Starred Review ALA Booklist

Starred Review From its opening sentence, Coman's latest grabs your attention: When Jamie saw him throw the baby, saw Van throw the little baby, saw Van throw his little sister Nin, when Jamie saw Van throw his baby sister Nin, then they moved. Coman captures in lyrical prose the rush of feelings third-grader Jamie experiences when his mother, having successfully caught the baby, packs them in the car and flees to a friend's trailer. Jamie likes the small space, where, if someone went flying, they wouldn't go far, and there are no sharp edges, but when he and his mother venture out to a school carnival and think they spot Van, their fear overwhelms them. Fortunately, Jamie's teacher spies them crouching, and when Jamie misses more than a week of school, Mrs. Desrocher lends them the support they need to reenter the normal world. Coman depicts with visceral clarity the reactions of both Jamie and his mother, capturing their jitteriness and the love that carries them through the moments when they take their fear out on each other. Coman admirably overcomes the technical difficulties she has set for herself in beginning her novel with such an intense scene, and her conclusion, with Van deflated by the unified front Jamie and his mother present, satisfies and feels truthful. Jamie, with his acute observations and ability to completely immerse himself in the moment, is a memorable character children will recognize as being just like them. (Reviewed December 15, 1995)

Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

What third-grader Jamie saw-his baby sister being hurled across the room by his stepfather, Van-is the first image in this heart-wrenching book. What follows are the effects of the incident on the boy: his relief when baby Nin is caught, miraculously, by his mother, Patty; his gratitude and anxiety when Patty moves them out of the abusive household; and, most powerful of all, his underlying fear that Van will find their new home, a friend's trailer, where Jamie, Patty and Nin live like sitting ducks.'' Coman so deftly slips into the skin of her main character that he seems almost to be dictating to her. The opening sentence, for example-When Jamie saw him throw the baby, saw Van throw the baby, saw Van throw the little baby, saw Van throw his little sister Nin, when Jamie saw Van throw his baby sister Nin, then they moved''-reveals Jamie's befuddled state and his efforts to make sense out of inexplicable violence. All of the protagonist's thoughts and reactions ring true. Although its plot is not as far-reaching as that of the author's first novel, Tell Me Everything, this work too seems to spring directly from Coman's heart into the reader's own. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

Horn Book

Jamie's mother takes him and his baby sister to live in a tiny trailer in the New Hampshire woods when his stepfather's behavior becomes dangerously abusive. The fragile family seem to be living in suspended animation until Jamie's teacher finds them and encourages them to take some positive steps. The powerful story probes with painful insistence at the insidious nature of fear and its consequences.

Kirkus Reviews

An extremely intimate narrative about Jamie, nine, that opens in the middle of a traumatic scene-his mother's lover throws Jamie's baby half-sister across the room, and his mother catches herand then closely follows the state of the boy's soul as he, his mother, and the baby move out of the house and into a trailer on top of a mountain. Written in the third-person, entirely from Jamie's point of view, the book tries to describe what Jamie feels, but what he himself might not yet be able to articulate. To this end, the narrative organizes his experience obliquely, whether by employing a poetic and repetitive prose style in order to convey the uneven manner in which emotions or episodes unfold or by stepping back from the protagonist by posing a question``Just who did Jamie think was going to open that door?''only to return to him immediately for the answer. In effect, Coman (Tell Me Everything, 1993, etc.) speaks for her hero with the intuitive understanding and empathy of a mother. The subjective impressions that she records are unmistakably those of a young boy, and Jaime's subjectivity becomes increasingly convincing; the cumulative effect is mesmerizing. Reading this short novella, readers will find themselves quickly slipping into a mode of thought analogous to the protagonist's. It's a profound characterization and a remarkable achievement in a book about ordinary people trying to put their lives in order. (Fiction. 8-10)"

School Library Journal

Gr 6-9--With wrenching simplicity and mesmerizing imagery, Coman articulates nine-year-old Jamie's baffled, stream-of-consciousness observations of a violent act that robs him of his security, but not his innocence. Awakened in the middle of the night by some primal sense of alarm, the sleep-disoriented boy watches his stepfather reach into his baby sister's crib and throw her across the room. And then he watches his mother step into the bedroom doorway and catch her flying baby. Patty deposits her pajama-clad children into the safety of her rusty old Buick, collects the bare necessities, and leaves. With the help of her friend Earl, Jamie's teacher, and even her mother-in-law, Patty finds her way back to work and into a support group for battered wives. In a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, she and Jamie tough it out, slowly reinventing their lives. Revealed through the boy's clear, unprejudiced eye, characters, though rough and uneducated, are not stereotyped. It is Jamie who is most delicately and lovingly wrought. His love of magic tricks, illusion, and sleight of hand sustains him through the bad times. Shocking in its simple narration and child's-eye view, What Jamie Saw is a bittersweet miracle in understated language and forthright hopefulness.--Alice Casey Smith, Sayreville War Memorial High School, NJ