Lullabies For Little Criminals-Heather O'Neil

Over the March Break, I had read the award-winning book Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neil.

The main character in the story is a teenage girl named Baby. The whole book is about the struggle through Baby’s life of inconsistency. When she was born, Baby’s mother past away, leaving the infant with her father named Jules. Jules has a very big heroin addiction, often leaving Baby to herself as he gets himself into a lot of trouble. Baby bounces around from guardian to guardian, trying to find out where she fits into the world. With no parental guidance, Baby experiments with different things such as drugs and prostitution to see where she stands in the grand scheme of things. Although her father is abusive and dangerous, Baby can see past all he’s done to ruin her life and see the good inside of him. Having so much happen at such a young age, Baby is a very mature girl who holds onto things for as long as possible.

In the book, there are two quotes that I thought were very interesting and very well written. The first was:

“I was silent and confused as I put the tape back in my pocket. One thing I thought I really knew about Jules was that he liked Charles Aznavour. It was my favourite too. I had tried to get some friends of mine into that tape. They looked at me with a pity and disgust that was way above their age and maturity. I guess you had to be a child with some tragedy to understand that music.”

I found this effective for a few reasons. First I find the opening two sentences to be her way of trying to reconnect with what she lost. Her connection with Jules’ old music shows she lingers onto things that many people would have forgotten. The comments she made about appreciating the music shows that she’s much more mature than most of her friends. Baby understands that the troubles she went through growing up are not the problems most children face. I think from this passage we can see that she can decipher between important problems and childish problems.

The second quote is:

“I realized that kids like Theo and me weren’t even suppose to have real friends. We were supposed to be alone and confused. By being each other’s friend, we were defying our laws of gravity”

This quote to me is a big break through for Baby in the book. She connects with Theo and realizes he can actually feel her pain. He’s been in very similar situations as Baby, and she sees that they are two of a kind. I think Baby feels like what she thought was a real trust bond, was not and this is the real deal. I think because Theo could feel what she went through, she could truly confide in him. What she means by the first two lines is that normally people face these problems by themselves, but now that they’ve found each other, the can face the world with one another. The last line to me means that normally kids like themselves could not open up to each other, but only in Baby’s moment of vulnerability could Theo reach out to her.

If I were to write to the author, Heather O’Neil, and write three questions to her, they would be:

1. Baby as a character is quite intricate. Many different aspects and qualities fit together to make her who she is. Were any or all of these aspects based off of a real person?

2. In the novel, it seems that Baby jumps from place to place a lot. Meeting new children who she seems to have a connection with (Linus Lucas, Zachary, Felix, Johnny, Etc). Which of these would you say helped shape Baby along the way of her life?

3. When reading Lullabies for Little Children, your emotions are really drawn in by this sad plot. How and where did you get the inspiration to write such a tragic tale?