I Never Knew Your Name by Sherry Garland

This is another one of those stories that I was sort of confused about. It is a controversial book too but I was not totally sure why. It is about a little boy who watches his neighbor while he is waiting for his dad to come and pick him up (which he never does). When knowing that you are reading a controversial book I feel like you are always looking for that part of it so in this one I kept trying to guess what it was. At first I didn't know if it was because the dad never came or even that they were maybe trying to show that the little boy was having homosexual thoughts about his neighbor...I did not know. As the story continued I think that I figured it out though.

As the story continued the boy would see his neighbor shooting hoops and having a crush on his older sister but then getting rejected. One night the boy really wanted to go fishing and saw his neighbor and was going to go ask him if he wanted to also but he never did. Later that night they heard a lot of ambulances next door and later found out that the neighbor boy had died. It does not say how he dies in the book but I am guessing, since it is controversial, that it was suicide? In this sense I can see why parents wouldn't want their children to read it but I think that since it doesn't come out and say anything that the book is fine.

It is recommended for grades four and above and I think that I would have it in my classroom if I taught upper elementary.