Book Report: The Watsons

The Watsons are a black family living in Flint, Michigan. The mother, Wilona, is from Birmingham, Alabama, but moved to Flint when she married Daniel, the father. Their three children are Byron, who is 13; Kenny, who is 10; and Joetta or "Joey," who is 5. Kenny is the protagonist of the story; he is very smart and relatively quiet. Byron is something of a juvenile delinquent and possesses a knack for breaking the rules, and Joey is a sensitive child and a strict rule-follower.

It is the dead of winter in Flint, and naturally it is extremely cold. Wilona misses the South for its warmth, but Daniel reminds her of the way African Americans are treated in places like Birmingham. (It is 1963, the height of the Civil Rights Era.) When Byron and

Yet Byron is king of the school, so Kenny does not get teased as much as he would if he were not Byron's brother. When he does get teased, though, it is either because of his lazy eye or because he is a bit of a teacher's pet. Because he is so smart, other students call him "Poindexter." Usually, a bully named Larry Dunn is the one who gives him trouble.

One day, though, two new kids come to school; they are Rufus and Cody, who moved from the South. Because of their accents and the state of their clothes (they are poor, so they share clothes often), they immediately become targets for the jeers of other students. Kenny, however, becomes fast friends with Rufus, and the two boys often play with Kenny's favorite dinosaur figurines together. Their friendship is put in jeopardy when Kenny laughs after some bullies make fun of Rufus's clothes, though soon Kenny realizes he is wrong and

He manages to convince his little sister that the reason people in their area have to dress so warmly is because garbage trucks come and pick up frozen, dead people in the street every morning; people with Southern blood like the Watsons' freeze faster. When Larry Dunn steals Kenny's good leather gloves, Byron gives him such a terrible beating that Kenny even feels bad for the bully. Byron gets in big trouble for playing with matches, for signing his name for groceries at the store and not telling his parents, and for letting his partner in crime, Buphead, administer a chemical straightening treatment to his hair.

The Watson parents decide that something must be done about Byron. They fix up their old car, equip it with a new record player, and decide that they will take a road trip down to Birmingham to leave Byron to spend the summer with strict Grandma Sands. Byron is not happy about this. Wilona plans the entire trip out to the last detail, including where they will stop to spend the night on the road, but once they get started it becomes clear that Daniel's plan is to drive straight through to Alabama without stopping