Harris, 12, has a summer job baby-sitting preschooler Jamey Benya, who is a handful. Harris is impressed with Jamey's wealthy parents, who contrast sharply with his own messy, easygoing, financially just-about-making-it mother and father. When he's not sitting, Harris hangs out with his big-talking best friend, Bert, whose sole aim in life is to call ``babes'' on the phone and make dates for him and Harris. Harris tells his parents that he won't be going on a family camping trip and secretly nurses a hope that the Benyas will adopt him. Then Jamey runs away; in his search for the child, Harris learns something about both the Benya family and his own, all too predictable to matter much. Bert's machismo is far more offensive than amusing, but Harris is a reassuringly normal hero, whose actions are mostly believable. He's stuck in a well- worn plot, though, where Cullen (The Backyard Ghost, 1993, etc.) surrounds him with little more than cardboard characters; readers will smell the set-up before he does. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-395-73680-3
Page Count: 149
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sixth-grade overachiever discovers that there are worse things than being forced to sit between two underachievers in this wickedly barbed tale of a teacher gone bad. Perennial teacher’s pet Jasper Gordon has a ringside seat, between cousins Spike and Butch Couture, the banes of Theodore Ervin Elementary for five years, as they square off against tough, feared Mrs. McNulty. At first, the two sides are nearly equal, but after the Coutures are caught skinny-dipping on a field trip, McNulty stops playing fair, discarding the boys’ contributions to the student literary magazine out of hand, then formally recommending that Spike be left back and Butch be enrolled in remedial classes when he reaches junior high. Meanwhile, she keeps the rest of the class under her thumb with threats, intimidation, and belittlement. Fair-minded Jasper appeals to the sympathetic but powerless principal, then helps Spike and Butch put together a science project, sabotaging his own to give them a better chance of winning. When she finds out, McNulty cracks, attacking Jasper before a crowd of parents and engineering her own downfall. The characters are all slightly larger than life: McNulty is just plausible enough to be scary, the Coutures are driven not so much by malice as by a free-spirited rejection of the idea of structured learning, and Jasper—his performance anxiety well established—makes a meaningful sacrifice. That’s two- for-two for Gauthier (My Life Among the Aliens, 1996); Spike and Butch are the most hilariously annoying classroom cut-ups since Barbara Robinson’s Herdmans in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (1972) and The Best School Year Ever (1994). (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: April 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-23216-8
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tony's father hasn't been home in months; his mother Eileen spends days ``sick'' in bed, leaving four-year-old Christy on her own. Only on the baseball field does Tony feel safe and in control. Gradually, he realizes that his mother's illness is not flu but alcoholism. When she is hospitalized after a fall, Dad returns, admitting that he had fled the problem rather than face it; he patiently bears Tony's hot anger, and by the end they are friends, waiting for Eileen—still at the denial stage—to come home. Tony performs heroically in several games, but the baseball action takes a backseat to his bitter discovery that his parents are imperfect. With insight, Anderson, author of Coming Home: Children's Stories for Adult Children of Alcoholics (1988), explores the effects (though not the causes) of alcoholism on a family, properly offering no easy solutions. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-689-31686-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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