Trash

by Sharon Darrow

"Amid gritty free verse, Darrow interweaves beautifully crafted forms such as the villanelle, sestina and pantoum, whose intricate patterns suit Sissy's mournful voice." —  Publishers Weekly

For sixteen-year-old Sissy and her brother Boy, trash is a reminder of one too many sorry foster placements they've endured, a way of life they can't wait to escape. Now on the run in search of their big sister Raynell, ironically they are forced to rely on their trash-picking skills for sustenance and shelter. Reunited at last with Raynell in St. Louis, Boy and Sissy shed their old identities, reinvent themselves as graffiti artists, and splash their new names on city bridges and walls. But one night's expedition goes horribly wrong, and Sissy looks again to trash, this time as the beginning of something artful and beautiful.

Genres: Young Adult, Poetry, Novel In Verse, Realistic Fiction, Family, Urban, Childrens

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 8, 2006

About the author

Sharon Darrow is the author of THE PAINTERS OF LEXIEVILLE and THROUGH THE TEMPESTS DARK AND WILD: A STORY OF MARY SHELLEY, CREATOR OF FRANKENSTEIN, illustrated by Angela Barrett. Sharon Darrow lives in Vermont.

Reviews

[Kenneth Knudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book for a couple of reasons. First, the description of nature in the city. I don't see a ton of books that attempt to describe art in the everyday city life, so my opinion might not count for much. But from what I read, it felt like the city came alive.

"morning breaks & St. Louis’s

silver arch shines
like dawn on red bricks

spray-painted names:
GRAAT ZELLZ ARCHER

water towers and billboards
graffiti blooms(55).

It's almost as if the graffiti has become the flower. I just think the author does a good job of making the scenery come alive.

Second, I enjoyed this book because of it honest depiction of human nature. Life is a fragile thing. Death happens to all of us at one point.

He fell & broke
into pieces
icicles melt
rainbows
dissolve
people
die why
you?
I am the only
visitor here
I yell “Boy! Why didn’t you look?”(114)

I enjoyed how honest Sissy (one of the main protagonist) was with her feelings. She didn't recover right away. She didn't just forget about her brother. She gave herself time to morn, and then moved on finally towards the end.

One of the things that I had a hard time with was how often the story jumped around. At times I couldn't quite follow what was going on, but for a book made from poetry, it was fairly clear and straightforward.

[Lexie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was apathetic and didn't think reading could be fun. I never wanted to just sit down and read a book , after reading a book makes me think that it isn't so bad to read. I have had drastic feelings towards reading since the first semester , I can say that reading isn't so bland. This book was about two kids that were boucing around from fauster home to fauster home and evertime they'd get to know the parents they'd have to move to another fauster home , and one of the homes they were moved into , they got to do whatever they wanted to and they started to be bad kids and they went out and started doing graffiti and as they were jumping from builing to building , the boy died. This book has very powerful meanings and I do recomment this book to others. One of the meanings would be ; listen to your parents , they do things for a reason because they love you.

[Taia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book I read was called “Trash”. It was written by Sharon Darrow. The reading level of Trash is 6.3. For Sissy and Boy, trash is a reminder of to many foster placements they ran away from. When they ran away the last time they went to look for their older sister Raynell and slept around in trash-picking spots for shelter. A couple night later they found Raynell in St.Louis, shed their identities and turned into Graffiti artists. They wrote their names all over city bridges and buildings. On one of the graffiti trips something goes wrong.
The author includes two kids who were not named at birth and got put in foster homes. Sissy and Boy were really good kids until they found their sister. The author also includes Boy’s death and it stresses Sissy. The text says “ Boy looks back at me, makes sure I am with them & leaps the low wall. About a yard to Tyrone”s right he disappears screaming”. Another piece of text says “In the flashlight spill all broken and bloody, wide open eyes. “Boy” I’m yelling holding him….Call the paramedics”. Boy disappearing scared everyone especially Sissy, The second piece of text I shared before shows that Sissy didn’t want him to leave and that she cared for him.
Trash is a pretty good book. I would recommend it more for a 5th or 6th grader because it was on the easier side of most books that 7 & 8th graders read. I liked it because it shows love and relationships and it was easier to understand unlike other books. This book is kind of like the outsiders because someone passes away and another person stresses out after the death. I didn’t really have a favorite part being it was a really good book. It seemed like the author wanted us to feel how Boy and Sissy were feeling in the story by telling us how the foster homes were “trash” and how Sissy reacted to boy passing away.

