Fourteen year-old Dana is a runaway, living on the streets of Toronto. Begging for spare change to buy coffee and a doughnut, and protecting her rapidly dwindling possessions from thieves is a far cry from her comfortable life in the suburbs, but she cannot go home.
Fortunately, Dana is adopted into a street family. Sixteen year-old Ashley has been on the streets since she was twelve and, though she puts on a tough act and grumbles about the added pressures of looking out for an underage runaway, proves herself when things get difficult. At seventeen, Brent shows a sometimes alarming tendency toward drug use, and possesses a level of cynicism and pessimism that hints at the struggles he has known, but is steadfast in his care and protection of the two girls. It is Brent who knows all the squats and finds them somewhere safe to sleep each night. It is Brent who figures out each day how they are going to make some money, either by choosing a subway entrance at which to beg for change or by cleaning windshields at stoplights. Both Brent and Ashley are there to calm her down and get her safely away when Dana is propositioned by a man in a business suit who then accuses her of solicitation when Dana starts making a scene.
Dana learns about the realities of life on the street, the constant discomfort of dirty clothes and hair, of hunger and of fatigue. She discovers that street people such as she are invisible, and that most passers-by either become hostile when asked for money or give out of the selfish desire to make the unpleasantness go away.
Dana’s only escape from the tediousness and fear of street life is making art. When she is caught spray painting underneath an overpass by a worker from a local centre for street youth, she is invited to drop in. At Sketches, Dana finds art, industrial arts and computer design studios, and friendship in the form of the centre’s director, Nicki, and a former street youth and now up-and-coming artist, Becca, who volunteers at the centre.
Though Brent and Ashley are initially sceptical about Dana’s increasing involvement in Sketches and its programs, they quickly recognize the potential of making sidewalk chalk pictures, after Nicki and Becca teach Dana and others how to create them. Soon the three young people are earning some decent money through the donations of admiring passers-by, and are thinking that, just possibly, they can make it off the street.
This is a good story about street youth and the hardships of life on the street. It explores some of the compelling reasons that push young men and women to leave home, and as well as the difficulties they face in making it off the street and into homes and jobs. Perhaps our politicians ought to be reading this. Sketches is the Intermediate Book Club’s choice for its second book of the year. I know there will be plenty of discussion about social justice.
FernFolio Editor
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Sketches by Eric Walters
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