YA Featured Review: Just a Hat (S. Khubiar)

Joseph was born in California, but is now getting ready to enter the 8th grade in Texas in 1978. His parents fled Iran when things became difficult; his cousin Shahla’s parents were both killed in a car bombing. Joseph is good friends with neighbors Mateo and Roberto Ybarra, but often comes under attack by neighborhood bullies because he wears a kippah in accordance with his Jewish culture. He has a very close relationship with Miss Eleanor (or LaLa), a grandmotherly older lady who gives piano lessons. He gets groceries for her, helps around the house, and keeps her company, and in exchange, she gives him piano lessons. When he finally retaliates against the hoodlums who are bedeviling him by punching one of them at the store, the police are called. He isn’t in trouble with the law, but his father punishes him for his act of violence by beating him, in true 1970s parental fashion. When approached by the football coach to play, Joseph seizes the opportunity, and is soon a talented player. He has a tentative relationship with a girl he thinks is cute, Vonda, but the two recognize that their relationship has no future because of the differences in their religions (she’s Baptist) and the objections of their parents. Joseph has his Bar Mitzvah, his father takes flying lessons, and life goes on, but when the Shah of Iran comes to the US for cancer treatments, his mother is upset. Things get worse when the Iranian Hostage Crisis takes place and people in the small Texas town start to turn against the family. When the police question Joseph about a local drug distribution problem, will his knowledge get him in trouble, or put his family in a better position?