51 pages • 1-hour read
And Then, Boom!
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 1-65Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide feature depictions of child abuse and abandonment, emotional abuse, and trauma due to extreme poverty.
Note: These pages contain the poems “Just Like Superman,” “Origin Story,” “Why the World Needs Comic Books,” “And-Thens And Booms!,” “Scratching an Itch,” “Prepare for Takeoff,” “Mom’s First Takeoff,” “Make Me Choose,” “Pop!,” “Onomatopoeia,” “Oodles of Doodles,” “Power of a Word,” “From Poor to Poorer,” “The Mess with Mom,” “Wish I Didn’t Have to Know,” “What I Know About My Dad,” “Two Halves ≠ Whole,” “Unhoused,” “The Fishbowl,” “Eating Crumbs,” “Out of Our Reach,” “Dirty,” “Ant-Man,” “It’s Amazing,” “Life Preserver,” “The Overripe Banana,” “Nick,” “Three-Finger Rundown,” “Uncle Frankie,” “Frank-Mart,” “The Quilt,” “Grandmum’s Arms,” “Key,” “By the Front Door,” and “Safe Space.”
Pages 1-65 Summary
Joey introduces himself and talks about his grandmother’s fond habit of calling him “little nut.” He admits that his mother doesn’t say or do nice things, then reveals that he was recently on the news for “flying” like Superman. Joey emphasizes that although he is not a superhero, he does have an origin story. Joey meditates on the way that comic books give readers hope for a happy ending. He believes that stories are made of “and-thens” and “booms,” and he defines these phrases as the moments in a story when something changes dramatically.
Joey remembers a time when his face swelled up after he ran through poison ivy. The worst part was trying to live with the constant itch. Joey knows the signs that his mom has “the itch” to leave her family. She looks out the window, sighs loudly, and experiences mood swings. Then she disappears for weeks or months at a time. The first time Mom left was a summer day. Joey had tried to catch a butterfly, igniting Mom’s anger. She stormed off to the car and drove away. Mom wears a butterfly scarf and considers herself free like a butterfly, but Grandmum reminds her that she cannot go wherever she wants because she is a mother. Mom challenges Grandmum to make her choose between motherhood and freedom. Joey compares his anxiety over his mother’s unexpected departures to the anxiety of waiting for a jack-in-the-box to pop up. He fears that she will not return, but he also fears her when she does return. Joey uses onomatopoetic words like “slap” to describe the abuse in his relationship with his mom.
Joey likes to doodle. He often draws an infinity symbol, which looks like it never ends. Joey learns about his own feelings by doodling. He draws a planet where adults behave like adults and do what they are supposed to do. Grampy was an Air Force pilot. He restored an old car that Grandmum still drives. Joey refers to the car as “the Fishbowl” due to its unique glassy top.
Grandmum and Joey live on the edge of poverty. Whenever something goes wrong, such as the car breaking down, they fall behind. Joey alludes to an incident in which Mom was arrested a year ago. He refuses to explain the details but reveals that Grandmum put her house up for Mom’s bail. However, when Mom failed to show up for court, Grandmum had to sell the house to pay for the lawyers. Joey thinks of his mom as someone who creates mess after mess.
Joey acknowledges that he knows things that children shouldn’t have to know, such as how much money his grandmother makes and how embarrassing it is when there isn’t enough money on their government benefit card to pay for food. Joey doesn’t know anything about his dad.
Joey thinks of his time living in his Grandmum’s house, which he calls the “Gingerbread House” and how angry he felt when they had to leave. Joey throws rocks into the water and imagines throwing them at his mom. He feels torn between loving her and hating her. One day, when Joey sees an unhoused woman being harassed, he reflects that now that he and Grandmum have lost the Gingerbread House, he knows how easy it is for people to lose their homes.
Joey describes his doodles as a way to remember the experience of living unhoused. At first, he and his grandmother stay with friends and coworkers, but then they begin living in the car. Joey thinks that everyone is watching him, but he soon realizes that people do not want to look at him because they are afraid that they might one day become unhoused like him.
Joey eats every crumb of a heel of bread because he does not know where his next meal will come from. Joey and Grandmum go into a store to wash up in the bathroom. Joey wishes that he could afford socks for his grandmother. He washes his hair in the sink at the store but still feels dirty. He accompanies Grandmum to her job of cleaning offices and finds a leftover cake from an employee’s birthday. He savors the sugary treat despite the painful cavity burrowing into his molar.
At school, Joey hides the truth about his living situation from his friends, and he is amazed at how easy it is to tell small lies that cover up this reality. Joey doodles as a way to tell about an incident in which he was kicked out of a parking lot. One day, his friend Nick spots the Fishbowl and realizes that Joey lives in it, so Nick slips him a note about a mobile home for rent across from his. Joey and Grandmum move in and feel relief. Joey names their new yellow mobile home “The Overripe Banana.” He loves having his own room and a bathroom that isn’t public.
