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Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri
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Eleven-year old Roger is trying to make sense of his classmate Robert "Yummy" Sandifer's death, but first he has to make sense of Yummy's life. Yummy could be as tough as a pit bull sometimes. Other times he was as sweet as the sugary treats he loved to eat. Was Yummy some sort of monster, or just another kid? As Roger searches for the truth, he finds more and more questions. How did Yummy end up in so much trouble? Did he really kill someone? And why do all the answers seem to lead back to a gang-the same gang to which Roger's older brother belongs? Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty is a compelling graphic dramatization based on events that occurred in Chicago in 1994. This gritty exploration of youth gang life will force readers to question their own understandings of good and bad, right and wrong.
- Sales Rank: #43460 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Lee Low Books
- Published on: 2010-07-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 6.50" w x .75" l, .45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 96 pages
- Great product!
From Publishers Weekly
In 1994, in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago's South Side, a 14-year-old girl named Shavon Dean was killed by a stray bullet during a gang shooting. Her killer, Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, was 11 years old. Neri recounts Yummy's three days on the run from police (and, eventually, his own gang) through the eyes of Roger, a fictional classmate of Yummy's. Roger grapples with the unanswerable questions behind Yummy's situation, with the whys and hows of a failed system, a crime-riddled neighborhood, and a neglected community. How could a smiling boy, who carried a teddy bear and got his nickname from his love of sweets, also be an arsonist, an extortionist, a murderer? Yet as Roger mulls reasons, from absentee parenting to the allure of gang membership, our picture of Yummy only becomes more obscure. Neri's straightforward, unadorned prose is the perfect complement to DuBurke's stark black-and-white inks; great slabs of shadow and masterfully rendered faces breathe real, tragic life into the players. Like Roger, in the end readers are left with troubling questions and, perhaps, one powerful answer: that they can choose to do everything in their power to ensure that no one shares Yummy's terrible fate.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up–In 1994, an incident of Southside Chicago gang-related violence captured national headlines. Eleven-year-old Robert "Yummy" Sandifer shot and killed his 14-year-old neighbor Shavon Dean. Neri's retelling is based on public records as well as personal and media accounts from the period. Framing the story through the eyes and voice of a fictional character, 11-year-old Roger, offers a bittersweet sense of authenticity while upholding an objective point of view. Yummy, so named because of his love of sweets, was the child of parents who were continually in prison. While living legally under the care of a grandmother who was overburdened with the custody of numerous grandchildren, Yummy sought out the closest thing he could find to a family: BDN or Black Disciples Nation. In the aftermath and turmoil of Shavon's tragic death, he went into hiding with assistance from the BDN. Eventually the gang turned on him and arranged for his execution. The author frames the story with this central question: Was Yummy a cold-blooded killer or a victim of his environment? While parts of the message focusing on the consequences of choice become a little heavy-handed, the exploration of "both sides of the story" is unflinchingly offered. In one of the final panels, narrator Roger states, "I don't know which was worse, the way Yummy lived or the way he died." Realistic black-and-white art further intensifies the story's emotion. A significant portion of the panels feature close-up faces. This perspective offers readers an immediacy as well as emotional connection to this tragic story.Barbara M. Moon, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY
© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Robert Sandifer—called “Yummy” thanks to his sweet tooth—was born in 1984 on the South Side of Chicago. By age 11 he had become a hardened gangbanger, a killer, and, finally, a corpse. In 1994, he was a poster child for the hopeless existence of kids who grow up on urban streets, both victims and victimizers, shaped by the gang life that gives them a sense of power. Neri’s graphic-novel account, taken from several sources and embellished with the narration of a fictional classmate of Yummy’s, is a harrowing portrait that is no less effective given its tragic familiarity. The facts are laid out, the suppositions plausible, and Yummy will earn both the reader’s livid rage and deep sympathy, even as the social structure that created him is cast, once again, as America’s undeniable shame. Tightly researched and sharply written, if sometimes heavy-handed, the not-quite-reportage is brought to another level by DuBurke’s stark black-and-white art, which possesses a realism that grounds the nightmare in uncompromising reality and an emotional expressiveness that strikes right to the heart. Like Joe Sacco’s work (Footnotes in Gaza, 2010), this is a graphic novel that pushes an unsightly but hard to ignore sociopolitical truth out into the open. Grades 8-12. --Jesse Karp
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Shades of gray
By E. R. Bird
"Sometimes stories get to you; this one left my stomach in knots. After three days of reporting, I still couldn't decide which was more appalling: the child's life or the child's death." - John Hull, TIME Magazine, Sept. 1994. When true stories get turned into graphic novels for kids, they tend to take place in the distant past. Books like James Sturm's Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, for example. Contemporary stories, or tales that have taken place in the last 20 years, are few and far between. Picking up "Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty" by Greg Neri, I hoped against hope that the book in my hands would be appropriate for middle grade readers. I love comics for kids, but there are really only so many tales involving kids finding magical distant lands that you can read before you want to pluck out your own eyeballs. Yummy in contrast was something entirely new. Gritty, real, willing to ask tough questions, and willing to trust that young readers will be able to reach their own conclusions. The central question is this: Can a child murderer be both victim and bully all at the same time? Don't look for easy answers here. Neri's not handing them out.
