(STARRED REVIEW) Klise, better known for oddball mysteries, goes here for a more character-driven family story, narrated by an 11-year-old middle child edging toward serious depression. Compiling lists like "The Most Embarrassing Things in My Life," Charles Harrisong glumly records efforts of his hardworking parents to make ends meet, the tumultuous teasing and tears at home among his four siblings and his own unsuccessful efforts to escape the jeering notice of his middle school's in-crowd. Just beneath these seemingly routine trappings, however, lurks a far more rewarding tale, for the Harrisongs are one of those uncommon (at least, in literature) species, a cohesive nuclear family whose members, for all their occasional fallings-out, love and respect each other to pieces. Better yet, Klise doesn't tell, she shows, leading readers gradually into the hearts and spirits of her characters-while taking those characters on a seriocomic odyssey of their own, as they impetuously leave their rented Illinois home for a leaky houseboat off the Alabama coast, and a well-earned fresh start. Nothing "normal" here.
PEOPLE
PEOPLE reporter Kate Klise, author of five previous books for young readers,
has written a quirky coming-of-age tale for the 10-14 crowd. Starring
goofy but loveable Charles Harrisong, a boy from Normal, Ill., it's about
standing out in all the wrong ways.
HORN BOOK
In Normal,
Illinois, sixth-grader Charles Harrisong feels that his family is anything
but normal. Because he is intensely self-conscious, almost everything
humiliates Charles past endurance, and in truth his classmates do tease
him for being different. Yet the very family who so embarrasses Charles
is also a source of strength and support. When, after a cruel incident
at school, his sister Clara points out that Charles isn't just shy, that
the other kids' treatment of him "made him shy," the Harrisongs
pack up their belongings and move to a houseboat they bought sight unseen.
This reckless action isn't altogether plausible, but Klise's ear for family
dynamics is dead-on, with each family member precisely and delicately
drawn as the family relationships shift with their risky move. Klise's
previous books (Regarding the Fountain, etc.) used devices such as letters
and newspaper clippings to assemble the story; in this, her first straightforward
narrative, she shows a gift for getting inside her narrator, delivering
his perceptions with immediacy and self-deprecating humor. Readers will
hope for a sequel to this touching, funny book. S.D.L.
