Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	Dancing in Cadillac Light
	Author:	Holt, Kimberly Willis
	Date Published:	2001
	Genre:	Real Life
	Grade Level:	6 - 7
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
Grandma had died a month ago in June. Now it was hot at cinders July, and Grandpap was living with Uncle Floyd and Aunt Loveda. Every day, Momma got a phone call from Aunt Loveda complaining about Grandpap and what trouble he had caused her. Nothing big, so far as I could see. But they were the rich side of the family, and obviously didn’t want to be burdened. In fact, they kept talking about putting him in a nursing home. Finally, Momma told Daddy she didn’t know what to do. “You know exactly what we have to do,” Daddy responded. “Jaynell, you’re going to have to move in with Racine for a little while…until (Grandpap) is ready to back to the homeplace,” he told me. Living that close to my 10 month younger little sister would like to drive me crazy. But at least Grandpap would be safe with us. The next day, just after the highwaymen came to start blacktopping our road, Momma and Daddy went to fetch Grandpap, and I moved into Racine’s room. Grandpap wouldn’t talk, even to me, that first day, and Daddy had a task for me the rest of the summer. He wanted me to keep an eye on Grandpap and let him know if he did anything crazy. The second day Grandpap was with us, I followed him out of the house. He headed for the cemetery. “You going to say hello to Grandma?” I asked. “You Betcha,” he responded. He invited me along, and when I asked why he hadn’t been talking, he responded that he hadn’t had anything worth saying. I spent the rest of the summer with him, and never found him doing anything crazy. Unless you counted visiting the cemetery and talking to the graves crazy, but people often did stuff like that. Or, if you counted the time we were on the lake and Grandpap saw some hunters trying to shoot ducks out of season and waved his arms and shouted to chase the ducks away. He was just being fair. Or if you counted the stops we made on Saturdays at many of the places Grandpap delivered mail in his working days and talked to all his old friends. The only really crazy thing that the grownups thought he did was the day we hitched a ride to the Cadillac dealership in Longview and Grandpap bought himself a used Cadillac convertible. With cash. Me, I thought it was pretty nice and not at all crazy. That night Grandpap and I were talking about the stars and how a man would be walking on the moon soon. I related how the newspeople said we'd even be able to see it on TV. “You will,” he responded, “I ain’t figuring on me.”