The real world facts are available. Here's what we know: That Robert "Yummy" Sandifer was eleven years old in 1994 when he went on the run after accidentally killing a neighbor girl. Gang violence was at its peak in the Roseland area of Chicago, and in this book a fictional neighborhood boy watches what happens to Yummy and to his own brother, both members of the same gang. The book asks hard questions as we watch Yummy's life and strange toughness, even as his story turns tragic. An author's note and bibliography appear at the end.
Author Greg Neri first stepped onto the children's literary scene a couple years ago when he wrote Chess Rumble with illustrations by Jesse Joshua Watson. After that he went YA with Surf Mules, only coming back to the world of middle grade fiction with the publication of "Yummy". And it is middle grade, by the way. I can already tell that the age range is going to be a big question with a lot of people. As it happens, Mr. Neri originally wrote Yummy's story as a film script, but held off on making it into a movie because he knew that the content would earn him an R rating. And an R rating would keep the kids who most needed to hear this story from seeing it. So a middle grade graphic novel it became instead. The gun violence (or really any violence) that's in this book is always "off-screen" so to speak. And no one could read this book cover to cover and claim that it praises gangs or gang violence in any way, shape, or manner. Most importantly, this is a story that needs to be told and it needs to be told to kids. Hand it to teens all you want (this would make a fantastic reluctant reader pick), but remember that there's going to be nine and ten-year-olds out there as well who are ready for what Mr. Neri has to say.
You can have the nicest written graphic novel in the world, but unless you have a worthy artist to pair with the text, it's not worth much to anyone. Enter Randy DuBurke. DuBurke has done some children's books before, as it happens, but nothing so gritty. A couple years ago he won the John Steptoe Award for best new talent for The Moon Ring. Until now he's never really delved deeply into the graphic possibilities behind children's comics. Aside from the odd Malcolm X biography his comic book work has usually been relegated to the D.C. and Marvel side of things. Now he's taken Neri's tale and created a book that feels both realistic and as beautifully stylized as any old noir. Playing not just with expressions and characters but with light and shadow as well, it's DuBurke's choices that lift this book up and make it far more compelling than it would be merely on its own.
First and foremost, watch what DuBurke does with our narrator. He's fictional, of course. A composite of the children that would have lived through that time period. So it was interesting to note that at the start, when Neri is talking about what Chicago is known for, DuBurke places the narrator in with the famous characters. He's on the court with the Bulls, or arresting Al Capone, or singing a tune or two with Muddy Waters. So basically right at the beginning DuBurke is making it clear to the reader that this kid, like all kids, has a connection and a part to play in the history of his city. As for Yummy himself, there is one image of him that appears on everything from the cover of this book to just about the last page; his mug shot.
Then there's DuBurke's use of light. In a two-panel section we see Yummy next to a tall tough looking dude. The text mentions that Yummy was just four feet tall, "and maybe 60 pounds heavy." In the first panel he's looking up at the tall guy, eyes wide. The second panel, however, the shadows have darkened around his eyes, and his mouth is set. He's a whole different person. Now look at the end of the book. The harsh light of the streetlamps throws everyone's faces into white and black. Eyes get hidden, bodies get eaten up in the shadows of leaves. It's fantastic. The whole book is a series of variegated contrasts, all black and white. That's particularly ironic when you read the text and realize that the storyline is anything but black and white. This is a book written in shades of gray.
Such shades of gray affect all aspects of the storytelling. You read enough books like this and you begin to feel like they all hit the same beats. So when Neri writes that "Everyone had an opinion: The news guys, the politicians, the police, the lawyers, and the professors," I expected to see a bunch of white people giving the same old, same old about gangs and violence. Instead, Neri chooses to show sympathetic professionals who may not quite get it, but aren't pitted against Yummy either. As one man says, "This young kid fell through the cracks. If this child was protected five years ago, you save two people. You save the young woman who was killed and you save the young offender." This was not what I expected to hear. Refreshing doesn't even begin to describe it for me.
