Soli just wants to get through life with as little trouble as possible, but it seems like trouble follows him everywhere. For his whole life, Soli has bounced through different foster homes, all of which ended in something violent and the need for reassignment. But most of the situations Soli gets in aren’t really his fault. He’s a misguided boy who wants to be good. The only person who has ever really trusted him is his current foster mother, Martha, and Sissy, another girl who was put into the care of others. But right now, a new social worker has it in for Martha and might possibly move Soli again. Sissy is opening up to people, but she wants to help everyone she meets and threatens to tell on things Soli does, like driving without a legal permit, to Martha. And all of this is over the never-ending mystery of Soli’s past and why he ended up in foster care in the first place.
Lynn Hazen wrote Shifty to bring awareness to the lives that kids thrown into foster care live. Everything Soli does leads to some problem that leads to another. He’s a good kid at heart and refuses to fall into violence and drugs, but he can’t help the fact that he’s had an unstable upbringing, switching parents and lifestyles so often. Kids who switch foster families as much as Soli seem like they’re bad, when really sometimes not everything is as it appears. Hazen also incorporates recovery through her characters as well as discovery as Soli tries to understand how he ended up in foster care while Sissy tries to forget her violent life before she was taken away from her family. Shifty is one of the VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers, perfect for anyone who likes realistic, eye-opening books.
- Date of Review: 06/05/2010
- Publisher: Tricycle Press
- Publication date: 09/01/2008
- Genre: Young Adult Fiction