Staff Review: "Lunch-Box Dream" by Tony Abbott

"Lunch-Box Dream" by Tony Abbott. In 1959, two families converge in a bus ride in the segregated South. The white family of two boys and their mom and grandmother start off in a car ride to Florida, stopping along the way to visit famous Civil War battle scenes, as the boys are really into Civil War history. Along the way, Mom’s inadequate driving skill results in the car being damaged, requiring it to be abandoned. Grandmother is sent on to Florida alone and mom and her two sons board a bus to head back home up north. The black family gets on the same bus to travel to the next town where the young male relative is missing, filled with anxiety that some hate crime has been committed.


The bus ride experience exemplifies the Jim Crow laws of the time, with signs on the bus labeled for the COLORED and WHITE sections. Told from the many points of view across both families, the heated, anxiety-filled bus ride results in the white boy, Bobby, experiencing a revelation in discovering his own racism and exemplifies the naivete, clueless attitude of many whites in this pre-Civil Rights era.


A list of characters at the front of the book helps distinguish between the multiple narratives throughout. This very serious, adult topic is perhaps too challenging for its intended audience of Grade 5 – 8 readers. It is front-loaded (prefaced) with a most powerful punch of a poem by Langston Hughes.
--Rishon F., Headquarters