I felt some similarities in this book to The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon, particularly in terms of a younger brother seeing his older sibling making potentially dangerous choices outside the home. Still and all, Monster by Walter Dean Myers is probably the closest equivalent to "Yummy" at this time. But "Monster" was a study in unreliable narration and new style of prose, more than anything else. "Yummy" looks a little deeper what makes a human being "good" or "bad". Is it how they're raised? Or how they live? The choices they make? As our hero says, "I tried to figure out who the real Yummy was. The one who stole my lunch money? Or the one who smiled when I shared my candy with him? I wondered if I grew up like him, would I have turned out the same?" That's a question any kid reading this book might ask themselves too. We have so few serious graphic novel fiction titles asking kids tough questions like this. I mean, walk over to a graphic novel section of any library or bookstore and find me the contemporary realistic fiction. It's there, but hardly any of those books feature black characters, and the ones that do are historical. I guess Yummy is historical too, but at this point in time no kid will notice. What they'll find instead is a book that asks tough questions and comes to the conclusion that there aren't any easy answers. Believe me, you've nothing like this in your collection. Better get it while you can.
For ages 10 and up.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Hook and Substance
By Jesse J. Watson
Powerfully drawing you deep into the emotional turmoil of the events surrounding the real life story of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, G. Neri is a master of HOOK and SUBSTANCE. To simply call this book a cautionary tale would be criminal. This book is like the streets. There is no master key to check your answers against. Like the streets, you draw your own conclusions. And, like the streets, the cautions are painted on the walls right in front of you.
Neri is less an author and more of a wizard, stirring his cauldron of words into a tonic that once drunk, sucks the you into that world completely. Even after closing the last page of the book, you remain deep in the realm of, in this case, south side Chicago in 1994. Yummy haunts you. Yummy's face appears when you look at your kids, playing in their safe, crime free neighborhood. Yummy calls to you from beyond the grave with not answers, but more questions.
A confident writer can pen a book that asks more questions than it answers, yet still satisfies to the core. And this is one of those books. There is no shortage of commentary on this event, but Neri only uses those various voices as fuel for the readers' own conclusions. And, in this day and age of nonstop bombardment of opinions coming from parents, teachers, media sources, politicians, everywhere.... it must be nice for a kid to pick up a book that truly honors their ability to draw conclusions using their own mental capacity. In short, Neri trusts the kids that will pick up his book. And that is an honorable trait in an author.
The use of this book's narrator is effective because you are not getting the answers from Yummy himself. You, like observers at the time, are on the outside peering in. The voices of all the neighborhood folks, the reporters, the cops, the gangsters, everybody, create a texture of noise that ebs and flows through the story.
Visually, the book is gorgeous. Even at first glance, the jacket will tell you that this is going to be a treat. Production on this book is nice and in the days of cutbacks from big publishers, Lee and Low Books has shown, once again, that they are willing to drop some extra coin to get a fine book into your hands.
The artistic storytelling of this book is very well paced, exciting, inviting, haunting, and heartbreaking. DuBurke portrays the hood in '94 with wonderful details. The use of long shadows that serve as both background for text and for directing flow, is affective. My favorite pieces are those with that dramatic shadowing. The light becomes a character in the book, one that alters how we view the characters, especially Yummy. Depending on the light, this boy can be a teddy bear hugging pup, or a cold blooded killa.
Graphic novels are hot. Will continue to be hot. But, what many of these books are lacking is what Hollywood has clearly abandoned...good storytelling, not gimmicks. Form is nothing without function. Style is meaningless without content. What makes a book great at heart is the same thing that makes a great movie, tv show, webisode, ballad, comic, and graphic novel. When it has a powerful story delivered skillfully so that the reader/viewer is affected by what they have consumed, then it does not matter what format the delivery system is. In this case, had Neri made this into his initially intended screenplay, it could have been amazing. But, I am very happy he ended up going the graphic novel route. Looks great. Format works well as a vehicle for this story. And, because there is a significant deficit of urban books for urban kids, particularly in graphic novels, I bet there will be quite the waiting list for this one at many libraries!
4 Stars. Two thumbs up. This book is sick! Go buy one for yourself and one for your local library!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Before Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook, there was `Yummy' Sandifer.
By Alpha Reader
Before Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook, there was `Yummy' Sandifer.
