HEADS OR TAILS

Though Jack has lived in nine houses and gone to five schools in his young life, three things have remained constant: a stable family, his father's inability to find a permanent job—and The Sound of Music, playing at the local drive-in since he moved to his Fort Lauderdale neighborhood. Gantos (Rotten Ralph) depicts him in a loosely knit series of incidents—tragic, comic, or both. When Jack copies his older sister's handwriting and his teacher accuses him of cheating, he vengefully shows her his diary, which also contains his pressed bug collection; he forgets to put his bike away and loses it in a hurricane; when his little brother points a finger-gun at a passing plane and it crashes, Jack takes quick action to save him from a lifetime of guilt; at his grandfather's sad funeral, he talks with a man who claims to have touched a UFO. Surrounded by a quirky cast (a relentlessly pessimistic older sister, a mother who makes the best of things, neighbors who remind Jack of the Stupids), Jack is an innocent with a sixth-grader's sensibility and a good heart, learning how quickly life's highs can become lows and vice versa. In the end, another job falls through and the family prepares to move; still, The Sound of Music finally gives way to Planet of the Apes. Funny moments, with an underlying poignancy. (Fiction. 11-13)