Shadow Jumper

Beth is a girl who is Jack’s age. She sees him acting suspiciously on the street and follows him to the roof tops where they first bond over shadow jumping. She demonstrates a fearlessness that surprises Jack and which he considers to be somewhat dangerous. She convinces him to search for his father. During the process of searching for Jack’s missing father, Beth learns more about Jack’s aggressive sun allergy and his family secrets. She confides in him that she was orphaned after her parents were killed in a car accident. After her parents’ deaths, Beth moved in with her parents’ friends, whose family includes seven other children. As a result, Beth has a lot of freedom, but she feels very isolated at home. She feels guilty for her parents’ deaths because they were on their way home after she feigned illness and requested that they return early from a party; she believes that their car accident was her fault.

Beth lugs around large rucksack that is very heavy. She does not disclose the contents of the rucksack when asked, and she is fiercely protective of her bag. She has a meltdown after realizing that she left it on a bus; she and Jack retrieve it as soon as the bus station opens, and her relief is palpable. Eventually, Beth trusts Jack enough to disclose that she carries around her parents’ ashes. This revelation belies Beth’s attempts to pretend she is over her parents’ deaths. In the climax of the novel, Beth is about to slide off the roof, and her rucksack dangles precariously. Jack must choose between saving the ashes and saving Beth. He chooses Beth, despite knowing how much the rucksack and its contents mean to her. She is thankful for this because she realizes she means something to Jack, and his rescue puts her relationship to the bag and ashes into a perspective where she can let go of the emotional baggage even as the actual bag plummets to the street. This incident helps her gain closure about the death of her parents. She and Jack commemorate her parents by taking petals of roses, her mom’s favorite flower, to a beach where she and her parents enjoyed their last holiday together.

Beth identifies as Goth and purposefully wears a lot of stark black and white makeup that she knows gives her an off-putting appearance which discourages people from talking to her. She feels incredibly isolated after the death of her parents, and is not comfortable in her own home since she is now one of eight children. Neglected at home and shunned by her peers, Beth finds a friend in Jack. Beth teaches Jack to be less self-centered simply by being his friend. She models caring and appropriate interaction. Jack has little social experience in general and little experience with girls in particular, and he often makes inane, oblivious remarks about her emotions. Beth is very patient with him. Beth’s rebelliousness is “tamed” by her friendship with Jack. She realizes she no longer needs to push others away, so she chooses to wear less makeup. At the end of the novel, Beth scatters her parents’ symbolic rose petals with no makeup on, symbolizing her metamorphosis into someone more satisfied with herself who does not want to hide from the world.

Like many moms in middle-grade literature, Maeve Phillips’ identity is mostly reduced to “mom.” Since the third person limited omniscient narration is from Jack’s point of view, the reader learns about her solely from Jack’s perspective. Jack is a teenage boy who worries a lot about himself and very little about others. Her character, from Jack’s perspective, is defined more by what she lacks or what she does imperfectly. He notes her absences but does not comment much on her presence besides wishing that she would leave him alone. Jack thinks that she is prone to over-worrying.

Maeve works in retail for barely enough pay to rent a small apartment and supply their scant basic needs. She takes on extra shifts to support herself and Jack, who complains about her constant absence. She is married to Tom, an emotionally unstable scientist of some renown whose inability to take criticism caused severe instability in his career and in their marriage. At the start of the novel, they are separated. When Jack was a baby, Tom moved the family from Colford because of allegations surrounding a trumped up controversy around Tom’s role in product testing. After leaving the smaller town for a large and expensive city, Maeve is forced to raise her son in a much more expensive setting. The cramped apartment and Tom’s spotty employment contribute to marital squabbles and discontent, which ultimately lead to their separation. She realizes the effect that Tom’s absence has on Jack; rather than speaking badly about the man or feeling offended that Jack prefers his emotionally abusive dad, she attempts to track Tom down and try to get him to contact his child.

Jack does not recognize most of his mother’s hard work or understand how difficult it must have been for her to endure such an uncertain marriage. She works to provide stability for Jack at the cost of her own happiness. Jack does not show appreciation for. Maeve is another character who is isolated by circumstances, despite having a son to care for. Her sister-in-law lives hours away in Colford and she does not have any nearby family. Presumably, she does not have time for friends or any semblance of a social life because she is constantly working to provide for Jack.