The Planet of Junior Brown by Virginia Hamilton

First published: 1971

Type of work: Psychological realism

Themes: Health and illness, emotions, friendship, and social issues

Time of work: The post-1970’s

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: New York’s inner city

Principal Characters:

• Junior Brown, an obese, black, emotionally disturbed eighth grader, who is musically gifted
• Buddy Clark, a brilliant streetwise boy, who helps Junior and homeless boys survive
• Mr. Pool, the school janitor and a former teacher, who provides a place of escape for Junior
• Junella Brown, the overly controlling, self-centered, sickly mother of Junior Brown
• Miss Peebs, a mentally unstable piano teacher, whose actions contribute to Junior’s separation from reality

The Story

New York, with its crowded inner-city streets, abandoned buildings, and homeless youth, is the setting for this contemporary realistic novel. Much of the action takes place in a secret retreat behind a false wall that has been constructed in the junior high school basement to provide refuge for two students, Junior Brown and Buddy Clark. Eighth graders having failed to fit the public education mold, they have been hiding for months during school hours in the basement sanctuary with the aid of Mr. Pool, the junior high janitor. Fifteen years before, as a teacher, Mr. Pool had given up on the educational system, which was failing to help tough, black, city youth, but he had retained a need to stay a close observer. He had discovered rough, unapproachable Buddy breaking into a classroom. Over time, Mr. Pool won the confidence of Buddy and later of Junior, whom Buddy brought to him.

To Junior, who has a sickly mother and no knowledge of his homeless friend’s struggle to survive on the streets of New York, it appears that Buddy has a carefree existence. In contrast, Buddy, being unaware of Junella Brown’s behavior, has no comprehension of Junior’s destructive homelife until he coerces Junior into inviting him home for dinner. Beneath the outward comfort and order of the Brown home, Buddy detects the rigidity with which his friend’s behavior is controlled. For example, Junior, with his love and need for music, must practice his playing on a silent, wireless piano to save disturbing his self-centered, asthmatic mother.

In the secret basement room, Buddy, with the help of Mr. Pool, constructs an elaborate motorized solar system model with a special tenth planet called Junior Brown. Streetwise, mathematically talented Buddy is sensitive to his fat, shy friend’s precarious mental state and has constructed the tenth planet to convey a sense of belonging and help Junior cope with his reality. Buddy is aware of Junior’s increasing emotional disturbance that is in some way associated with Friday piano lessons and Miss Peebs. Miss Peebs, a former concert pianist turned recluse and Junior’s music teacher, has a grand piano which Junior longs to play. Yet Miss Peebs, who lives with her own ghosts in a large, cluttered trash-filled apartment, refuses Junior permission to touch her concert grand and instead forces him to beat out his lessons on a chair.

The climax occurs when Junior, fearing for the destruction of Miss Peebs’s grand, brings Buddy, his protector, with him for his Friday lesson. Buddy realizes that Miss Peebs is mentally disturbed and that Junior has lost his tenuous hold on reality. With the help of Mr. Pool, Buddy is able to move Junior into an abandoned building in which other homeless youths are living their secret existence. The colony of street boys, known as a planet, is part of an entire system of hideaways where other older boys such as Buddy help their younger cohorts learn to survive.

Context

The Planet of Junior Brown is one of the several award-winning literary works by Virginia Hamilton that focus on the black experience. In an earlier work, The House of Dies Drear (1968), Hamilton has portrayed the dignity of black heritage. In M. C. Higgins, the Great (1974), which followed The Planet of Junior Brown, a sense of foreboding is developed as M. C., the protagonist, seeks resolution of the danger surrounding his family. In each of these novels, the characters are complex, serious black youths. In The Planet of Junior Brown, however, the inner-city setting with its attendant problems contrasts with the rural locations of the other works.

At the time this work was published, following the civil rights battles of the 1960’s, juvenile books by minority authors concerning the black experience were increasingly becoming available. The early 1970’s was a time of social change and unrest, high divorce rates, and growing concern for black inner-city youth, many of whom resided in poor, single-parent homes without the presence of male models.

Junior Brown does not fit this stereotype. Junior lives with his mother in a comfortable apartment in New York City while his father works in New Jersey; he is well dressed and in fact overly fed and protected. Yet, although in appearance Junior’s life-style differs from the stereotype, he still experiences the problem of emotional abandonment: his mother’s tyranny and his father’s absence on weekdays.

During a time of change, when the nation was examining the problems of its inner cities and evidencing fear, The Planet of Junior Brown held out hope for the future. The rich, complex metaphor of the planets pervades the plot. On the planets, abandoned youths learn to live for one another and work together to achieve a new dignity and survival.