A young Chicagoan finds an unstructured but effective alternative to public education in this toothy satire, set in the ism- crazed 1950s. In his first week at Riverview High, Robert is accused of being either a commie or a fairy by his homeroom teacher, informed of an international Jewish conspiracy by his English teacher, spends hours copying dreary blackboard essays into a notebook, and finds himself sitting at the geek table at lunch. Soon he’s cutting classes, thinking—wrongly, it turns out—that no one much cares; to head off imminent transfer to reform school, Robert persuades his parents to enroll him at Wheaton, a small private school with a decidedly looser approach to learning. As every student automatically gets all A’s, there’s no need to attend classes. Robert soaks up contemporary thought and culture as he meets as wacky an assemblage of free spirits as has ever sprung from Pinkwater’s fevered imagination: He hangs out with teachers and classmates at movie houses, the local greasy spoon, a jazz bar, a beat bookstore, and the public library; attends college lectures armed with a fake ID; and makes excellent money helping a schoolmate deliver furniture. Falling somewhere between Candide and Holden Caulfield, Robert is an inexperienced but savvy teen, with an ability to land on his feet and capacity for sardonic observations that will have readers rocking with laughter. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: April 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-31969-3
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
In a departure from his realistic novels, Thomas (Satellite Down, 1998, etc.) tries a science fiction adventure intended for younger readers, with less success. Grady, 13, is a junior-high geek and botanist who is invited to join a secret forest regeneration project in the Amazon. The project is directed by the mysterious Dr. Carter, who turns out to be, not surprisingly, a standard mad scientist. When Grady arrives at the site he is scorned because his colleagues were unaware of his youth; assigned to drudge work and left alone at the campsite, Grady surreptitiously analyzes the data the team has collected, and realizes that Dr. Carter is growing poisonous trees that are destroying the food chain. When his efforts are discovered by Dr. Carter, Grady escapes from the camp and joins the local Indians. The book shifts into an action adventure tale, as Grady fights hostile tribes and attempts to foil Dr. Carter. While the scenario is imaginative and Thomas doesn’t completely abandon his fortÇ, characterization, at the core this novel is a kids-know-best shoot-’em-up. When Grady blossoms into an Amazonian superhero, the author’s fans may feel the threat of incredibility, but they’ll also have to turn every page to the end. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81780-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
Grand passion, terror, desire, comfort—it’s all here, and much of it is actual history, in Skurzynski’s spirited retelling of the story of Abelard and Eloise. The author can be forgiven some purple prose and melodramatic posturing on the narrator’s account: Aran is a mute shepherd rescued by Abelard himself from the horrors of an abusive family and then from a man who produces freaks on demand. Abelard, the mesmerizing 12th-century theologian and scholar, has need of a silent servant, as Aran—now called Spider—learns, because he is passionately in love with his student Eloise and their lessons have turned carnal. Spider keeps watch during their trysts, and travels with them when the pregnant Eloise goes to live with Abelard’s noble family. Eloise’s brilliance and beauty glow in these pages, along with Abelard’s reckless, self-centered intensity, and the harshness of peasant life. Spider is helpless to prevent Abelard’s castration by Eloise’s uncle, but that trauma leads him to find, eventually, a voice of his own. A great deal of information about medieval France, gore that won’t disturb the more hardened in the audience, and a famed love story will hold readers and send them to the sources cited at the end. (map) (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-82149-2
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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