Danielle Paz

I love this picture because of it being this dead end road with a warning on it and a serious gate, but yet it seems so enticing. All I want to do is hop the yellow bar and wander down the dirt path, as I’m sure Wyatt would be curious to do, probably hoping he could take Clark along with him.

I’m so glad Danielle caught this one, because I know Wyatt would have loved to snap a surprise glimpse of this comic book store. He might have even taken it for Clark Kent, because Wyatt’s one friend likes comics so much.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up–Wyatt Reaves opens his soul to an unnamed stranger on a bus taking him away from his bleak past and negligent parents, Fever and Ma. When he was 12, he burned down his family home. For the next five years, he is taken on a circuitous road trip by Uncle Spade, Fever’s brother, an unscrupulous, hard-drinking traveling salesman with girlfriends in several locales. Stopping in Arkansas, Wyatt makes friends with Clark, a small, bespectacled boy. Together they invent a game of cruelty to polliwogs, but soon the beat-up Chevy is back on the road heading wherever Spade’s shady deals take them. Wyatt’s height and developing musculature belie the fearful, lost child inside, who is unable to cry. His thwarted emotions coalesce into an intense rage that is often violent and out of control. Spade eagerly becomes Wyatt’s manager, coaching him, sending him on long beer runs, and collecting the cold cash flowing from Wyatt’s dominance as a fist-fighter. They stop to visit one of Spade’s girlfriends, whose kindness touches Wyatt, but things go badly when Spade batters her on her front lawn, and Wyatt begins to question his own sanity when he feels a compulsion to go and kill his one friend, Clark. He demands to return to Fever and Ma, a move that only confirms the harm and hurt of a family culture laced with vulgarity, mockery, and insults. Characterizations are strong in this searing, yet affirming first novel of a young man determined to define himself and make a new life.

–Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT

What do you think Wyatt notices in this picture? What detail does he see?

Voice Of Youth Advocates

On his half birthday, twelve-year-old Wyatt finds himself homeless and in a shelter, no shoes on his feet, and his parents screaming threats at him through the door of a social worker’s office. His Uncle Spade shows up like some cool guardian angel with a muscle car and whisks him off to a life of adventure on the road. Spade is a traveling salesman of dubious moral character, selling merchandise of questionable provenance. He is woefully unprepared to meet the developmental needs of a child, yet he is a considerable step up from Wyatt’s birth parents. Spade is a hustler and soon learns how to exploit Wyatt, turning him into a successful bare-knuckle fighter. Together they crisscross the country like characters in a violent, dysfunctional-family/buddy film. Wyatt keeps fighting and winning, and he tries to raise himself, with occasional input from one of his uncle’s “girlfriends.” Using first-person narrative and the fractured grammar of an undereducated teen, Oaks puts readers inside Wyatt’s head. He is a troubled youth being raised by little better than wolves. The fighting is a fairly obvious metaphor for Wyatt’s hardscrabble journey from victim to victor but will engage male readers. The story succeeds because of Wyatt’s voice, capturing all his vulnerable, messy humanity. This novel is a tough-guy’s coming-of-age story, and its brief length will likely appeal to reluctant readers. Librarians should be aware that the book references violence, drugs, and alcohol and includes a scene in a Gentleman’s Club.

Reviewer: Amy Fiske

…also check out what one blogger thought at Starving For Books