Lullabies for Little Criminals

Jules’s health declines; he coughs frequently and is cold all the time. He gets admitted to a long-term hospital for tuberculosis. Baby gets taken to a foster home.

Baby is the only girl in a foster home full of boys; she considers them all to be losers, but she quickly befriends them anyway. She finds out Jules is going to be in the hospital longer than expected, and she starts “cursing more and throwing bottles against train tracks. I did these things for no good reason. I didn’t know anyone whose father lived in a hospital” (29).

Linus Lucas arrives at the foster home. He is fourteen and explains “how his mother was white and his father was black” (29). He is cooler than the other foster kids, and it’s clear that he’s been in the system for a long time; while the other kids daydream about their parents rescuing them, he seems removed from that hope. Linus and Baby quickly become friends. He thinks she’s cool because she and her dad are from Montreal, and Montreal is nothing but cool in his eyes.

One day, the foster kids go into town.