A picaresque coming-of-age tale with an often appealing hero.
When his father dies suddenly, an adolescent boy faces more than one kind of loss as he navigates the perilous path between childhood and maturity in a new city in Walker’s debut novel.
In 1965, 12-year-old Sam “Humpy” Barger lives with his family in the tiny fishing village of Ninilchik, Alaska, helping his father mend and set nets, attending his small, eighth-grade class, and taking the first shy steps toward having a girlfriend. Then his world gets turned upside down: his strong, capable father has a heart attack and dies, forcing Sam’s mom to move him, his brother, and his sister to Anchorage so that she can find work. Reeling from the sudden loss, Sam confronts the challenges in his life with honesty, integrity, and curiosity, as well as sadness and anxiety. Along the way, however, he makes new friends and tests the limits of his daring. Walker’s first-person narrative is engaging and vivid as he describes Sam’s earnest progress toward discovering who he is. The author skillfully evokes the world of adolescent boys, full of gross-out jokes, territorial challenges, and a few true friends. Sam’s adventures are gripping, yet realistic, such as when he almost, but not quite, gets caught by the police while stealing comic books, and each escapade teaches him something about himself. Occasionally, readers may feel Walker reaches a bit too far for an unlikely metaphor, as when Sam describes a Corvette passing his friend as “a burgundy ghost passing across the mirror of his soul.” Also, although the narrative does treat racism with some sensitivity, a gratuitous gay joke goes disturbingly unremarked. In general, though, the book is absorbing as it describes the painfully awkward moment before kids become “teenagers with cars and adults with power.” As it follows Sam through the changes and choices, the plot builds to an exciting conclusion that includes violence, redemption, and the first faltering steps toward a new life.
A picaresque coming-of-age tale with an often appealing hero.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943328-79-6
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Alaska Northwest Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The poster boy for relentless mischief-makers everywhere, first encountered in No, David! (1998), gives his weary mother a rest by going to school. Naturally, he’s tardy, and that’s but the first in a long string of offenses—“Sit down, David! Keep your hands to yourself! PAY ATTENTION!”—that culminates in an afterschool stint. Children will, of course, recognize every line of the text and every one of David’s moves, and although he doesn’t exhibit the larger- than-life quality that made him a tall-tale anti-hero in his first appearance, his round-headed, gap-toothed enthusiasm is still endearing. For all his disruptive behavior, he shows not a trace of malice, and it’ll be easy for readers to want to encourage his further exploits. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-48087-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
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