84 pages • 2 hours read
Katherine ApplegateCrenshaw
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 28-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary
The family lived in their minivan for fourteen weeks while Jackson’s parents saved up enough money for a deposit on an apartment. Jackson reflects that “getting out of homelessness doesn’t happen all at once, either” (131). His family was lucky, he says, because others live in their cars for years. A month into it, Tom found a job in a hardware store, and Sara picked up extra waitressing shifts. Tom continued busking.
After the family moved into their apartment, Jackson and Robin were able to return to school. Since their apartment was forty miles from their previous home, the children had to attend a new school, but Jackson didn’t mind. He was just happy to go back to a “place where facts mattered and things made sense” (132). He never told anyone, not even his friend, Marisol, about the family’s experience being homeless. He hoped that by not talking about it, “it couldn’t ever happen again” (133).
Chapter 29 Summary
Jackson and Crenshaw did not talk much during Jackson’s time living in the minivan; instead, Jackson found comfort simply by being in Crenshaw’s presence. What Jackson remembers most vividly is watching Crenshaw riding the hood of the minivan, “riding the wind like the end of a kite” (136). The sight made Jackson feel hopeful that their situation would improve, and “just maybe, anything was possible” (136).
Chapter 30 Summary
From speaking to others, Jackson believes that imaginary friends typically “fade away, the way dreams do,” but he lost Crenshaw suddenly, “after things got back to normal” (137). On Crenshaw’s last day with Jackson, they walked to school together. Jackson was telling him he wanted “a real cat,” which made Crenshaw grumpy because he considered himself to be a real cat (138). A group of older boys pointed and laughed at Jackson for talking to himself. It was the first time he felt “embarrassed about having an imaginary friend” (139). After they moved on, a girl called Marisol introduced herself, commenting on their identical Tyrannosaurus backpacks and announcing that she wanted to be a paleontologist when she grew up. Jackson replied that he wanted “to be one too. Or maybe a bat scientist” (149). When he looked around a moment later, “Crenshaw had vanished” (149).
Chapter 31 Summary
Jackson has sometimes wondered if he was too old, as a second-grader, to have an imaginary friend. After researching the topic, he discovered that 31% of children have imaginary friends at 6 and 7 years old, “even more than three- and four-year-olds” (141). Jackson concludes he was not too old and notes that Crenshaw appeared exactly when he was needed.
Chapters 28-31 Analysis
Fourteen weeks into living in their minivan, Tom and Sara are able to earn enough money for a deposit on an apartment. It is implied that during that time, Robin and Jackson did not attend school, as they would have needed an address to enroll. Returning to his former normalcy of four walls and school five days a week fills Jackson with relief. He is back in a world of order, where things make sense. He decides never to speak about his experience, hoping that silence will act as a kind of talisman that will protect the family from the same thing happening again. Interestingly, Jackson has no logical basis for feeling this way. It is an emotional decision consistent with the pattern in his family of not directly addressing difficult experiences.
Jackson repeatedly says that Crenshaw’s presence represented hope, the idea “that maybe, just maybe, anything was possible” (136). At a time when life felt out of control for Jackson, being able to create reality through his imagination provides a sense of agency, and that agency provides comfort. The older boys who mock Jackson when they see him seemingly talking to himself make him confront that Crenshaw is a figment of his imagination. In a sense, it is taking away his agency and the comfort the illusion provides. At the same moment, however, Jackson finds a new friend in Marisol, and he is able to let Crenshaw go.
The scientist in Jackson, who looks for logical explanations, researches imaginary friends and finds comfort in what he finds, demonstrating that both facts and imagination can provide comfort at different times in one’s life.
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