Book: Justin Case: School, Drool, and Other Daily Disasters
Pages: 256
Author: Rachel Vail
Okay, for starters, I don't generally like it when authors try to write a first person narrative about the other sex. For example, if you, the author, are female and you attempt a book from the viewpoint of a third grade boy. I just don't think you get the whole picture. No matter how many questions you ask to a 10 year old boy, you are just missing part of the equation.
With that being said, for what it was Justin Case turned out to be a pretty good book. It wasn't technical reading by any means. It's probably geared for a 10 year old boy to read, considering it's written about one. But, I read it anyways.
And I'm not going to apologize either.
So the book chronicles a day-by-day existence of Justin through his third grade year. The boy is neurotic. If David Sedaris (one of my most favorite authors, but please don't blame me for any content if you choose to read him.) were to publish his diaries from his third grade year, this would probably be it. The boy has some issues. But, amid those issues, you get the sense that we are all still struggling with variations of the same things--do they like me? Why does the teacher (boss) want to see me after school (work)? What am I doing here? Why won't the bullies leave me alone? You get the drift. As it turns out, we're all still stuck in some limbo between third grade and the rest of our lives.
If I were of the persuasion to censor the books my children read (or will read, given that they aren't exactly reading novels at this point), this book would make the cut. It had great illustrations that were funny and the issues that Justin grapples with like bullying and parents and girls are all things that will eventually creep into my own children's lives and reading about someone else tackling the same situations will hopefully make it more bearable.
But I'm not of the book censoring persuasion (a post for another day), so hopefully, my children will find, if not this book, then another book that will help them out. I guess I could suggest it though...
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2 comments:
By all means don't apologize for reading it-- sounds good! (And you made me so happy by writing a blog post tonight-- I was really wishing for one from you!) And yeah, I'm with you on the book censoring-- or lack thereof. But you already knew that. And probably weren't one bit surprised to find out that we agree on that too... :)
Hmm, how funny that the book I'm writing right now is a first-person narrative of about a third-grade boy. Shrug. I'm writing it for my third-grade son, so I'm not going to apologize about it. :) But it's still funny.
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