Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

“Standing next to the heavy glass paned door that led into the house, Jana could hear voices. Curtains kept her from seeing inside. She felt suddenly shy. Phoenix House was really home for the people who lived there. Would they think of her as an intruder? Would they resent her being there? Suddenly she felt like turning around and leaving. Maybe there was a phone booth at the corner, and she could call her mother to come and get her. ”No. If she did that, she wouldn’t be able to face Liz in the morning. She could just see the look on Liz’s face if Jana didn’t show up after the big argument they had had. “Jana resolutely pushed the doorbell and waited for someone to answer.” (91) Is she ready to “step into someone else’s shoes” for the night? Finished reading Jana to the Rescue, the November 1990 twenty-first book in the Fabulous Five series by Betsy Haynes. This time, the For Girls series turns a socially aware spotlight on… homelessness! Fabulous Five leader and all-around good student Jana Morgan is selected by the Wakeman Junior High to help “mainstream” one of the girls living at a local shelter. Not a really exceptional entry, and a bit of a misnomer—Jana has relatively little impact on the outcome of events—but seemingly a balanced treatment of the subject, with a humorous subplot for some needed lighter moments. First, some housekeeping. As I’ve mentioned before, after The Boys-Only Club, the nineteenth book (which twice mentions it being springtime), the chronology gets skewed. Keeping in mind the events of each book take up approximately two weeks, here, Jana’s mother‘s remarriage, which happens in the sixth book, The Parent Game, was “a few months ago” (5), and per the preview for the next installment, Caribbean Adventure (“Super Edition” No. 2), it’s still winter, and “the winter break between semesters is coming up” (117). Is this one of those schools where the old classes drag on after Christmas break, and they have a week off in February? No, checked ahead: this is the usual Christmas to New Year’s vacation. Since Jana is still in seventh grade, was she struggling to help Liz—at the same time the Fabulous Five were straining to save all the pets in the shelter in book thirteen, The Christmas Countdown? Head hurting now. Did Bantam even have a consistency editor, or did they just figure the tweens wouldn’t care? So, Jana is one of the model students chosen to partner with a kid from the aptly named Phoenix House, and get her feeling at home at “Wacko”. She’s paired with Lizzie Flagg, and as you can imagine, the new girl begins very cold, distant, and untrusting. The preview text just inside the cover gives a good example. “Would you call me Liz instead of Lizzie? Just my good friends call me Lizzie.” Jana’s invitations to get involved in after school clubs, store her coat in her locker, and befriend the Fabulous Five fall flat, and even her efforts to study together for a history test prove thankless, when Liz is overwhelmed, tried to look at Jana’s answers during the test, and gets angry at her not letting her cheat! This leads to the dare readers will see coming due to Andrew Bacha’s cover art: Liz sarcastically says she’d like to see Jana spend a day in the shelter, and Jana takes up the challenge (84-85). The stay at Phoenix House isn’t even as bad as I expected, and I’m sure worldly wise readers will be able to guess most of the ins and outs, but for the younger intended audience, some parts will probably be eye-opening. It is noisy, with kids screaming, older women catatonic before a turned-up TV, has no privacy, and is a poor environment for studying (but Haynes wasn’t quite clear if Jana was, in fact, able to do her homework, or shocked teachers by having it unfinished). Possessions are liable to get stolen if out of sight, and there’s a ten-minute limit to morning bathing, brushing, etc. For a popularity contest-winning girl like her (book fourteen, Seventh Grade Menace), ten minutes to bathe (the place anomalously has a tub, no shower) and groom, that’s an issue. At least the place, for all the worn furniture and linens (see cover), was clean. I expected Jana to be horrified by hordes of mice, roaches, lice, and other creepy crawlies! While it’s mentioned a few times that many homeless are addicts or mentally ill (now, this seems to be the vast majority), there’s no “literary realism” mentions of her spotting drug paraphernalia, someone discreetly using, or of anyone acting erratically, as I expect you really see at a night at a shelter. Now it would probably be quieter, as residents scrolled their phones like everyone else. As on the cover, lights out, turning off the one sixty-watt bulb, is at ten. I know how fond indigent folks are of pushing shopping carts around, but given that the bedroom is upstairs, would take a determined one to violate the third rule. Haynes doesn’t give Liz a pass for treating Jana unkindly when she’s volunteering to help her, but does put into perspective why homeless kids, and their parents, are so wary, and out of contact with the school system. As Wakeman counselor Mrs. Brenner explains, ”’most of them haven’t been to school for a long time because their parents are afraid their children will be taken away from them.’ “‘By whom?’ asked Jana. ”’The police, social workers, hospital personnel,’ Mrs. Brenner said. ‘Parents know they aren’t providing adequately for their kids if the family is living in an abandoned house or in a car. And they know that welfare workers can take their children away and place them in foster homes. So many parents don’t try to get their children into schools. They’re afraid, and they want to keep the family together. Many times, their children are all they have.’” (52-53) A nice acknowledgment that government busybodies don’t consistently know what’s best, and might have been making the matter worse. Evidently, authorities in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the series is set, decided to lay off for once for the greater good. Meanwhile, another Fabulous Five member is positively giddy over a chain letter only a seventh grade girl could believe in. Perpetually boy-crazy Melanie Edwards got a “love test” from her cousin in California. As she tells her fellow Fabulous Five pals, ”What you do is send out these tests to six girls in six days. Then on the fourth day after that, you drink a glass of water, then say your favorite guy’s name. Within another four days, he’ll ask you out or tell you he likes you. If you get the letter and don't do what it says, your love life during the next four years will be a total disaster!” (12) You would think the risk would deter her, but no. Not to mention that Melanie juggles three boyfriends already; you would think she would be antsy about finally deciding which one was “the one”. Jana, Beth, Katie, and Christie are having none of it, but evidently Melanie is able to paw off six copies of the test to other superstitious dupes (we aren’t told who). Then, at their usual burger joint hangout Bumpers (was surprised Liz didn’t point out how spoiled all these kids are, having enough pocket money to eat out at a restaurant almost every day after school), after rejecting water in a paper cup that had ice in it (!), she ceremoniously drinks the glass of water, and… blurts out class clown Richie Corrierro’s name after he offers her a frog to kiss (36-37). She spends the rest of the book avoiding Richie, lest he ask her out (that her friends remind her she can just say no provides no comfort). The two plots connect when Jana, after the rough night of trying to study with Liz, gets a call from Melanie, waxing dramatic over her attempt to break the spell (she shouts a putative counterspell that ends up freaking out perhaps her favorite guy, Shane Arrington). Jana loses it and snaps at Melanie, only to recognize, after hanging up, that Melanie didn’t deserve her attitude; Melanie just hadn’t known what was going on in her life right then. This is an insightful moment, probably the best in the book. She calls Melanie back right away to apologize, and it is then that she begins getting on track to solve her issues with Liz (72-73). It‘s unfortunate how topical this book remains. Homelessness has become so much bigger a problem than it was in 1990 when Jana to the Rescue came out. Knowing homeless folk personally isn’t rare anymore even for the less outgoing, though I’m mostly familiar with people homeless as adults. We learn that before her mom lost her job, Liz was seemingly a popular girl too: she cherishes a picture of her with two best friends in better times. As the story closes, she‘s moving back to her old hometown, as her mom has her job back. Jana didn’t bring that about, but Liz is grateful for the friend she made, and even leaves Jana a treasured heirloom, her grandmother’s gold earrings. The passage underlines what Jana has learned about her friend’s self-respect and sense of dignity. “Jana started to protest again, but the look on Liz’s face stopped her. She really does want me to have them, Jana thought. It’s important for her to be able to give something to me.” (114) I expect the next entry, the plus-sized Caribbean Adventure, though a heavier tome, won’t have so heavy a tone! Ships away! #BetsyHaynes #JanaToTheRescue #FabulousFive #AndrewBacha #homelessness #homeless #homelessshelters #shelters #chainletter #superstition #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books