Gypsy Davey - Hardcover

Lynch, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060235861 ISBN 13: 9780060235864

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1994

Synopsis

Twelve-year-old Davey is the man of the household, taking care of his mother and older sister as best he can and avoiding them when they're either too mean or too sad

About this title

About the Author:

Chris Lynch is the Printz Honor Award–winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, including Printz Honor Book Freewill, Iceman, Gypsy Davy, and Shadow Boxer—all ALA Best Books for Young Adults—as well as Killing Time in Crystal City, Little Blue Lies, Pieces, Kill Switch, Angry Young Man, and Inexcusable, which was a National Book Award finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews. He holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He teaches in the Creative Writing MFA program at Lesley University. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Gypsy Davey TWO TOO MANY

My sister Joanne has a baby and sometimes after school I go over there and I help her with it and she lets me have a glass of wine and then I start to think of things.

Things like that I’m really good with babies even though I’m only twelve and I can think of no reason why I should be after all good with babies since I don’t have any of my own but I sure would like to. Better than my sister is with her own baby that’s for sure though I don’t actually mean to be mean because she’s nice to me some of the time and it’s hard for her and I fully understand that. She’s only seventeen herself but her old man she calls him is thirty which is why there’s always a glass of wine around although from what I can see the old man himself ain’t. Around that is.

Sometimes my sister goes out right away when I come over and comes back hours later when me and the baby Dennis are asleep. She says that Dennis is crazy because he’s loud and he’s active and he doesn’t listen but then he stops still and stares for almost ever and he makes a lot of sounds that are nothing at all like words and he moves funny sometimes more like a praying mantis than like a big baby boy and that all this is why little Dennis and me get along so good is what she says because we’re both screwed she says. And that’s why she has to leave sometimes.

But I don’t see the problem so much to be honest and I tell my sister so. She says I can’t see it because I’m a retard myself is what she says when she’s not feeling so nice or just that Davey you don’t understand things very well is what she says when she’s better.

But I can do things. I can change Dennis’s diaper when he needs it, and I know when he needs it. I even like it doing the changing doing the feeding like it when my sister leaves us alone because I like being the one in charge for a change. I am really responsible and I don’t think my sister changes Dennis often enough because of what I see sometimes on his little bum. Like boils. I can’t tell my sister something like that because I told her once told her after she came home from a long long time when she was out of the house. And she said how dare you to me and she hit me slapped me real hard. Then she stared at me and thought about it and just said how dare you again and hit me real hard on the same part of my face again even though I’m bigger than she is by a lot. But I couldn’t do nothing about it of course because I couldn’t. Except cry. I could cry and I did just with the water part and no sound coming out of me. And I turned so little Dennis couldn’t see because he looks up to me admires me and he’s real curious and kept stretching his neck to try to see me. So now I just wipe the cream on him all the time and I blow lightly on the red parts of his bottom to cool him because it looks hot.

My sister says so what to all this because she did it all for me when I was little like our brother Gary who doesn’t live around here anymore did for her because she says Mom had two kids too many than she could handle. And so I owe somebody.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0060235861
• ISBN 13: 9780060235864
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Gall Chris