Girls Like Us

Starred review from March 10, 2014
Following graduation from their high school’s special education track, two girls become wards of the state and are placed in an apartment where they live independently and cook and clean for their neighbor/employer, an older woman named Elizabeth. Sharp-tongued and aggressive, Quincy is defensive about her learning difficulties and the physical scars left by the source of her brain damage, “when my mama’s boyfriend hit my head with a brick.” Sensitive Biddy, who describes herself as having “moderate retardation,” overeats to mask past traumas, which include having given up her baby. Giles’s (Dark Song) background teaching special education students informs this blunt, honest, and absorbing story about two young women overcoming challenges that have less to do with their abilities to read or write than with how society views and treats them. In short, alternating chapters, the girls narrate in raw and distinct voices that capture their day-to-day hurdles, agony, and triumphs. The “found family” that builds slowly for Quincy, Biddy, and Elizabeth—with no shortage of misunderstandings, mistrust, or tears—is rewarding and powerful. Ages 14–up. Agent: Scott Treimel, Scott Treimel NY.

Starred review from June 1, 2014

Gr 8 Up-Quincy and Biddie are "speddies" (special education students). They have just graduated high school and must live out in the world on their own. After being matched together by their teacher, they are given adult responsibilities: Quincy works at a supermarket while Biddie cooks and cleans for the older woman who is boarding them. The teens must learn how to fend for themselves in a world that is unfamiliar. They have both experienced physical, mental, and sexual violence, and must rely on each other to come out stronger than they were before. Girls Like Us is filled with genuine relationships that develop over time and feel authentic. There is humor and heart throughout, making the severity of the protagonists' situations more accessible to readers. A story line about Biddie's obsession with a family of ducks in their backyard is particularly poignant. The one- or two-page chapters alternate between Quincy and Biddie and are told in voices that are genuine to their experiences but never sensationalized. The frank discussions and depictions of the violence committed against them are shocking but never vulgar. Giles has constructed a unique, hard-hitting yet refreshing story with well-developed characters free from expected cliches or caricatures. A powerful novel that teens will enjoy wholeheartedly.-Christopher Lassen, Brooklyn Public Library

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2014
Two "Speddies"--special ed students--graduate high school and move in with a kind but sometimes misguided older woman. At first, prickly Quincy, who is mixed-race, and fearful but kind Biddy, who is white, seem to have little in common besides their special ed designation. After they finish high school, the two girls are placed in a living situation together. Biddy has a job cooking and cleaning for the elderly woman in whose home they are staying, and Quincy will work at a grocery store. The girls narrate alternate chapters, a page or two long each and related in readable but distinct dialect. The story is told with both gentleness and a humor that laughs with, not at, the two girls. (Quincy's recurring joke about Biddy catching "the duck rabies" from a family of ducks she's started feeding is particularly charming.) Sexual, institutional and family violence against both Quincy and Biddy are treated frankly, with realistic but not sensational detail. One plot point involving the daughter who was taken from Biddy years earlier feels contrived, but otherwise, the warmth, conflict and mutual caring that develop among Quincy, Biddy and elderly Miss Lizzy are authentic and genuinely moving. A respectful and winningly told story about people too often relegated to the role of plot device--bravo. (Fiction. 12-18)

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Starred review from May 1, 2014
Grades 8-12 *Starred Review* In compelling, engaging, and raw voices, 18-year-olds Biddy and Quincy, newly independent, intellectually disabled high-school graduates, narrate their growing friendship and uneasy transition into a life of jobs, real world apartments, and facing cruel prejudice. Obese and illiterate Biddy has more emotional intelligence than Quincy, whose normal brain development was shattered when her mother's boyfriend hit her with a brick when she was six. Biddy's limited cognitive capacities spring from oxygen deprivation during birth as well as lifelong deprivation of nurturing. Paired by a social service program, the girls are made roommates in a live-work placement where they share a small apartment at the home of a wealthy, sensitive, and supportive widow, Elizabeth. Biddy cleans and provides physical assistance for Elizabeth, while Quincy, who loves cooking, works at a market. Biddy and Quincy share deep secrets and narrate lives heartrendingly full of anger, abandonment, and abuse, including explicit, realistic descriptions of two rapes. But with the help of patient Elizabeth and the support they gain from each other, they are empowered to move forward with strength and independence. Giles (Dark Song, 2010) offers a sensitive and affecting story of two young women learning to thrive in spite of their hard circumstances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014
After graduation, "Speddies" (short for special ed) Biddy and Quincy are assigned to live together, helping to cook and clean for well-meaning Miss Lizzy. Quincy also gets a job at a grocery store where, on her first day, she's accosted by a coworker who later rapes her. The teens' slow-to-develop friendship, with small moments and poignant encounters, is believably volatile yet ultimately rewarding.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

May 1, 2014
Although they're both "Speddies" (short for special ed), high school classmates Biddy and Quincy aren't friends. Quincy -- prickly, mistrustful, physically scarred, and left with brain damage after her "crack ho" mother's boyfriend hit her with a brick when she was six -- is a product of the foster care system; Biddy -- angelic, overweight, illiterate, diagnosed with "moderate retardation" -- has been raised by a cruel grandmother who kicks her out immediately after graduation. The two girls, both wards of the state, are assigned to live together, helping to cook and clean for well-meaning (but sometimes way-off-the-mark) Miss Lizzy. Quincy also gets a job at a grocery store where, on her first day, she's accosted by a coworker who later rapes her. Biddy, too, has been brutally raped and was tricked by her grandmother into giving up her baby. "Police or nobody else care what happen to girls like us," the normally sunny Biddy tells Quincy when she finally reveals what occurred. Small moments and poignant encounters throughout the book prove Biddy wrong, and each girl gradually starts to let down her guard. The teens' friendship -- slow to develop but life-altering -- and their relationship with Miss Lizzy are believably volatile yet ultimately rewarding. For most of the book, very short chapters alternate between Biddy and Quincy's first-person narrations. At the end, when Quincy struggles with the decision about whether to speak out or remain silent, she takes over the telling. The book gives memorable voice to underrepresented young women. elissa gershowitz

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)