[Jade Gregerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trash is a book written in verse about two siblings named Sissy and Boy. They’re two foster kids who grew up living with their sister, until she could no longer support them. Then they lived with this couple who made a living in the dump. Everything around them had been and smelt of trash, always. They ran away to go live with their sister again after their legal guardians started hitting them. They end up finding and living with her in a big city. Boy starts hanging out with some of their old friends, and sneaking out at night. They both become taggers, leaving the house every night and covering the town with their tag names, Atenz and Skye. Until something tragic happens.
I love books written in verse, so naturally I liked the book immediately. It was a fast read, but it had a lot of meaning. It really made me think about how often things like this probably happen in the world. A lot of the book was sad, but it felt really real, too. Sissy tells about how her life is in a very honest and clear cut way, like she knows the situation and she has accepted it. She doesn’t sound like your average melodramatic teenager, and that was just one more thing that I loved about this book. I’d recommend this book as a quick read for people who like books about art, foster families, hard times, etc. (And really just anyone who has the time.)

[Ben Passinault]

The realistic fiction novel Trash by Sharon Darrow tells a not so good story. I didn’t really like this book because nothing in the book ever caught me by surprise and when the author had a chance to make a big change she didn’t. Boy and Sissy are the main characters. Boy and Sissy are siblings and they were left by their mother when they were very young so they have to try and survive without an education or money. The author gave a lot of details when it came to Boy and Sissy’s thoughts. This writing style puts a lot of dramatic irony in the book when the reader knows Boy is hiding something from Sissy, or Sissy is hiding something from boy. I think someone who is younger would like this book because it would fit there understanding of what being poor is like. The older you are the less you’d like it because the book doesn’t give a very good representation of what it is like being poor but you wouldn’t realize that at a young age.

[Lucas Smalec · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book was definitely not the best book I have read but it was not the worst. This book was very eventful with lots of emotion. There were two kids named Boy and Sissy they left here parents and became foster children. Boy and Sissy really enjoyed hanging around with each other running threw the city and spray painting all the alley ways. One main reason I liked this book was because it was written in verse. Finally, the last thing I liked was how the author made Sissy go on her own because she was just a follower of boy earlier.

[Anna Lupton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gut wrenching, definitely will make you cry, but also somewhat inspiring. It's a short read, I finished it in about 30 minutes, but the story will stay with you for a lifetime. It's written in beautiful free verse, I love the graffiti elements in it, and I especially enjoyed watching Sissy use her creativity to find a way out of her situation. I read this during a low point in my life and it reminded me that I could dig myself out of my hole just like she did. Absolutely beautiful story.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was definitely not my style, but I knew that going in. While I was excited to read a book about graffiti artists, this didn’t really give me what I was looking for. I am interested to read The Painters of Lexieville though, as I think I might like it more.

[Susan McGilvray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrowing but lovely novel in verse - great choice for our middle school artists.

[Jennifer Wardrip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce for TeensReadToo.com

TRASH is a verse novel that continues the story of Boy and Sissy Lexie, first introduced in Sharon Darrow's novel THE PAINTERS OF LEXIEVILLE. It's certainly not necessary to have read that first book (I haven't)--but I'm planning on it now that I've read this one. The best part of this book, I think, is the characters, and I'd love to read more about them.

Sure, the story is interesting, too: Boy and Sissy are teenagers now. They've been shipped around to various foster homes in a way that makes them feel like trash, especially since their mother discarded them like it. Now they're living with the town trash collectors, a placement that seems especially fit using that comparison. It'll never be home.

Boy says that home is where their big sister Raynell is, and Sissy thinks it's the truth. So what do they do? They run away and go to find her. They think she's in Little Rock, but it turns out that she moved to St. Louis and their foster parents didn't deliver the message. They don't know how to find her, so they start saving their money, and when they have enough, they go to St. Louis and search her out.

In St. Louis, they have a family with Raynell, her husband, Jobe, and their baby, Kylie. They also have new friends: Dolores and Tyrone. The four of them run around the city at night, climbing, jumping, and painting. They take new names with which to sign their graffiti: Boy and Sissy, who have always wanted real names, are now Atenz and Skye.

And then something unthinkable happens. Something terrible: Boy doesn't look where he's jumping, and in that split second of not looking, things change forever. Sissy's life will never, ever be the same.

Both the story and characters in TRASH are interesting. This is a story well worth reading.

[Felicia L · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because it was a book that kept you still wanting to read more because of all the intense moments and mixed feelings in the book. The main point of this book was about showing people with fortunate lives that people who are unfortunate have it way differntly than people who are fortunate. This book is about two teenagers named Boy and Girl that have no home, no money, nothing. So they have knowhere to live but in the trash. They feed off of everything that's thrown away in the dumpsters. They were abandoned by their mothers when they were younger and they have beeen taking care of eachother since she left them. In the story you can hear them crying out for help but no one knows their situation until foster care took them in one day. But they run away to there older sister Raynell's that lives miles away from where they are now. Foster care finds out they ran away and finds them. And ever since then they have been sneaking out to spray paint at nights, where one night something horrible happens and nothings ever the same from then. Something happens to one of them and leaves them both seperated forever..

