Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	Jimi & Me
	Author:	Adoff, Jamie
	Date Published:	2005
	Genre:	Real Life
	Grade Level:	6 - 8
	Booktalker:	Susi Bonato

Booktalk:
My dad died a month ago by a random shooting. He went to a corner store to buy a diet Coke and the next thing we knew, he was dead. We had to move from Brooklyn, New York to a small town in Ohio called Hollow Falls. I feel so alone and lost without dad. Mom says everything is going to be different now and everything has changed. She says it more with her eyes than her mouth. Dad's favorite music artist was Jimi Hendrix, the greatest guitarist who ever lived. Dad and Jimi were like brothers who never knew each other. Black hippies with big souls and even bigger smiles. Both died way before their time. Jimi did it to himself, and Dad never saw it coming. My name is Keith James and I'm 13 years old. I write poetry and like to dress in my dad's clothes from the 60's when he was a kid. We moved to Hollow Falls to be closer to my mom's sister, my aunt Berny. She calls me Little Cool. Hollow Falls sounds like a horror movie town to me. Not a lot of black kids and definitely no one dresses like a hippie. On my first day, I met a fine girl with long blonde hair named Veronica Sweet. Over the next three weeks we become friends and she likes Jimi's music and we share the same values. But some of the other guys don't like it that I'm hanging out with her. And sometimes I get accusatory looks walking around town, a carmel-faced lookin' kid with a big bushy 'fro walkin' with a gray-haired middle-aged white lady. Fitting into Hollow Falls isn't easy. The biggest hardship is finding out my dad had a secret life, one that started before he met my mom and one that continued on after they met and had me. It all started on the account of some insurance premiums not being paid up. And what I'm discovering is a journey more painful than coming to peace with my dad's death, coming to peace with my dad's life. The man I worshipped suddenly became the man I hardly know. Everything is going to be different now.