Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty

Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty is an acclaimed graphic novel by G. Neri with art by Randy DuBurke, published by Lee and Low Books in August, 2010 (). The story is about Robert “Yummy” Sandifer, who was eleven years old in 1994 when he became a fugitive from justice after killing a neighbor girl while he was shooting at somebody else during a gang initiation. Neri creates a fictional narrator who watches what happens to Yummy when he seeks help from the gang he is trying to impress. Instead, they turn on him when he becomes too much of a liability to them. The book asks hard questions: Was Yummy a thug who got what he deserved? Or was he just as much a victim as the girl he killed? As our hero says, “I tried to figure out who the real Yummy was. The one who stole my lunch money? Or the one who smiled when I shared my candy with him? I wondered if I grew up like him, would I have turned out the same?”

The book won a 2011 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award and was named one of the Best Books of 2010 by Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews. It also has received five starred reviews—from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, School Library Journal, the Bulletin of the Center of Children's Books, and VOYA.

List of Awards and honors

Starred Reviews

Kirkus Reviews described it by saying, “A haunting, ripped-from-the-headlines account of youth gang violence in Chicago provides the backdrop for a crucial mediation on right and wrong. A much-needed look at the terrifying perils of life on the margins that will have all readers pondering the heady question of moral responsibility." Booklist added it was "A harrowing portrait... Yummy will earn both the reader’s livid rage and deep sympathy, even as the social structure that created him is cast, once again, as America’s undeniable shame. This is a graphic novel that pushes an unsightly but hard to ignore socio-political truth out into the open." School Library Journal summed it all up: "Yummy [is] something entirely new. Gritty, real, willing to ask tough questions, and willing to trust that young readers will be able to reach their own conclusions. This is a story that needs to be told and it needs to be told to kids. Believe me, you’ve nothing like this in your collection."

...
Wikipedia