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had I realized that this is a sequel to The Painters of Lexieville I would have read that first. I probably would have understood more about the motives of the main characters if I'd read the first book. This is the story of two children who finally go to live with their sister and her husband in St. Louis after a series of foster homes don't work out. What bothers me about this story is how the sister doesn't pay more attention to what her siblings are doing when they go out at night. Tragedy was bound to happen. I was pleased to see the story end on a positive note, however. Overall, it was an ok story.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the idea of a book that examines the creativity of graffiti artists, showing how simple tagging can develop into something more. Unfortunately, as poetic novels go, this isn't my favorite. Darrow's Sissy is just a little too thin a character for me to connect with. The meat of the book is Sissy and Boy's struggle to survive poverty and foster care, and their art is about the only bright spot they have. There's grief, homelessness, loss and abandonment, poverty and survival, but it all felt a little distant.

As quick reads go, a fair reader could finish this in a couple of days; it took me an hour or so.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trash by Sharon Darrow was about 2 children named Boy and Sissy that have been from foster home to foster home trying to find a place that they could actually call home. Boy and Sissy run away from a foster home to find their beloved sister and her husband because they said wherever she is that's where home is. As they struggle through their journey things soon happen that makes only one of them alive. After Boy dies Sissy soon believes that she has to stay in that town to live even though her sister left and begs her to come with Sissy decideds to stay because she doesn't want to leave where Boy's grave is.

[JUAN IBARRAaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is about a sister and brother and they are in a foster care home and they start to pick trash to make some cash to buy new clothes but then they fall in love with the art of graffiti and they start to write trash because they think they treat them like trash . som they start writing their new graffiti name on walls. This poem is all about a large unforgetable moment and very poetic and aty the end something bad happens that changes everyone's life . but at the same time it is the best for everyone.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty good book. I felt like it was kinda predictable. Poor Sissy and Boy are abandoned and abused. They have bad experiences and then find graffiti art. Boy dies trying graffiti stuff. Sissy can't move on. She deals with grief and then goes to art school.

It took me less than an hour to read this book because it's in free verse (which = if it was written like a normal novel it would be 90% shorter).

[Cathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Review: I was annoyed at first with the lack of prose telling the stories of these two young urban teens, but soon found that the story was unfolding perfectly and with enough mood and detail that I clearly felt and saw the pain and struggles of the kids. I think that, while I didn’t enjoy the poetry, some of my students will definitely relate to it. The text generation is more used to brief poetic jabs to tell a story – they get it.

[Antwonn]

This book is not that fun becasue ther is no spark to the conflict so i reconmmend nobody read this book. This book was too fictitous because the guy can not jump over for bulidings also it can be gullible. Also this may be the worst book i have read this book is not going to evolve over the years. I had my friend read this book he tought it was soo fake to. Also the characters are not funny at all so it was not humouruos.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This moving novel in verse is about a brother and sister, so unloved by their mother that she didn't even give them real names - just Sissy and Boy. The author draws a parallel between trash and these two kids. After landing in a foster home where they're mistreated, the two set off on their own, to find their older sister. They become graffiti artists in the city. Very moving story.

[Deborah Lyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Sissy and her brother, Boy have been bounced from foster home to foster home. They make their way to the home of an older brother by digging through trash for food and shelter. Once reunited both start out as graffiti artists but then tragedy strikes.

The title is so appropriate. Two children being thrown out from foster homes like they were nothing but trash.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This YA story is told in verse.
Sissy and Boy are moved from one foster home to another. Not only do they pick up trash, they are treated like trash. This story follows them as they search for a place that will feel like home.
I strongly recommend this book.

[Reggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trash is a good book. Its about two kids who move house to house. There names are Boy and Sissy. But they find a house who likes them and they like too. But at nights they go out and spray paint walls........

[Lauren Gommert]

One of the most poignant, beautiful, haunting books I've ever read. This novel is written in a style that makes every emotion jump off the page and into your heart. A quick read that will stay with you for a long, long time.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely stunning poetry.
The story has an authentic feel, as if the author followed a group of taggers around late at night.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very good book. Excellent for young people. Left me wanting to read more, so I may pick up 'Painters of Lexieville'.

[Mima Tipper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome voice and mad-compelling! A winner all around:)

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much for books in verse, but this was just beautiful. Full of emotion, and so powerful.