In this riveting futuristic novel, Spaz, a teenage boy with epilepsy, makes a dangerous journey in the company of an old man and a young boy. The old man, Ryter, one of the few people remaining who can read and write, has dedicated his life to recording stories. Ryter feels a kinship with Spaz, who unlike his contemporaries has a strong memory; because of his epilepsy, Spaz cannot use the mind probes that deliver entertainment straight to the brain and rot it in the process. Nearly everyone around him uses probes to escape their life of ruin and poverty, the result of an earthquake that devastated the world decades earlier. Only the “proovs,” genetically improved people, have grass, trees, and blue skies in their aptly named Eden, inaccessible to the “normals” in the Urb. When Spaz sets out to reach his dying younger sister, he and his companions must cross three treacherous zones ruled by powerful bosses. Moving from one peril to the next, they survive only with help from a proov woman. Enriched by Ryter’s allusions to nearly lost literature and full of intriguing, invented slang, the skillful writing paints two pictures of what the world could look like in the future—the burned-out Urb and the pristine Eden—then shows the limits and strengths of each. Philbrick, author of Freak the Mighty (1993) has again created a compelling set of characters that engage the reader with their courage and kindness in a painful world that offers hope, if no happy endings. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-08758-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
In a third book that links the imagination of a small child with the toy vehicles in his possession, S°s (Trucks, Trucks, Trucks, p. 538, etc.) puts realistic scenes of a child on the lefthand pages, and the scenes the child envisions on right. On one page, a boy sits on a sofa with a couple of boxes and a couple of poles and a small blanket. A blue scatter rug is on the floor. Opposite that scene is the same boy, but now the sofa is in a state of transformation. Gradually, through the pages, it is first an amorphous conveyance, then an inflatable, a canoe, a sailboat, a junk, until it becomes a great liner. The little rug, of course, becomes the sea. The pages march correspondingly along, with the boy arranging the boxes and poles into his vessel of choice. A fold-out page reveals a terrific sea monster, but a mother appears, too, with her vacuum cleaner, bringing boy and readers back to shore. S°s is at his simple best, using broad lines to depict reality, and then the spidery, dot-dash penwork to shape his fantasy world; he and children speak the same language to weave their dreams. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16644-X
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
Jack’s back (Jack’s Black Book, 1997, etc.) and wacko enough to water ski on land, feed his sleeping sister a cockroach, and bring about the unfortunate demise of three pet cats. Gantos’s hyperactive rewriting of his own diaries zips Jack through fifth grade and a barrage of overlapping adventures. Like the steel sphere in a pinball game, Jack bounces around between his older sister’s insults, his parents admonishments, and his friend Tack’s dares. None of this is for the weak of heart or the gullible; between picking a hookworm (his “secret pet”) out of his arm and lying in a hole with a screaming locomotive passing overhead, Jack is no role model, but he is real. His battles with his emotions—why he cries all the time, why he is “more interested in gross things than in beautiful things”—and his struggles to do what he deems right and adult (instead of wrong and childish) ring true. Have readers fasten their seat belts for this one, or—for a real jolt of Jack—don’t. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1999
ISBN: 0-374-33665-2
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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