him from his own self-loathing and the cruelty and neglect of others. Written in Blacky's voice, this unrelentingly bleak novel shows the terror, bewilderment, and damage of child molestation. Some of the scenes' repellent details verge on the gratuitous and occasionally the sensational: Blacky's mother's oozing eczema, for example; a scene in which another man forces Blacky to handle his penis. But Rapp creates a powerful voice in Blacky, whose honest, raw account shows desperate struggles just to keep breathing and moving: "My legs are ok, I tell myself. My legs are good." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Brilliant
I'm sixteen and I actually bought this book for the cover [usually I am very good about these things haha] but it was so much better than I expected from the few lines of summary. This book is amazing. It really brought out the true emotion of Blacky. This was my first Adam Rapp novel and I strongly Recomment "under the wolf, under the dog" and this book together. They are so strong. You won't be able to put them down. The content is a little intense but there is never really detail into the abuse, it's more of a psychological experiance of Blacky Brown. The story just unfolds into a beautifully written book. The style of Adam Rapp's novels are truly mesmerizing.

Beautifully Tragic Nightmarish Childhood
This book was the best book I have ever read. I must warn you though, for me, it was also the most heartbreaking. I do not think this book is really a good choice for someone with depression, like me, but I am still glad I read it. Rapp's voice as an author is amazing. He has an ability to be a child in his writing. Blacky Brown is an eleven year old boy who I absolutely fell in love with. I love children and so it was awful to read about him going through the abuse and the cruelty from his peers and loved ones, the confusion and hopelessness. Awful only because I felt sorry for him, but the writing is still excellent and seems very true even though it is fiction. The poor boy almost seems as if he is too young to even understand how miserable he is. I would want to save any boy from the fate of Blacky Brown. He is a good kid. This book is brutally honest and depictive, there is a good deal of sexual content and I would never let anyone young read this. I think 16 or older would be sufficient, even though the main character is only 11. This author deserve credit for writing a very gutsy book, a tragedy which I will not forget.

Amazing writing, wrong audience
The writing in this book is amazing. The narrative action is the car wreck you see as it occurs, time slowing, your eyes frozen on action you'd rather not witness. The subject matter is, however, far too intense and layered for a middle school student. I know few high school students who could cope with this book. Like another reviewer, I long to see this work used in a university setting.