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BRO

Name: BRO
Author: Robert Newton Peck
ISBN: 0-06-052974-1

by Robert Newton Peck ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2004

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Nine-year-old Tugwell Dockery doesn’t speak. People think it’s because of the horrible train crash that killed his parents, but no, something he witnessed years ago made him mute. His older brother, Broda Joe Dockery, knows Tug is smart and knows he’ll talk again someday, but Bro is in prison for another year, though plotting an escape. Told from several rapidly shifting, third-person points of view, the story races along. A corrupt prison warden, a prison break, a swamp full of deadly gators and snakes, and mysterious terrors in Tug’s memory give the story a larger-than-life feel. The opening chapter is a model of sharp descriptive writing, and a later birthing scene is reminiscent of a famous episode in A Day No Pigs Would Die. Allusions to prison violence and a graphic scene out of Tug’s memory make this a work for an older audience. (Fiction. 12+)

Pub Date: June 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-06-052974-1

Page Count: 160

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

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SLIDER

by Pete Hautman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2017

Winning views of a family pulling together, of young people stumbling into adolescence, and of an entertaining if...

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Winning a competitive eating contest is David’s only hope of avoiding being grounded for life after he does something stupid with his mother’s credit card.

Already an avid eater and a fan of the “sport,” David Miller, 14, figures that he’s really going to have to up his game after accidently spending $2,000 in an online auction for what is billed as the very hot-dog half that cost pro eater Jooky Garafalo last year’s Nathan’s Famous contest. Fortunately, local pizzeria Pigorino’s is sponsoring a competition at the Iowa State Fair with a $5,000 first prize. Unfortunately, David will have to beat out not only a roster of gifted amateurs to make and win the finals, but also a pair of professionals—notably the renowned but unscrupulous El Gurgitator. As much gourmet as gourmand, David not only vividly chronicles awe-inspiring gustatory feats as he gears up and passes through qualifiers, but describes food with unseemly intensity: “Disks of pepperoni shimmer and glisten on a sea of molten mozzarella.” Even better, though, is the easy, natural way he interacts with Mal, a younger brother whose neurological disability (the term “autistic” is banned from family discourse) transforms but does not conceal a rich internal life. Other subplots, such as a developing relationship between David’s longtime friends Hayden (who is evidently white) and Korean-American Cyn, further enrich a tale in which his own tests and his loving, white family’s determined quest to discover what they dub “Mal’s Rules” both result in thrilling, hard-won triumphs.

Winning views of a family pulling together, of young people stumbling into adolescence, and of an entertaining if controversial pursuit, “reverse-eating events” and all. (Fiction. 12-14)