LAST CHANCE SUMMER

So few pages, so many changes in the lives of the unruly boys living on good-hearted Scotsman Carlton Jenner's Canadian farm. It's their last chance—unless they remake their attitudes- -before they are sent to a prison-like institution for boys. Marl feels lucky that his social worker, Cecile, has placed him at the farm, and he's happy at the friendship that springs up between him and Goat, a boy whose skin is so scarred from beatings that, even in July's heat, he never goes without a shirt. Despite all good intentions, events conspire against Marl—and the other boys—but Jenner, Goat, and Cecile glimpse his struggles and reach out with help. The writing in this first novel gains emotional depth from its controlled, lean sentences; the boys' motives and the pressures on them are revealed quietly and surely. There are no bad boys, only bad breaks—at least within these pages. Readers will believe. (Fiction. 10-14)