Busta’s Book of the Week: Children’s book chronicles life of Dr. Joe Dudley Sr.

By Busta Brown Imagine your life as a child who lived in a shack on a farm, with no electricity. It’s barely big enough for two, yet both of your parents and ten siblings live with you. Every day at 5 a.m. it’s time to feed the cows, chickens, and pigs, and then clean their stalls. You flunked first grade because of a learning disability. “The kids laughed at me every time I gave a wrong answer in class,” Little Joe says in the book.  In the book, he was physically and verbally abused by his aunt. “She promised me a bike if I didn’t tell my mother. So, I would lie to my mother and tell her I fell down,” said Little Joe. His aunt never got him the bike.   The seven-year-old witnessed his grandmother’s battle with diabetes. “She gets sick a lot, because she has too much sugar in her blood. My family takes turns taking care of her. I bring her food and water, and do anything she asked me to do,” said Little Joe. His grandmother is very nice to Little Joe, unlike his aunt.  These are snippets from the book, “Tough Times Don’t Last: The...