cover image Baby Blues

Baby Blues

Hope Herman Wurnfeld, Hope H. Wurmfeld. Viking Children's Books, $14 (80pp) ISBN 978-0-670-84151-6

Wurmfeld's own adoption inspired this brief novel about teen pregnancy. Annie, her mother long dead, has just lost her father to leukemia. She has missed so much school that she has quit and found a waitressing job instead, and her isolation and grief lead her to grow more dependent on her boyfriend, Jimmy. Always thin, she's initially unconcerned when her waistband feels tight, but when the doctor eventually reports that she is six months pregnant, an abortion is too risky. If telling her older brother is tough, so is informing Jimmy. Yet Annie doesn't want marriage now, and realizes that placing their baby with loving adoptive parents is the wisest recourse. The author's approach to depicting rural, blue-collar America is to allow Annie to narrate in laboriously colloquial English: ``Me and the guys some nights we go down to the lake.'' Although nothing's said about the necessity for practicing either safe sex or birth control, and although Annie smokes marijuana while pregnant without any editorial comment, the novel does reveal a touching if mild view of the adoption process, which is underscored by an afterword about Wurmfeld's personal experiences. A short glossary explains related terms. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)