Nick is excited to live next to Joey. He reveals that because his parents split up and his dad moved out, his relationship with his mom is complicated. Nick tells Joey about the neighborhood. First, he explains that the walls are thin, so Joey will have to get used to the noise of neighbors and wildlife. Second, if there’s a storm, he tells Joey to run to the tornado shelter in the middle of the mobile home park. Third, there’s a man named Uncle Frankie who helps everyone out. Frank King, also known as Uncle Frankie, owns the mobile home park and assures Joey and Grandmum that he will help them at any time. Uncle Frankie notices that they don’t have any furniture and offers to let them take some from his barn for free.
Uncle Frankie’s barn looks like a store lined with furniture, building supplies, and even a wheelchair. Joey looks longingly at a TV, and Uncle Frankie encourages him to take it. Grandmum struggles to lift their new possessions. As they finish up, the car won’t start, and Joey admits that they are probably out of gas. Uncle Frankie’s friend returns with a gas can. Joey nearly cries and realizes that sometimes people really do help each other.
Joey and Grandmum snuggle under the quilt that Grandmum made. To Joey, the quilt is a metaphor for the way Grandmum holds this family together. He feels comforted when she holds him, and he compares her quilt to Captain America’s shield. Joey squeezes his new house key and values it deeply.
The security system is a baseball bat. They also have a folder containing all the important documents proving that they are poor enough to receive government support. In the event of a storm, Joey is instructed to grab the folder. He scopes out a safe place to find a moment of privacy and escape. He finds the perfect grove of pine trees.
Pages 1-65 Analysis
As Joey narrates the novel-in-verse, this uniquely lyrical format mirrors his fragmented and overwhelmed emotional state, mimicking the way his thoughts arrive in bursts whenever he is under pressure. In addition to contributing to a broader narrative arc, each poem functions as its own small unit, focusing on a specific scene, reflection, or feeling that provides a vivid but momentary glimpse of Joey’s experiences. This form of narration foregrounds Joey’s earnest and humorous voice, and his knowledge of serious and difficult topics is leavened by the many references that a child his age might use. Joey thinks of himself as someone who has had to grow up too quickly, and the reality of this dynamic is reflected in the story’s incongruous contrasts. For example, his thoughts jump from poop jokes and superheroes to The Impact of Food Insecurity and the insufficiency of government benefits all in an instant, and it is clear that he is constantly navigating the tension between childhood and premature adulthood. As Joey grapples with realities that a child “shouldn’t have to know” (33), his words highlight the unfairness of his precarious lifestyle.
From the start, Joey uses superhero-themed language and relates his life to comics in order to make sense of his chaotic situation. The titular phrase “and then, boom” recurs often throughout the novel, invoking the onomatopoetic style of comics in a context that indicates dramatic or life-changing moments rather than action scenes. These moments include events that have shaken Joey’s world, such as past traumas, the experience of becoming unhoused, and the devastating changes in his family structure. By framing his traumatic experiences as plot points in a larger story, Joey distances himself from the pain and suggests that he is still hoping for a better ending to his story. Thus, the very act of storytelling becomes a tool for survival. At the same time, his euphemisms and vague language—such as referring to “the mess with Mom” (30)—give him a way of Addressing the Social Stigma of Poverty and familial upheaval, and his oblique references to these issues also suggest that he is still unable to fully process certain traumas. His shame around his family’s struggles leads him to hide important information, such as the fact that he and his grandmother are living in a car. This shame—and the silence it produces—erect problematic emotional barriers that Joey must overcome before his situation can improve.
The first section also explores Joey’s relationships with his community, and the very existence of these connections foreshadows the fact that they will become an important source of strength for him. At the moment, his grandmother is his most stable and trusted caregiver, as demonstrated by his tendency to invoke the motif of superheroes to describe her. For example, his love and admiration for her shines through when he compares her handmade quilt to Captain America’s shield. In this context, the quilt is symbolic of warmth, safety, and selfless protection. In Joey’s mind, his grandmother is the real superhero of his life because she always puts his needs first despite the enormous challenges they face. By contrast, Joey’s volatile, unpredictable mother associates herself with a butterfly scarf because “butterflies are free” (25). Thus, the scarf’s delicacy represents her desire for freedom and the fragility of her bond with her son. The scarf, unlike the quilt, is flimsy at best—just like the unreliable attitude that Joey’s mother has toward her family responsibilities.
Despite Joey’s precarious home life, his friendships become a stabilizing force. His close friends, Nick and Hakeem, are emotionally intelligent and supportive, and they offer Joey help without making him feel ashamed or judged. Nick’s approach is subtle because it is rooted in personal experience and empathy, and Joey slowly opens up to his friend about his living situation. With this vital connection, his friends begin to act as a lifeline, offering Joey emotional support and tangible solutions. These early scenes show that Joey is not as alone as he believes himself to be, but his reticence also suggests that he has not fully accepted the idea of asking for help from others.
The introduction of Uncle Frankie further expands Joey’s community, and Frankie becomes a much-needed paternal figure in Joey’s life, helping him and his grandmother to settle into the mobile home park and providing them with crucial supplies. He even fixes things around their home and takes on responsibilities that ease Joey’s burden. This gesture is significant, as Joey has felt compelled to act like an adult in his household. Still, he struggles to fully trust Frankie; although he wants to believe in this new support, his years of instability have made him cautious. Joey’s slow journey toward trusting Frankie foreshadows his broader emotional evolution of learning to depend on others rather than carrying everything alone.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs