GET LOST, LITTLE BROTHER
By
On p. 121 (of 154 pp.), eleven-year-old Todd is still ""getting pushed around and ignored"" by his 13-year-old twin brothers Michael and Leon, which is virtually all that the story's about. Supposedly, they should stop picking on him because he has ""his own friends now and his mother [isn't] defending him anymore,"" the ostensible reason for their hostility; but he also has to prove to them--and the world, it appears--that he's learned ""how to be a friend"" (to, as it happens, two oddball stereotypes). Todd, who mopes for most of the book, is hardly a sympathetic or involving character (or a credible eleven); still, you'd have to feel sorry for a kid with all this laid on him.