Checking on the Moon

by Jenny Davis

Cab Jones has never met her grandmother or been to the town where she lives. But when Cab's mother and new stepfather takes off to Europe for the summer, Cab and her older brother find themselves stuck in Washco, Pennsylvania. The streets are dirty and drab, and Cab is afraid she'll never make friends.



But Cab's summer job waitressing in her grandmother's restaurant--EATS--proves to be a great way to meet people, including her new friend, Tracy. Slowly Cab comes to love the neighborhood and the restaurant's colorful coffee drinkers.



Then the even fabric of summer in Washco is ripped apart when terrible crimes are committed against the residents. Cab and Tracy join a crusade to restore safety to the streets of the place that has become home to Cab. But by summer's end Cab finds the future has another home in store for her.

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published April 1, 1993

About the author

Jenny Davis has never been a person to sit on the sidelines. In her writing, teaching, and social activism she has translated her personal experiences--both pleasant and unpleasant--in ways that can help young people survive adolescence. Social concerns such as unemployment, homelessness, illiteracy, and violent crime are shown from the viewpoint of Davis's teen protagonists in such highly praised novels as Good-Bye and Keep Cold and Checking on the Moon.

Growing up involves more than just overcoming one or two obstacles for the young people who inhabit these novels. It means confronting a never-ending succession of challenges. In each of Davis's books, written in an engaging conversational style, teens learn that parents are not always right, and that violence, old age, insecurity, and loneliness are all a part of life, sometimes conquerable, more often accepted and endured to the best of one's ability.

"I try very hard not to write down to anyone, myself included," Davis told an Authors and Artists for Young Adults (AAYA) interviewer.

Reviews

[Keatonship · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet easy read, not very exciting

[Luci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quality YA but dated. Reasonably well written, but not terribly inventive.

[Deanna Mlynarczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because it is set in Pittsburgh. More specifically an imaginary neighborhood in Pittsburgh. No one in Pittsburgh says they are from Pittsburgh. Everyone who lives there identifies themselves with a particular area of the city. In this book is it Washco. The main character, Cab Jones, moves there to live with her estranged grandmother, from the wide open spaces of Texas. She will be separated from her mother for the very first time. She learns how to make friends, how to live in a community, and builds a relationship with her very special grandmother. Washco is dealing with some very serious issues, and our herione, Cab, is important in the community's effort to solve them. Similar to Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer

[Susan Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Cab Jones's mother goes on a European concert tour with her new husband, Cab and her brother Bill must leave their small Texas town to spend the summer in Washco, a decaying Pittsburgh neighborhood, with a grandmother she doesn't know. How the grandmother and the neighborhood become Cab's own is the heart of this appealing book. Ordinary changes - Cab's learning to care about a variety of people in the neighborhood as well as finding a new friend her own age - form a counterpoint to a larger social issue when violent crime strikes in Washco, and Cab must grow up in more ways than one.