Lullabies For Little Criminals

Lullabies for little criminals by Canadian author, Heather O’Neill, is a heart wrenching story following 13 year old, Baby. Due to her mother passing away at a young age her father, Jules, is left with the task left to raise her, when he too is a child himself.
As time passes her fathers heroin addiction worsens causing him to be in and out of the hospital and rehab. For baby this means she’s passed from person to person, trying to find a place where she can stay. With these constant moves comes constant challenges and Baby is left teetering on the edge of adulthood and childhood.

Though I’m only a third of the way done the book so much has happened and Baby has already grown so much as a character, and not in a good way.  

Baby has never been given the chance to just be a kid, but it’s not her fault. She’s grown up without a mother and her father too preoccupied with heroine to actually raise his child. Yet Baby still loves him, even idealizes him in a way which I believe may be her downfall.

“Can you get me some magic mushrooms? I have five bucks I just want to couple you can keep the rest for yourself”

“All right, sure. You got the money on you?”

I handed Jean-Michel five dollars. He gestured for me to wait for him and headed across the street, waving to someone in the park. Jean-Michel walked past him and drop the money. The guy picked it up and placed a baggy delicately on the ground. It was all very efficient and professional.

Jean-Michel didn’t know he shouldn’t get a 12-year-old drugs. He didn’t even know what a 12-year-old was. He took some mushrooms out of the bag and put them in his pocket, gave me the bag. I skipped down the road feeling like I’ve accomplished something. I put the bag under my bed and waited for the right moment.” (O’Niell, 81)

Because of the environment Baby has been growing up in, she feels as if buying these drugs is something she should be proud of, and as if her father would be proud of her as well. Kids have been taught their whole life about the dangers of drugs and how the use of them will get you into big troubles in a lot of different ways. I even remember when I was Baby’s age and we had police come into our class and lecture us about this topic and how scared my classmates and I were about drugs. This is something Baby was probably never taught, even if she was, it was normalized in her everyday life. Since Jules always leaves when he’s at his worst, she never gets to see the worst of it.

With all that being said, I can’t help but to this the story will only continue getting darker for Baby. She’ll cross the line of childhood to adulthood too early in her life and as much as I hate to say it, her life will continue getting worse.  

Sympathies huge topic when it comes to this story, whether it’s sympathy towards Baby, Jules, or any of the other kids she comes across but I think I’m having a bit of trouble with that. Obviously I’m sympathetic towards Baby, she’s had no control of her environment or upbringing and what she’s doing now is just the tragic consequences of those factors. But I have different feelings when it comes towards her father. This may seem harsh but I don’t feel much sympathy for him. He’s an adult, he’s aware of what he’s doing to himself and to his child and I think it’s that fact what upsets me the most. But maybe that’s how the author wants me to feel?

Though I have really enjoyed this book thus far, I can’t help but be saddened by it. When reading, it feels just like any other story, a work of fiction but when I put it down it hits me;  this is a real struggle. Millions with kids are raised like this and no one talks about it. In fact, in Canada’s alone, there are 1.3 million children living in poverty and 15 million in the states. That’s 21% of children in the U.S.A.

This is terrifying in my eyes and should be in yours as well. The environment in which someone is raised in can and will affect them for the rest of their life. Baby is a perfect example of this; she’s growing up in a world we’re drugs are glorified and now she’s normalized them. “I was very firm on the idea that I will become a drug addict too now. I didn’t care what drug is going to be addicted to.” (O’Niell, 72)