Eleven-year-old Jimmy is the youngest of three children. His parents argue a lot and his dad sometimes drinks too much. He and his friends run wild on the suburban streets outside of Baltimore. They build (and defend) forts, ride bikes, roller-skate, and have snowball fights. They play video games at the arcade and hang out at the public pool. They discover girls and the things they need to do to impress them, like pretending to be older and smoking cigarettes. But first, they learn how to impress one another.
“Meathead” (as the older kids call Jimmy) is treated as an outcast until he proves his worth by becoming an expert shoplifter. “I expected to feel remorseful, but instead I felt like I’d earned that prize by being smart and sneaky,” Jimmy is shocked to realize. The only thing that makes him feel guilty is getting caught—and disappointing his hero, his grandfather Poppy, who sees Jimmy’s promise and encourages his better qualities, like his talent for drawing. When Poppy gets a terminal cancer diagnosis, Jimmy feels his world split in two. In the outside world, he has his adventures with his friends. But at home, he shares a room with Poppy, watching him get more and more frail.
GROWING UP MEATHEAD casts a nostalgic look back at a disappeared world in the days before helicopter-parenting. Author James B. Zimmerman notes that the story is autobiographical and based on the anecdotes he’s relayed to his own children. Lamenting their lack of comparative freedom, he asks, “Do they miss out on important life lessons? Probably.” It’s possible that Zimmerman is honoring a fidelity to his own memories and has simply recorded things as he remembers them happening. Episodes are more or less plopped down without deliberate thought of advancing plot or character. The material could have been shaped more effectively to show the protagonist’s growth away from “Meathead” into “Jimmy” (in the direction of “James”). The simple story is illustrated by black-and-white drawings that show different scenes from Jimmy’s life and adventures. While nicely composed, their placement in the text sometimes feels random. Often, a picture interrupts the narrative action. What works beautifully is the quiet sincerity with which the story’s conveyed. The power in the storytelling comes from the integrity with which Zimmerman testifies to some of his earliest experiences. His love for Poppy is beautifully and effectively portrayed.
GROWING UP MEATHEAD is James B. Zimmerman’s sweet snapshot of a 1970s suburban American childhood.
~Michael Quinn for IndieReader