Just Juice By Karen Hesse: Literary Analysis

In a world of losers and winners, it is destined that one will laugh while another will sob immensely. Just Juice is a marvelous children’s literature book written by Karen Hesse that discusses the impact of being raised in a working class family. The story is about a poor working class family that struggles financially. The story centers on Juice who despises going to school because she lacks academic excellence. However, Juice is skillful at working with her hands, and helping her parents out. In the end, Juice learns to seek education and the family decides to all learn how to read and work together to make ends meet. This book reveals the underlying inequality in the American school system. The hidden curriculum in our schools is designed

School is not made for children like Juice. In fact, Juice feels like an object of ridicule due to her lack of proper school mannerism. School does not value Juice’s knowledge and her working class abilities and talents. Our school systems do not value interpersonal and abstract skills. If a child is deficient in reading, writing, and arithmetic, then they are failure to society.
Social class matters and in fact it is a big marker on the identity of a child. In Where We Stand: Class Matters, bell books states, “Three important things I learned in school: 1) money matters, 2) status goods matters, 3) where you live matters” (p.10). Here we see that systems of power work against working class children by constantly questioning their values, and talents causing them to be torn between two worlds. It is only after attending school that children see the difference between themselves and their peers. For instance in the story Juice struggles with reading. Unfortunately, her parents are not able to take her to tutoring, buy her books, or help her with her reading. Juice has no academic support system at home unlike her middle class classmates. When Juice comes to school, her