Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2425446 in Books
• Published on: 1986-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 298 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The assured, imaginative writing in LeVert's first novel compels belief in the story told by John, a sensitive 16-year-old. Insecure among peers, John suffers from his father's unreasonable demands at home although he enjoys a loving relationship with his younger siblings. His problems make the boy singularly aware of animal life, which he studies closely, and he gets into deeper trouble. John becomes, in crises, a variety of creatures with whom he empathizes. His weird behavior incites attacks from kids at school and enrages his father. A didactic psychiatrist is no help but John's good friend, his girlfriend and his little brother and sister remain close and caring. The story lacks a definitive conclusion but gives readers a memorable experience and much to think about, particularly on the understanding owed to "different" people.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 9-12 John, a high-school junior, increasingly identifies with animals in this first-person narrative. Whether observing a spider in his room, feeling territorial as he plays football or observing the turkey carcass at Thanksgiving, he thinks and talks in animal imagery. The book is an episodic series of linked encountersat school with the demanding biology teacher, with his Jewish friend's grandmother or with his own sarcastic father. Dialogue sometimes runs away with the storyas when his black friend randomly reads bird names aloud and ascribes a race to each. Discussions touch on evolution, vegetarianism, anthropomorphism, Kafka, animals killed on highwaysas well as fears and loves. There are profanities and profundities as adolescents try on the world for size. John finds himself going a step beyondtalking to the neighbor's dog and getting a reply; empathizing with animals and becoming them, psychically. He shares these experiences with his girlfriend and gets nowhere with psychiatrists. But at the close, under stressand as he has often dreamedhe soars home, where his family meets him and sits together on the steps in a strangely moving climax of support at once special and ordinary. The book is too long, and Levert's lengthy lessons about animal behavior are occasionally pedantic. However, this is an unusual first novel, written with compassion and wit, that seems at times more about than for teens, yet one that some will read. Ruth M. McConnell, San Antonio Public Lib .
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.