Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks

Cynthia “Say So” Sower puts on a comedy show in front of her classmates during the last five minutes of class time. Her teacher Mrs. Stevens allows her to do so because she knows “this was the only way to keep Cynthia from disrupting and derailing the entire lesson” (137). Mrs. Stevens even secretly enjoys Cynthia’s jokes as they “reminded her of old comedians on the black-and-white TV shows her grandmother used to watch when she was a child” (139).

Cynthia’s mother works during the day and attends school in the evening. Although “she was Cynthia’s hero,” Cynthia considers her grandfather “her superhero” (141). Cynthia is named after her grandfather whose name is Cinder. He owns a liquor store and would “hold court right there in the middle of the store” on a wooden crate he would flip over as a makeshift stage (141). Cynthia has inherited her grandfather’s sense of humor and talent for making jokes. Cynthia describes her grandfather as being both “a hardheaded, hardhanded, hard-talking man” while also being “soft enough to hold baby Cynthia and stare at her and laugh and laugh like she was the greatest joke ever told” (142). He nicknames baby Cynthia “Say So” for her noisy babbling.