CW: Child kept prisoner and mistreated. ( )

“The Boy in the Basement” is the story of Tom, a young boy who has suffered extreme child abuse at the hands of his father. The author does a wonderful job of telling a story, as it is happening, from the eyes of a child. The sentence frames used are those similar to a scared and anxious child, while still remaining to be captivating and thought-provoking. I thought this book was a poignant view into the world of a child who has suffered from abuse, and readers learn how difficult some people have it. The author sucks you into the basement with Tom when he describes the lurking spider in the corner. “It, with its eight eyes, glared at me. I could see it grow to at least twice the size it was a day ago. Soon, it would be larger than me and devour me.” I liked this book a lot because it gave you a glimpse of what it is like to suffer from neglect.
Tom is kept in a cold and concrete-floored basement and is severely malnourished. While suffering from lack of the basic needs for survival, he is also haunted by his environment. He lives with a spider in the corner of the basement, and with each passing day, he feels that the spider is growing bigger and bigger. Eventually, in his mind, the spider will grow to be larger than him and will devour him. He fears sounds and objects around him that would seem harmless to any healthy individual because of the abuse he has undergone. Eventually, he wanders out of the basement into the streets of his neighborhood in the middle of the night, and wakes up in a hospital. Where his feet, knees, palms, and face had always been brown and ashy, they were now the color of his white skin. He is sent by Child Protective Services to a group home where he is adopted by a woman and her son, who is of comparable age to him. Tom has been thrust into a world larger than he could have ever imagined, all with the remnants of the abuse he has suffered, the basement, and even the spider following him. Not without skepticism, he accepts his new caretaker and befriends her son, who teaches him about sports, how to act in school, and how to socialize. The world is terrifying to Tom, as the sounds, smells, and chaotic atmosphere overwhelm him. With the help of his new family, Tom learns how to interact with others, take ease to threatening images in his head, and be at peace with his past.

Booktalk: Charlie is being punished. He was bad so Father has sent him down to the basement and he can't come back up until the punishment is over. That's where Charlie goes when he's bad: down to the basement. He's usually allowed to join his parents upstairs again but this time...well, Charlie has been down in the basement for an awfully long time. So long that every night after his parents go to bed, Charlie sneaks upstairs to get peanut butter and bread to eat, the only thing he'll have to eat all day. Sometimes, if his mother is able to, she'll hide an apple for Charlie behind the cookbooks. Then, careful not to make any noise, Charlie goes outside to pee and sometime more before sneaking back down to the basement. Charlie has to be very careful; if his father catches him out of the basement, it means a longer punishment. And Charlie really wants to be back upstairs again. Tonight, when Charlie slips out of the basement, his stomach hurts too much to eat but he does have to pee. He holds the door open while he gets ready to pee off the side of the porch. It's windy and cold outside. But then Charlie accidentally gets pee on the floor of the porch. Oh, no! If Father sees pee on the porch then he'll know Charlie left the basement and he'll really be in big trouble. Charlie desperately tries to to wipe off the pee but he lets go of the door and the wind...slams it shut. Charlie panics. The door slammed so loud. His parents must surely have heard it. He's really in deep trouble now. Charlie grabs the doorknob and turns it and...it's locked. Charlie is locked out. He looks up at the windows. No light comes on and no one comes to the door. What is Charlie going to do? What is going to happen to THE BOY IN THE BASEMENT?

Very quick read. Heartbreaking, but probably true to what a young person would go through in this situation. ( )

Really good book. Was a little hard to get past the writing style, and I had to remind myself often that this book was written and intended for the juvenile audience. I was just expecting it to be a little more as I had found it in the Young Adult section at my library, and that is a section that gears to high school. However, while reading, if you keep in mind the age it was intended for, it was good at its message that abuse is never okay. ( )