Poor kids don’t receive as much guidance in a library as affluent kids do.
“The Badlands” is the local name for the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kennsington. The neighborhood is pockmarked with empty lots and burned-out row houses, the area has an unemployment rate of 29 percent and a poverty rate of 90 percent. The neighborhood of Chestnut Hill is just a few miles to the northwest of Kennsington but seems to belong to a different universe. In Chestnut Hill, educated professionals shop the boutiques along Germantown Avenue and return home to gracious stone and brick houses, the average price of which hovers above $400,000.