When he was just eleven-years-old, Robert `Yummy' Sandifer (so named for his love of junk food) opened fire in a street of his local neighbourhood in Roseland, Chicago. Yummy fired a 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol, hitting and killing a young girl called Shavon Dean, who was just 14-years-old. Yummy fled the scene, and a manhunt got underway - the senseless murder and 11-year-old killer making national headlines . . . but that was just the beginning of this tragic saga.
Yummy was close to members of the Black Disciples Chicago street gang, and this is presumably how he came to be in possession of the gun. During the manhunt, it was reported that the shooting was even an initiation gone wrong. And it was because of his fledgling ties to the Black Disciples that it was the gang who ended up finding Yummy, and executing him.
Brothers Cragg and Derrick Hardaway, ages 16 and 14, were the Black Disciples members who met Yummy on August 31. They promised him a safe place to hide from the police . . . instead he was driven to an empty underpass and told to get on his knees - he was then shot twice in the back of the head. His body was discovered by Chicago police the next day, and brothers Cragg and Derrick Hardaway were convicted of his murder and given long-term prison sentences.
Yummy's mug-shot was plastered over the cover of TIME Magazine (the same mug-shot his family used for his funeral program). His story sent shockwaves through America as more of his sad background and violent end became known. By three-years of age, Yummy was known to Child Welfare authorities as his mother had a history of misdemeanour arrests and his father was incarcerated. Yummy was beaten on a regular basis, and was found to have cigarette burns on his body as well as more serious bruises consistent with physical beatings. Sandifer was taken to live with his grandmother when he was three, but the house was often overrun with other children (up to 19 at any one time) and by the time Yummy was eight-years-old he'd started stealing cars and breaking into houses.
President at the time, Bill Clinton, spoke about Yummy and the sad circumstances of his life and death in a President's Radio Address on September 10, 1994. It was during this address that Clinton announced his eminent signing of a proclamation declaring the upcoming week National Gang Violence Prevention Week.
Some sixteen years after the violent life and death of Yummy Sandifer, author G. Neri together with illustrator Randy Duburke, created `Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty' - a middle-grade graphic novel about the child killer who still haunts Chicago and the American conscience.
Neri's reimagining of this tragic event is told from the perspective of Roger, a Roseland resident and classmate of Yummy's. Roger tries to come to terms with the killing of Shavon Dean, the manhunt for Yummy and his eventual murder amidst his own family's struggles with Roger's older brother, who has been hanging out with the Black Disciples.
This book is intended for ages 12 and up - though I can imagine a lot of people would take issue with the violent themes being discussed and depicted in a graphic novel for middle-grade readers. But the fact of the matter is; this violence really happened. This is Neri and Duburke recounting and questioning a very real, very violent crime that rocked America and, sadly, involved a young boy who is nearly the same age as the intended readers of this graphic novel.
In 1994 Neri was a filmmaker teaching workshops to kids in the inner-city schools of Los Angeles, when the Yummy story broke. In interviews he talks about how those kids grasped and processed the breaking news story of Yummy Sandifer - the opposing beliefs that he was a thug who deserved his end, versus those who saw him as a victim. There was also a recurring discussion of gang and gun violence. In reading `The Last Days of a Southside Shorty' I can see how Neri came to tackle Yummy's story from the similar point of view of a young classmate who is grappling with Yummy's death, and life.
Roger's voice is carrying this story, as we see events unfold through his eyes - he's weighing the tragedy of Yummy's life against the recent news of Shavon's death . . . and eventually, Yummy's execution. And then there's Roger's older brother, Gary, who is himself friends with members of the Black Disciples.
Neri does very well to process all of this information through Roger, who slowly comes to realise the shades of grey in the tragedy. And it is a slow processing - as bits and pieces of Yummy's abusive childhood leak into the news-feeds amidst images of the shrine in Shavon's memory.
Randy Duburke has done an incredible job of illustrating this powerful story - in bold, black and white panels he captures Yummy's innocence in one drawing, and then hints at his menace in the next. And some panels are lifted right out of the 1994 newsfeeds and TIME magazine photos - like the haunting picture of Yummy in his casket, surrounded by stuffed toys.
`Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty' has won countless awards, among them; the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, Kirkus Review Best Books of the Year, and the 2010 Cybil Award - Best YA Graphic Novel . . . to name a very, very few. And this graphic novel deserves all that praise, and more.
Author G. Neri and illustrator Randy Duburke have created a haunting graphic novel exploring one of the darkest moments in America's long history of gun violence. That they've created this novel for young readers is incredibly important and potent. `Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty' is a beautiful and raw graphic novel that looks unflinchingly and with great care to the story of Robert `Yummy' Sandifer - and while the illustrations may be in stark black and white, Yummy's story is reflected in complex shades of grey.
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