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 37-41Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 37 Summary
When Jackson and his father return from the pet store, Jackson finds Aretha in his room with her nose in his keepsakes bag. He knows she has something in her mouth, but she will not open it, even after he offers her the cookie. He figures she does not “want to eat stolen goods” (174). Aretha runs out of his room to the front door. Robin opens it, and Aretha shoots out, heading towards Marisol’s house. Jackson notes that Aretha loves Marisol’s seven cats.
He finds Aretha digging a hole in Marisol’s old sandbox. Marisol is outside, building a staircase for her cats to climb. She tells Jackson that Aretha brought her a statue of a cat wearing a baseball cap. It is the sculpture of Crenshaw that Jackson had put in his keepsake bag, but Jackson does not tell Marisol that. He downplays the statue’s significance, saying he made it as a kid and calling it lame. Marisol finds it “intriguing” and would like to buy it from Jackson, but he tells her to keep it as a “going-away present” (177). Marisol is alarmed at the idea of Jackson moving, telling him she loves his “weird parents” and would miss him and their dog-walking (177). He plays off the idea of moving and changes the subject.
They discuss Marisol’s project, which she is doing to fill the time now that her brothers have moved out. Her parents—a salesman and a pilot, respectively—often travel, leaving Marisol with a woman called Paula. Jackson asks Marisol if she has ever had an imaginary friend, and she has, a naughty girl called Whoops who served as Marisol’s scapegoat. Jackson claims not to remember his imaginary friend, but Marisol tells him he should not forget him, since he might need him someday. They chat about school and bats, then Jackson asks if Whoops ever returned to Marisol. Marisol replies that she has not, but she sometimes wishes that Whoops would. She asks Jackson if he is really going to be moving, and he says, “Probably not” (181). As he begins walking back home, Marisol tells him the statue needs a name. He asks what she thinks its name should be, and Marisol replies, “Crenshaw” (181).
Chapter 38 Summary
As Jackson crosses the street, he tells himself Crenshaw’s name must have been written “on the bottom of the statue” and reminds himself that there is “always a logical explanation” (183).
Chapter 39 Summary
The night before the yard sale, Jackson sits on his mattress, staring at his empty room. The racecar bed he has long since outgrown has been taken apart and given a price tag; dents in the carpet indicate where other furniture items used to be (185). His parents come in to check on him and bring him a glass of water. His father notes that it is much roomier and that his next bed should be something more serious. His mother quietly mentions that they can “always get new things” (186). Jackson insists he likes the space. As his parents turn to leave, his father thanks him for always being so helpful. His mother agrees and winks, saying they should “keep him around” (187).
After they leave, Jackson imagines the former contents of his room “spread out on the lawn” (187). He knows that they are just things and that he is luckier than others, but he still feels like he has “swallowed a knotted-up rope” (188). What most upsets him is that he cannot fix or control anything that is happening to him. He takes deep breaths and tries to empty his mind, then “without understanding why” he grabs the mug of water and smashes it against the wall. He expects his parents to return, but they do not.
Chapter 40 Summary
In the middle of the night, Jackson wakes up “sweaty and startled” from a dream “about a giant talking cat with a bubble beard” (191). Aretha is in bed with him, her feet twitching from a dream, and Jackson wonders if she is also dreaming about Crenshaw. The thought stops him short as he realizes that Aretha had seemed to see or at least react to Crenshaw the night of the bubble bath. Does that mean Crenshaw is real, or that Aretha was “responding to [Jackson’s] body language” (192)? He tries to remember if Aretha had reacted to Crenshaw when he first appeared during their period of homelessness, but neither can nor wants to remember.
Chapter 41 Summary
When Jackson wakes up, Crenshaw, Aretha, and the frog that Crenshaw had chased are lying on top of each other. He asks Crenshaw how to get rid of him for good, and Crenshaw says he is “here to help” (196). When Jackson asks what Crenshaw meant about telling the truth, Crenshaw replies that the truth is important to Jackson so it is important to Crenshaw. Jackson wonders if Crenshaw is his conscience, and Crenshaw asks if Jackson would like him to be. He replies that he is “managing just fine on [his] own” (197). In response, Crenshaw points out the stolen dog treat and reminds Jackson what happened when he stole a yo-yo back when he was 5. His parents made him take it back to the store and apologize. Crenshaw implies that Jackson needs to do something similar again.
As Jackson heads out of the room, he hears “a hiss and yowl” (198). Aretha streaks past him and hides “under the kitchen table for an hour” (198).
Chapters 37-41 Analysis
In Chapters 32-36, Jackson begins to come to terms with what he needs: to acknowledge that he is sad about what he is losing and that the instability of his situation causes him anxiety. This is the truth that Crenshaw hinted at earlier in the book and that Jackson will begin to confront between Chapter 32 and the end of the book.
His conversation with Marisol provides a foundation on which he continues to build. By sharing her own experience with Whoops and affirming the importance of imaginary friends, she helps Jackson feel comfortable with Crenshaw’s presence in his life. She also shows Jackson that a person who likes facts and aspires to be a scientist can still be intrigued by and attracted to mystery and whimsy. Though Marisol’s situation is not unstable in the way Jackson’s is, she also deals with loss via both of her brothers moving away and her parents often traveling. She fills her time constructively by building a structure for her cats, showing that everyone has to find ways to cope with anxieties and pressures, whatever those may be.
When his parents check on him at bedtime, the night before the yard sale, both try to comfort Jackson in their usual way. His father comments on how spacious his room is without all his furniture and talks about getting Jackson a more grown-up bed. His mother reiterates her point that the items being sold are replaceable. Though they are trying to be helpful, neither is creating space for Jackson to feel sad and to have his sadness seen and validated. He defaults to comforting his parents by downplaying his feelings of loss and anxiety. These feelings later explode out of him, causing him to throw the cup of water across the room.
When Jackson wakes up to find Crenshaw, Aretha, and the frog sleeping on top of each other in his bed, he wants to know how to get rid of Crenshaw, who has become emblematic of Jackson’s fears. Crenshaw reminds him that truth is important to him. Jackson wonders if Crenshaw is Jackson’s conscience. Part of him may serve that role. He encourages Jackson to resolve his feelings of guilt about shoplifting, but he also represents the part of Jackson that wants to be able to talk about his feelings, conflicted as they are. Talking about them will not change the facts, but it will at least help him feel less isolated.
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