"Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty" by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy DuBurke

This fast-reading graphic novel tells the story of "Yummy" an eleven year-old boy shot to death in Chicago's ghetto after committing numerous crimes, including murder. The story is told from the perspective of the fictional character, Roger, a neighborhood boy trying to resolve the unsolvable ... was Yummy a victim or a predator? The book has garnered numerous awards and is a nice, succinct retelling of a short life, but it doesn't stray much from the source material, namely the news reports that swirled around the 'hood in those final days. It is almost factual in the dispassionate presentation, although the black and white ink drawings manage to convey some of the emotions pouring out of the community. The drawings are both good -- they use close-ups with detailed hatching for emphasis; and bad -- both Yummy and his grandmother are drawn inconsistently, giving me double-takes from time to time as to who the character was. One thing that nagged at me was why our narrator, Roger, would have a brother in the same gang as Yummy when his home life seemed quite stable. I couldn't help but feel it was an artificial device used to make a point. Other than that, the subject matter was terrific, the story-telling clean, but the overall effect for me was "okay."