Like Sisters on the Homefront

by Rita Williams-Garcia

Book Overview

From National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia!

When Gayle gets into trouble with her boyfriend, her mother sends the street-smart 14-year-old and her baby, Jose down to Georgia, to live with Uncle Luther and his family. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one around except kneesock-wearing, Jesus-praising cousin Cookie. Then Gayle meets Great, the family matriarch and her stories of the past begin to change how Gayle sees...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140385614
• ISBN13: 9780140385618
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.3" x 7.0"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

Sisters forever

Life is hard growing up and being a teen mother, especially when you live in a bad neighborhood. That's how it is for 14 year-old Gayle. She is an African American who has two brothers, a sister and no father. This story is full of drama and romance. The author's purpose for writing this book is to show young adults how it's like to be a pregnant teen. It's also about living a rough life and trying to stay out of trouble. Gayle found out she was having a second child and she was six weeks pregnant. Her mom found out and took her to a clinic to get an abortion. After that Gayle moved to her uncle's farm, she turned her life around. When I finished reading this book I felt sorry, sad and happy at the same time. In this book the author made me realize that if you get in trouble you have to pay a price. I found this book rather interesting, because a few parts were hurtful and exciting. It also taught me not to take things for granted. I would recommend this book to anybody, why? Because it tells you that pregnancy should wait and you should stat out of trouble or you'll regret it later. This book will help you if you're going through rough times.

Greatest Book For Teenage Girls

Williams Garcia, Rita. Like Sisters on the Homefront. Dutton: Lodestar Books, 1995.Like Sisters on the Homefront is a book that could actually be used for learning from our mistakes. This book could actually teach some morals to a lot of people, especially teenage girls. It is about a girl, Gayle who makes a lot of mistakes in her life. Gayle is a very tough, brave girl who doesn't cry for anything, no matter how much it hurts. First she gets pregnant by a married man and later when she is 14 she gets pregnant again by another guy, but her mother makes her get an abortion. Her mother then sends her off to live with her very strict, Uncle Luther. There she has to work really hard and get along with her very upright cousin, Cookie. The only person she can relate to there is, Great, her great grandmother who teaches her about her family history. It is there where she learns her manners and becomes a respectful person and where she cries for the first time. The best part of all is that she decides to go back to school. Gayle changes her life a lot, all for the better.Change Change is common in everyone's life, in fact it happens constantly. Change is crucial in all lives because people should be open to different things. This is the only way that people will be able to succeed in life. In the book Like Sisters on the Homefront, Gayle a fourteen-year-old mother, changes dramatically for good. She changes from being a rude, mean, tough girl who above everything, has not, and does not plan to ever cry for anyone or anything in her whole life. Gayle changes every aspect of herself once it comes to her attention that those are not good qualities for any person to have. Gayle changes the way she acts towards school, her mother, her son, her sisters on the homefront, even the way she talks, and well of course she pretty much changes her attitude towards the whole entire world. One thing that my parents taught was to be respectful to all elders whether I know them or not but Gayle sure is not even respectful to any elder, not even her mother.Before Gayle went to her Uncle Luther's house she was always a really rude person to everybody whether she new them or whether she didn't. An example of this is when she was really rude to her mother. She would never listen to what her mother would say, she would ignore her, and she would not do what her mother would ask her to do. Whatever her mother would say she would do the complete opposite, everything her mother would say would go in through one ear and would go out the other ear. She was always mouthing off to her mother and as we all know that is very disrespectful. Gayle was also very rude to her aunt in Georgia, her cousin Cookie, and even her friends' mothers. After her journey of self-reflection she changes the way that she is, meaning that she is not sodisrespectful towards everyone. Some ways that show this is how she decides to listen to her mother. She also decides to be more open to new things. Like befo

A Must Read For All Young Adults!

I've read this book 3 times over! It has a great plot and it captures the readers attensions from the very begin (which is a good thing to keep a young person interested). Me being a young adult myself, I could relate to characters, and it is as just a great book focused on and for the African American youth.

Crazy brilliant book.

I've learned to fear books about teen moms because too often they turn into moralistic sermons or succumb to simple-minded stereotypes (i.e., long-suffering grandmother, wise-beyond-years teen). But Like Sisters was brilliant. Williams-Garcia gives us the flavor of Gayle's wonderfully rich language (e.g., an angry Mama's neck is described as 'snaking figure eights') without being condescending or sounding forced. She also suggests the complexities of families, of being a teenager, of raising a kid, of leaving NYC and moving 'Souf' -- and again, without the brick between the eyes approach of many other young adult approaches. This is a powerful, beautifully written book. Brilliant.

Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!

My eighth graders loved this book! They were so excited after I read the first page to them as a preview of what's to come, that they went to the library to check out the book because they weren't scheduled to read it for another week. They really connected with the author's use of language and her up-front, in your face style of writing. The author deals with teen pregnancy, abortion, and religion in a well-written, well- balanced way. She makes sure that the "real deal" of these teen issues are portrayed, as well as offering a "there's still hope" message for the readers. As a reading teacher, part of my job is to expose my students to well-written, exciting books they might not ordinarily find on their own, and I'm surely glad that this wonderful treasure has been found!