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‘Hey, Kiddo’ Aims To Help Kids With Addicted Parents Feel Less Alone

When author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in the fourth grade, his grandparents called him into the living room. “I remember thinking: Oh maybe we’re going to go on another family vacation,” he says. (The last time they called a family meeting he learned they were going to Disney World.)

But this wasn’t that kind of family meeting. Krosoczka’s grandparents had insisted on taking legal custody of him as a toddler — and they were about to tell him why.

“My grandfather sat me down on the couch,” Krosoczka recalls. “And he said: ‘It’s time we tell you the truth about your mother. She’s in jail and she’s a drug addict and that’s why she’s been gone all this time.’ ”

Krosoczka had seen his mother only sporadically since age 2. He had never met his father.

Throughout his childhood, Krosoczka kept this painful information hidden. “I didn’t tell anybody for the longest time …” he says. “When you have these addictions in your families, you sort of live this duality. You have this thing that you hold back from people and you put your best face forward.”

Krosoczka wasn’t an athletic or social kid. Drawing was his refuge, his way of making friends, and his way of dealing with life. “Maybe that’s [where] my storytelling skills began,” he says. “By my making up excuses for where my biological parents were.”

As an adult, Krosoczka became a graphic novelist — publishing books for young readers such as the “Lunch Lady” and the “Platypus Police Squad” series. He considered writing about his own life, but worried his story was too dark.

It wasn’t until he began meeting young fans with similar life stories that he changed his mind. Krosoczka’s new book Hey, Kiddo, tells the story of his mother’s addiction and incarceration from the point of view of his 17-year-old self.

“It took a long time for me to gain that courage to make this book …” he says. “I feel like I owe it to these readers to put myself out there.”