When a children’s book hero saves a child from the past

According to 10-year-old Portico Reeves, hero of Jason Reynolds’ Stuntboy series, Skylight Gardens is a castle. Why else would the apartment complex be so big? Skylight Gardens is Portico’s world, home to friends and foes, every door a portal to a whole new adventure. So when he finds out his parents are getting a divorce and moving into separate apartments — his dad to 3C and his mom to 5F — he understands it on his own terms.

“This is GREAT news!” the boy cheers. “[Now] we have two apartments!”

His parents shrug, confused. Reading this passage from “Stuntboy: In The Meantime” to my son, I feel a pang of recognition. Not for the parents, but for the boy, whose life is about to change in ways he both does and doesn’t comprehend.

My parents divorced when I was 8. The day they told me and my brothers, they called a family meeting — which they’d never done before — and we all squished onto a loveseat as they broke the news. The somber tone, so unfamiliar, made me uncomfortable. So I giggled, hopped off the couch, and brightly announced that I was going to tell the elderly couple next door.

The scene, as Reynolds writes it, is uncannily true to life. I flip to the front of the book to read the dedication. “For ten-yearold me,” it reads.

Divorce books that believably center a kid’s perspective didn’t exist in the 1980s, although my situation was far from rare. The divorce rate in the United States peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s, and movies about divorce enjoyed widespread popularity at the time: “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Parenthood,” “Mrs. Doubtfire.” But those movies were about the adult drama. Kid characters were onedimensional. They existed only to be sad, imperiled or resentful, projections of their parents’ feelings and fears.

In Portico, I’ve found my first fictional comrade in the child-of-divorce trenches, albeit nearly 40 years after the fact.

So when I heard that a second Stuntboy book was on the way, I was excited. I mentioned it to my son, ostensibly the real audience for the series, and he was excited, too. To him, however, the series isn’t about divorce. It’s about Portico, his friends, and their hijinx. That’s what makes the series so great. It’s about the whole kid; divorce touches everything, but it isn’t everything.

“Stuntboy #2: In-Between Time” gets into the complications — logistical and emotional — of having two apartments. The boy spends most of the graphic novel’s 263 action-packed pages carrying a bag of trash that his mom wants him to take out. He’s afraid his dad might want something in it, so he hangs onto it instead. Whatever else Portico is up to — catching loose iguanas, taking on bullies — the trash bag is always there.

A perfect metaphor. If you know, you know.