By Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

The well-written children's book, 'Tamika You Did It,' gave me what I call the-end-of-the-highway effect. It is the sensation you get coming off the Clarendon or Mandela Highway end of Highway 2000 and having to slow down as the road condition changes abruptly.

In this case it was not that Darcy Wright's writing, mainly in short, effective sentences, suited to the target group of 10 - 12 year olds changes dramatically as the book hits its final pages. Rather, it is that the climactic first meeting between 12-year-old Tamika and her father 'Maas Neville' comes and the book simply ends with:

"What a lot of catching up they had to do!! Her dad still has her mother's three letters, as well as his replies that were returned to him with 'incorrect address' stamped across them. Now that he has the special glasses, the 3 no longer looks so much like an 8!!"

And with that the tale of a young girl who is a barrel child in reverse (her mother Sonia provides her with everything in the U.S.A., but she longs to know the father she never met back in Jamaica) comes to a disappointing end.

It is especially so because the story, written in the present tense and with coloured illustrations by Michael Robinson, had been going so well up to that terminal point.

The basis of TamikaYou Did It is that Tamika makes a deal with her mother to give up her birthday party and do well in school, in exchange for a trip to Jamaica where she would (hopefully) meet her father.

Said father is mentioned from early, mother telling daughter "if he wanted to find you, he would. You don't need him; just forget him".

Along the journey to 'doing it,' Tamika loses a fellow 'beeny wapper' in the sassy, gum-popping Ayana, reassesses the stern Ms. Gobble who helps her with her mathematics problems, and matures considerably.

The takes on Jamaica by Jamaicans abroad, from negative memories of home by Uncle Robert, to sessions and the beach are realistic. And when Ayana tells Tamika that her cashy father is gone on a cruise and the adults say "is that them call it now" one knows exactly what is what.

The journey from the Norman Manley International Airport to the St. Ann district where Sonia is from in Shaka's old Austin Cambridge 'Lizzie,' is graphic and humorous, with hints of 'Mass Neville' dropped all along.

In the end, an ingenious Tamika insists on and engineers the meeting with her father, the final illustration showing a happy lookalike father and daughter in each other's arms.

And then braps, the story is over.

Tamika You Did It is published by Arawak Publications.