CALL ME HOPE

Hope’s mother verbally abuses her, calling her hopeless, an accident, stupid, the reason her father left, as well as innumerable profanities. When she’s brought into the principal’s office for calling another student a “dumb shit,” her mother arrives, speaking demeaning profanities about Hope to the principal. So the reader gets the picture right away. Because her sixth-grade class is studying the Holocaust, she begins reading Anne Frank, and watches the film Life is Beautiful. Hope begins to develops coping methods, as did Anne in her attic and Guido in the internment camps. All the while, readers see her as a good girl, smart and hardworking, while her mother continues to denigrate and dismiss her. Fortunately, she has support from other adults and an older brother who knows her grief. The abuse remains erratic—like living with a rattlesnake—and finally, Hope’s mother refuses to give her permission to attend the most important event of the year, the Outdoor School. Her brother contacts educators and friends, who intervene and convince her mother to change her mind. When Hope comes home, her mother has begun counseling and is beginning to change. Written for the purpose of helping other abused children, this has a hopeful, though rather facile ending; sadly, such is not the case for every abused child. (Fiction. 10-14)